2025 Lisbon EuroPride: A Force of (Dis)Unity

Article By Daniel Santos

Disclaimer: Please note the content discussed in the following article represents the opinions of the author and is not an official position of ReportOUT

In June 2025, Lisbon will host the EuroPride. However, this event, which presents itself as defending LGBTQ+ people and enhancing their visibility to fight for legal and social recognition in their home countries, risks being and becoming a force of division instead of togetherness among Portuguese LGBTQ+ communities. 

The EuroPride is the biggest LGBTQ+ event in Europe. It presents itself not only as a celebration, but a statement of visibility, unity, and resilience in continuing to fight for equality and a more inclusive future where LGBTQ+ individuals can proudly be themselves1. In fact, EuroPride has been extremely important in enhancing the visibility of LGBTQ+ communities and amplifying the claims of local LGBTQ+ communities for equal rights in its host countries. For instance, during the 2022 edition of the event in Serbia, despite the increasing homo-transphobia in the country and the formal ban imposed by Serbian authorities, LGBTQ+ communities became further visible. Participants in the 2022 Belgrade EuroPride called for equal rights, for European integration, and for a distancing from Russian political homophobia2. 

Delving into the contemporary Portuguese context, the event is especially relevant. It aims at increasing the visibility of LGBTQ+ communities in Portugal, where violence against these communities is still persistent. According to ILGA Europe (2025)3, in recent years, Portugal made some progress in defending the rights of LGBTQ+ people, for instance by criminalizing so-called “conversion therapies” in 2024 and passing a gender identity self-determination law in 2018.

However, there are growing political forces threatening these hard-won rights, namely the rise of the far-right political party Chega and the increase in the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech and hate crimes. Hence, pride events, like EuroPride, remain essential in Portugal to guarantee that the current government does not roll back LGBTQ+ rights and instead seeks to further advance the protection of these rights. 

Nevertheless, EuroPride is still embedded in power relations that reinforce inequalities within LGBTQ+ communities. Firstly, it reproduces homonormativity. EuroPride, as a case of mainstream European LGBTQ+ activism, does not question, and instead reinforces, neoliberalism by privileging the experience of the “good” White, middle-class, monogamous, metropolitan, and liberal LGBTQ+ person. Meanwhile, all other queer lived experiences are assimilated, and dissent is neglected. 

This homonormativity can turn the EuroPride itself into an acontextual event that assumes what local LGBTQ+ communities in hosting countries desire without effectively seeking to address their needs4. Secondly, EuroPride reinforces pink capitalism. It promotes mercantile LGBTQ+ values, calling for participants to support local businesses who present themselves as LGBTQ-friendly, even if they do nothing else to safeguard LGBTQ+ rights. Taking the example of Spain5, during the 2007 EuroPride and the 2017 WorldPride, local enterprises commodified LGBTQ+ identities mostly to exploit LGBTQ+ representation for profit, without authentically addressing the needs LGBTQ+ Spanish people. Hence, even with its supposedly radical emancipatory purpose, EuroPride can reinforce oppressive power inequalities. 

Since Lisbon was chosen as the host city for the 2025 EuroPride in October 2022, the event and its organization team have been involved in several scandals. Namely, early this year, almost all the initial local Portuguese LGBTQ+ NGOs have abandoned the event’s organization team, which prevented them from having a say about the event6. This raised concerns over how representative the event actually is. 

Progressively more Portuguese LGBTQ+ citizens, NGOs, and grassroots movements question: 

Further, another entanglement of EuroPride and power inequalities that recently raised some concerns is the potential relationship between EuroPride and Israeli pinkwashing strategies. Israel has been instrumentalizing LGBTQ+ rights to present itself as the most pro-LGBTQ+ country in the Middle East, in opposition to Arab countries, especially the Palestinian territories. While this strategy neglects the violence that LGBTQ+ Israelis still suffer in their society and that LGBTQ+ Arabs are struggling for their queer emancipation in their own terms, Israeli pinkwashing further normalizes the oppression of Palestinians, as well as the Israeli apartheid and illegal occupation policies, since these are justified as defending freedom and democracy in the region.

