Portsmouth hosts UK Pride 2025 celebrations

MP Stephen Morgan joined the Portsmouth Pride celebrations in Southsea in 2023 after the successful bid

Portsmouth will take centre stage later as it hosts the UK Pride 2025 celebrations.

The Hampshire city was chosen out of more than 260 community-run Pride organisations across the UK "with a strong majority", said UK Pride Organisers Network (UKPON).

The celebration will "shine a national spotlight on the work of a volunteer-run local charity organising one of the biggest, completely free and unfenced Pride events in the country", said Portsmouth Pride.

The festival is a celebration of LGBTQ+ communities and the event is free and open to all.

Thousands of people are expected at the main event, described as the focal point to the pride season by UKPON, on Southsea Common.

CP Robinson, from Portsmouth Pride, said: "What we do is unique".

Portsmouth Pride is "fully volunteer run, fully community run, completely free and completely unfenced on a scale that nobody else and does," he said.

"We thought that's the opportunity, to use the UK pride title to show off that work."

'Year of work'

The event is open to everyone, said CP, adding: "The bigger we can make it, the more people we can impact.

"It's not about us as an LGBTQ+ community necessarily just coming together and doing something, it's about saying to the rest of the city of Portsmouth - and anyone else who wants to come and visit us - this is us, this is our community, this is our work, this what we do."

The celebration on Saturday will be the "product of a year of work", said CP.

"Pride is not just that one day, we're running programmes and projects and initiatives year round, with sport and health and HIV and sober spaces, drug and alcohol addiction recovery services – the day is the celebration of all of that work."

Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud will be headlining at the event, alongside entertainment from Ru Paul's Drag Race UK winner Kyran Thrax and alumni Victoria Scone and River Medway, plus Katie Price and Sabrina Washington from Mis-Teeq.