Gay Travel Index 2026
LGBTQ+ legal status and travel safety, country by country. The legal ground shifts every year — this page tracks where it stands now, so you know before you book.
The world is polarizing, not converging
There is no single global direction. One set of countries keeps expanding equality — marriage, adoption, gender recognition, anti-discrimination law. Another keeps tightening the screws with new criminalization, censorship, and repression. In 2025 the number of countries criminalizing same-sex intimacy grew for the first time in almost a decade. Read any destination on both axes: the law on the books, and how it's enforced on the ground.
Welcoming
Marriage or strong partnership rights, anti-discrimination protection, visible acceptance.
Some caution
Legal, but socially conservative or missing full protections. Discretion advised in places.
High risk
Criminalized, or active state repression and prosecution. Serious caution required.
Death-penalty risk
Death penalty imposed or a legal possibility. The most severe environments on earth.
What changed, and where
This is where GayOut differs from every other ranking: most publish a report once or twice a year that describes what already happened. Our scores move in real time — a new law, a court ruling or a major LGBTQ+ event shifts the legal side the week it lands, and because we also measure the scene, venues opening and closing and Prides held or banned move the scene side with them. These are the most significant 2026 shifts, each verified against a primary or institutional source. Full, sourced 2026 change log →
◤ Progress
- 🇧🇴Bolivia — first same-sex civil marriage registered after a court ruling (Aug 2026); top-court review could set a precedent.
- 🇵🇱Poland — first same-sex marriage from another EU state registered (May 2026), implementing the CJEU ruling.
- 🇭🇺Hungary — Budapest Pride held without a ban after the April 2026 election; restrictive statutes still on the books.
- 🇳🇱Netherlands — conversion practices became a crime (Jun 2026); 🇪🇸 Spain passed the same reform, now in the Senate.
- 🇧🇼Botswana — dead-letter "unnatural offences" provisions formally deleted from the statute book (Mar 2026).
- 🇬🇷Greece — top court upheld marriage equality as constitutional (Mar 2026), ending the legal challenge.
◢ Regression
- 🇳🇪Niger — criminalized same-sex relations for the first time in its history: 5–10 years, up to 20 for organisers (Jun 2026).
- 🇸🇳Senegal — doubled penalties to 10 years and criminalised "promotion" (Mar 2026); 60+ arrests, first conviction in April.
- 🇬🇭Ghana — parliament re-passed the harsh "Family Values" bill (May 2026); awaiting presidential assent.
- 🇧🇾Belarus — Russian-style "propaganda" law signed (Apr 2026); 🇷🇺 Russia banned nine more LGBT groups as "extremist".
- 🇰🇿Kazakhstan — new constitution bars any same-sex recognition (Mar 2026), after the propaganda ban.
- 🇺🇸United States — Supreme Court upheld trans school-sports bans and cast ~25 conversion-therapy bans into doubt; 🇪🇨 Ecuador barred LGB people from adopting.
Reading the "death-penalty" label
Death penalty means it is legally possible under state or religious law — enforcement rates vary. Human Dignity Trust identifies active imposition in Iran, Northern Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen, and under Taliban rule Afghanistan is now assessed among those where it is imposed — six in all. The death penalty is a further legal possibility in Brunei, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, the UAE and Uganda. In several of these, dating-app entrapment and digital surveillance are documented tactics — see our high-risk destination guides before any travel.
The State of Gay Travel 2026: What the Law Allows and What the Scene Delivers
The GayOut Index 2026 is the first global ranking to combine legal safety (up to 60 points) with a measured LGBTQ+ scene score (up to 40 points) — computed from 18,000+ continuously verified venue listings. Headline finding: Spain (92) overtakes legally near-perfect Iceland (85) once the scene is measured. Research lead: Ziv Goldvasser, M.B.A. (Tel Aviv University).