The Israeli state expands this pinkwashing strategy through several techniques, namely the presence and funding of European pride events, such as EuroPride. Israeli authorities use these pride events to reinforce their reputation as a progressive, democratic, LGBTQ-friendly country surrounded by backward, homophobic Muslim nations. Therefore, Israeli pinkwashing7 entangles major pride events in Europe, and can become entangled with EuroPride. 

Looking at the 2025 Lisbon EuroPride, these pinkwashing concerns become especially vivid. The event’s organizational team had a municipal commissary who, in the past years, has been Head of Press Office of the Israeli Embassy in Lisbon and one of the two main organizers of the Israeli Pride Party in Lisbon8, besides being currently under investigation over accusations of embezzlement of funds9. Currently, this municipal commissary has been removed removed after an internal disciplinary process was raised against him. This commissary was chosen by the Mayor of Lisbon, who belongs to the political party PSD (Partido Social Democrata), which is still the ruling party and has historically had an “at least” reluctant position on LGBTQ+ rights. 

For instance, PSD presents itself as willing and ready to safeguard the human rights of all communities, including LGBTQ+ people, however, it also voted against the 2010 legalization of same-sex marriage, the 2018 gender identity self-determination law, the 2024 criminalization of conversion therapies, and was recently against further funding for the realization of the Lisbon EuroPride. Thus, there are bright fears that the 2025 EuroPride edition in Lisbon could be instrumentalized by Israel, and even the Mayor of Lisbon of the PSD. 

Consequently, more than 40 Portuguese LGBTQ+ NGOs and pro-Palestinian collectives have sent a letter to the EuroPride headquarters asking for concrete measures to, firstly, reassure that the event would not be instrumentalized by Israeli authorities in Portugal as a pinkwashing tool to conceal and normalize the Israeli genocidal military actions in Gaza, and secondly, to guarantee that representatives of LGBTQ+ Portuguese NGOs’ voices are heard10.

These NGOs have warned that “there is no pride in genocide”, and they will continue to fight for a EuroPride in Lisbon that fights for the rights of all human beings. It is noteworthy that, in response, the EuroPride reiterated that there are no relations between the event and Israeli military actions and called for the community to not allow itself to be divided on these issues because unity is more important than that11. 

Nowadays, the Portuguese LGBTQ+ community seems divided. On the one hand, some are not aware of the event and the scandals involving it, so they are often left aside in these discussions. Others are aware of the situation but diverge in how to respond to it. Whilst some believe there is still a chance to change the organization of the event, others are calling for a boycott.

The first are still hopeful that, through reforms, change can be achieved, and the 2025 Lisbon EuroPride can become an event that minimizes its potential negative effects and enhances the visibility of the community while addressing local Portuguese LGBTQ+ needs. The second12 perceive the boycott as the only way to demonstrate their indignation, resist the capitalist, right-wing, and Israeli possible instrumentalization of Portuguese LGBTQ+ communities, and call for radical change. This boycott movement in preparing a counter-event during the Lisbon EuroPride week13. 

In conclusion, an event that was created to increase the visibility of LGBTQ+ communities and demand adequate social and legal recognition of LGBTQ+ rights across Europe has the potential for becoming an efficient architect of homonormativity, pink capitalism, and Israeli pinkwashing.

In the context of the 2025 EuroPride in Lisbon, these internal contradictions have turned an event that was supposed to be bottom-up, inclusive, and unifying into a political force that risks disregarding local demands and needs, and reinforcing capitalist and homonormative power structures, concealing the violence of the Israeli regime, and further dividing the Portuguese LGBTQ+ community. Only time will reveal the effects of the 2025 Lisbon EuroPride on Portuguese, and European, LGBTQ+ communities.