About Prague Pride

It all started thanks to a bunch of queer people who started talking in flats, cafes and pubs about how we could have our own Pride parade in Prague. In 2010, they founded the Prague Pride association, the formal founders were Daniel Goris, Daniel Kupšovský and Marek Mojžíšek, the first chairman of Prague Pride. And in 2011, the first rainbow parade passed through Prague. Primarily for the organisation of the festival, the Prague Pride Association was founded. 

Along with the festival, the Pride Business Forum platform was formed at the instigation of Czeslaw Walek, who first opened the topic of the status of queer people in the workplace as a side event of the festival. Soon, this platform grew into the largest event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe and began to organize year-round activities. In 2023, Pride Business Forum became an independent organisation with more than 100 corporate members and the only platform of its kind in the Czech Republic. Prague Pride remains a proud co-founding member.  

In 2014, a tragic event occurred. Filip Havlicek, a gay minor from a village near Hradec Králové, committed suicide because he no longer had the strength to live in a homophobic society. It was just a month before his 15th birthday. In his suicide note, he urged his family to work to improve living conditions for those who were different. 

His aunt, the presenter Ester Janečková, contacted Czeslaw Walek, then director of the festival and chairman of Prague Pride. And so the online counselling service sbarvouven.cz was born. At the same time, a preparatory school for current and future parents was launched. For the first time since its founding, Prague Pride embarked on a wide range of year-round activities. In 2014, it began to organise the large project Gay rights are human rights, whose aim was to protect and support the human rights of LGBT+ people, promote an open society without discrimination against LGBT+ people and improve the situation of LGBT+ families.

In 2015, Prague Pride began actively working with several companies to improve the situation of LGBT+ people in Czech workplaces and to increase the sensitivity of companies operating on the Czech market to LGBT+ issues. The association conducted research among queer people, consultations with companies, and participated in various discussions and lectures. 

2016 was a breakthrough year for Prague Pride and for LGBT+ people in the Czech Republic. Frustrated by the government and parliament’s reluctance to pass an amendment to the Registered Partnership Act that would allow rainbow families to lead a dignified life, the entire association, led by Czeslaw Walek, decided that action was needed. And so, 10 years after the introduction of registered partnerships, the long-term initiative We Are Fair was created to talk to the public about who we are and what we want, to convince society that equal marriage for all is fair. The Coalition for Marriage for Gay and Lesbian Couples was founded by Amnesty International Czech Republic, Mezipatra, Logos and PROUD together with Prague Pride. The need to act and to push the public to legalize marriage for all was strongly supported by the figures from the survey conducted: 67% of people agree that gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry, 87% of gays and lesbians are interested in marriage. The coalition has stirred up the public debate on marriage for all and has begun to put pressure on the political establishment. The We Are Fair membership mapped the marriage situation in detail, educated the public and debated with both the public and political representatives about the need for marriage for all, because to advance this goal, people’s mindsets needed to change. Meetings and public debates were held across the country, and the campaign was supported by a number of prominent Czech personalities, both queer and allies.

In 2017, the association shifted especially in terms of its operation – from a volunteer organization to a semi-professional one. In addition to five programs (the festival, sbarvouven.cz, Support Groups, Pride Business Forum and We Are Fair), it already had a stable organizational base. And most importantly – we started running! We joined the organization of the charity run against homophobia and stigmatization of people with HIV, which had been organized for six years by the Czech AIDS Aid Society. The seventh edition, called Fun&Run, took place on Saturday 14 May in Prague’s Stromovka Park. The run is always held on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). Proceeds from the event go to support the online counselling service sbarvouven.cz and the House of Light, which helps HIV-positive people.

The year 2018 brought the We Are Fair petition in support of accepting marriage for all and the largest wedding cake, which is registered in the Czech Book of Records and which ended the petition campaign. Thanks to our efforts, the “One Love, One Marriage” exhibit was held in 13 regional cities, showcasing 13 gay and lesbian couples and families. In June, we delivered a petition with 70,000 signatures to the Chamber of Deputies’  Committee on Petitions. The culmination of our efforts was the introduction of an amendment to the Civil Code to allow marriage for all and the beginning of its consideration in the Chamber. At the Pride Business Forum, we presented the first LGBT Friendly Employer awards: the Champion for Vodafone, Leadership Commitment for Accenture and Employee driven initiatives for Exxonmobile. We also focused more on support groups for gender non-conforming youth, transgender people and gay and lesbian couples planning to start a family. In addition to the support groups, we also organized a series of meetings and workshops.