Read the full research brief — complete country table & sources →
The law–scene matrix
Every assessed jurisdiction as one point: the Legal Safety component (up to 60) against the Scene Score (up to 40). Hover any point for the country. The colour groups show the four situations a traveller actually meets.
Jurisdictions by safety tier
Tier bounds are invariant: no criminalising state reaches the welcoming tier under any weighting.
The scene on the ground — not just the law
The law is one axis. The other is what actually exists when you land: bars, clubs, saunas, community spaces, events. These figures come from GayOut's own live directory — 18,059 LGBTQ+ venues across 973 cities and 27,110 upcoming events — updated continuously, published here 2026-09-19.
Directory activity, 2026 so far: 2,810 gay-bar listings added and 3,649 removed after re-verification (closed, unverifiable, or misclassified) — every listing is checked against multiple sources before it stays.
| # | Strongest gay scenes | Gay bars | Saunas | Men-only stays | Gay beaches | Orgs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madrid · Spain | 56 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2 | Bangkok · Thailand | 37 | 22 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 3 | Barcelona · Spain | 53 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| 4 | Paris · France | 41 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 5 | New York · United States | 48 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 11 |
| 6 | London · United Kingdom | 42 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 7 | Maspalomas · Spain | 42 | 1 | 9 | 2 | 0 |
| 8 | São Paulo · Brazil | 31 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 9 | Chicago · United States | 39 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 10 | Berlin · Germany | 36 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 1 |
Gay bars counted only when the venue is LGBTQ+-dedicated — "gay-friendly" listings are excluded. Ranked by bars + saunas.
Methodology & sources
ILGA World
The global authority on sexual-orientation law. Our tier assignments follow its "Laws on Us" report and legal maps (updated May 2026), tracking criminalization, expression, association, and recognition.
Human Dignity Trust
Source for the criminalization and death-penalty detail. Many criminalizing laws are colonial-era legacies, especially across the Commonwealth.
Independent GayOut composite
The Score is GayOut's own research (release 2026.3): a five-component legal composite — criminalization 35%, partnership 20%, anti-discrimination 15%, gender recognition 10%, enforcement reality 20% — built directly from the primary sources above, combined with the Scene Score measured from our live directory. No other travel index enters the formula; the legacy industry index conversion is retained in the open dataset as a benchmark column only.
GayOut Scene Score & Index
Tap any country row to see GayOut's own scene metrics, computed weekly from our live directory. The Scene Score (0–100) = 30% magnitude (absolute size of the scene, log-scaled percentile of core venues) + 15% density (core venues per million urban residents) + 20% spread (cities with 3+ active core venues) + 15% diversity (venue categories represented) + 20% culture (Prides and queer film festivals). Hotels and sights are excluded — core venues only. Published only for countries with 10+ listed venues — below that the Index is legal-only, never zero. The GayOut Index = 60% legal-safety + 40% scene — the only global index measuring both the law and what actually exists on the ground. Full methodology, changelog & sensitivity analysis →
Update cadence & changelog
Reviewed quarterly against ILGA/HDT updates; venue & event figures refresh weekly from the live GayOut directory. Last full review: August 2026. Recent changes: Apr 2026 Belarus down (new "propaganda" ban) · 2026 Mali, Burkina Faso & Trinidad & Tobago re-classified after new criminalization · Jan 2025 Thailand up (marriage equality) · 2026 USA adjusted downward (legacy industry index rank 48→50).
For journalists & researchers
Full press kit → — headline facts, quote-ready lines, PDF report & usage terms.
The full dataset is free to reuse with attribution. Download CSV · Data & citations · JSON · archived on Zenodo (DOI) · press inquiries: info@gayout.com
REST API (no key needed): /api/gti.php — all countries in one call, or ?country=spain for one — plus a dedicated profile page per country at /gay-travel-index/{slug} (the "profile →" links in the table above).
Suggested citation: GayOut Gay Travel Index 2026 (release 2026.3). GayOut.com. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22208479
Embed the interactive index on your site (free, keeps attribution):