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
Legal status is not static. These are the most significant shifts rights monitors recorded heading into 2026 — the reason a travel index needs re-checking every year rather than trusting an old map.
◤ Progress
- 🇹🇭Thailand — marriage equality took effect Jan 2025; first in Southeast Asia.
- 🇳🇵Nepal — Supreme Court ordered equal marriage rights; registration underway.
- 🇱🇮Liechtenstein — marriage equality in force 2025.
- 🇩🇲Dominica & 🇳🇦 Namibia — decriminalized same-sex intimacy (2024).
- 🇵🇱Poland — climbed from rank 118 to 59 (legacy industry ranking, not the GTI score); last "LGBT-free zone" fell.
◢ Regression
- 🇧🇾Belarus — signed a Russian-style "propaganda" ban (April 2026).
- 🇲🇱Mali — newly criminalized consensual same-sex acts.
- 🇧🇫Burkina Faso & 🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago — criminalized gay sex.
- 🇮🇩Indonesia — new criminal code bans sex outside marriage, effectively barring same-sex relations.
- 🇺🇸United States — slipped from rank 48th to 50th (legacy industry ranking); protections vary sharply by state.
- 🇮🇶Iraq, 🇸🇸 South Sudan, 🇹🇲 Turkmenistan — sharpest declines of 2026.
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 17,000+ 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 — 16,909 LGBTQ+ venues across 929 cities and 20,053 upcoming events — updated continuously, published here 2026-08-17.
Directory activity, 2026 so far: 3,087 gay-bar listings added and 3,028 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 | Paris · France | 41 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 2 | São Paulo · Brazil | 31 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 3 | Maspalomas · Spain | 37 | 1 | 9 | 2 | 0 |
| 4 | New York · United States | 35 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 12 |
| 5 | Barcelona · Spain | 32 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| 6 | Puerto Vallarta · Mexico | 33 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 7 | Madrid · Spain | 25 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | Manchester · United Kingdom | 28 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| 9 | Brussels · Belgium | 25 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| 10 | Los Angeles · United States | 25 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 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) = 40% density (active venues per million urban residents, log-scaled percentile) + 30% spread (cities with 3+ active venues) + 30% diversity (venue categories represented). 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 · 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, gayout.com/gay-travel-index
Embed the interactive index on your site (free, keeps attribution):