The year 2019 has brought to light the serious topic of discrimination against LGBT+ people – a survey conducted by the Office of the Public Defender of Rights Anna Šabatová together with us and Queer Geography. What did the research show? First of all, a fundamental difference in how discrimination against LGBT+ people is perceived by the general public and by LGBT+ people themselves. Even the festival was the target of an unusually high number of attacks. The burning of the rainbow flag hanging on the Legion Bridge, the shooting of Roman candles at visitors and the evening Pride Village. Rainbow flags on flagpoles in the streets were torn down, and our e-shop was also attacked. Someone poured 50 litres of oil on the steps leading to Letna Plain, where the rainbow parade was due to pass in a few hours. A group of extremists then tried to infiltrate the parade crowd, but the police stopped them. 

The second big event of 2019 was the annual conference of the international organisation ILGA-Europe. Prague Pride was a co-organizer of this important meeting. Over 600 activists from all over Europe and Central Asia came to Prague to discuss the situation of LGBT+ people. On the occasion of Filip Havlíček’s 20th birthday, we started a new tradition: the Filip20 community event for queer youth. 

As the association grew and themes began to cross over into different programs, the structure of the organization had to be redesigned, as by that time it already had nine programs and seven service departments. We created a separate department focusing on corporate and individual fundraising, a unified production for the entire association began to emerge, and the communications team took responsibility for all of the association’s programs. We also started to become more involved in public education: we prepared workshops for employers, and in cooperation with the queer film festival Mezipatra we offered film screenings to schools, combined with educational talks. We have started an international project aimed at educating people working in the helping professions (social workers, psychologists, health workers) and also for teachers or other professions in education.  Regarding  HIV/AIDS, we have decided to strengthen and strategically focus on negotiation and communication activities. We have succeeded in helping the leadership of the City of Prague to actively engage in addressing HIV issues in the metropolitan area. Petr Kalla represented Prague Pride on the Prague City Council HIV/AIDS Prevention Group, which initiated Prague’s involvement in the Fast-Track Cities network. In addition, the Coordination Working Group of the National HIV/AIDS Programme, which is responsible for national activities in the fight against HIV/AIDS, was restarted. In 2019, we organized the first BOBR party centering around lesbians and promoting lesbian culture in the broadest sense.

In 2020, like the rest of the world, we were hit by the covid-19 pandemic. Instead of the upcoming grand celebration of the 10th anniversary of the association and the festival, we moved online and prioritized our own and the public’s safety and health. But we certainly didn’t stop our activities. In addition to the annual events, these included a special three-part podcast with Adela Elbel and interviews with famous queer artists and Pride Talks. The sbarvouven.cz mentoring team was approached by many young people who suddenly found themselves locked in a hostile environment in their homes where they were not accepted. But the mentors, then already under the leadership of Oldřich Kundera, were well prepared to help and support them, despite the increase in the number of clients by a whole third. The 10th annual festival was finally held (in a limited mode and without a parade) – as one of the few pride festivals in the world.

Also, efforts to pass a marriage for all bill in the Chamber of Deputies were stymied by the coronavirus epidemic, and the Chamber did not vote on the bill. We are keeping a close eye on whether the government is marginalizing gay and lesbian couples in an era of anti-gay measures. And 26 non-profit organizations and initiatives wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, the letter was about the systematic neglect of gay and lesbian couples and their families. It responded to the fact that the Czech government had forgotten them for the umpteenth time in passing resolutions addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The We Are Fair initiative received an award from the European Civic Forum for keeping an eye on government regulations throughout the year, helping separated gay and lesbian couples, as well as single mothers, out-of-work artists, frontline workers, at-risk groups and others. As part of our educational efforts, we produced three publications, She and She Plan a Family, Rainbow Families in the Foster Care System: A Handbook for Social Workers in Child Welfare, and Specifics of Social Work Respecting Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity.

In 2021, together with In IUSTITIA, Queer Geography and the National Institute of Mental Health, we launched activities to explain to LGBT+ people what a hate attack is and how to defend themselves. Therefore, an anonymised questionnaire has been created on our website to report an attack to In IUSTITIA. We have taken these activities all over the country and have supported the creation of informal communities of LGBT+ people who meet, help each other and create joint activities – for example, Brno Pride or Slavex Pride. The biggest success for the Pride Business Forum was clearly when the Czech Post was the first state-owned enterprise (and one of the largest employers) to join. In 2021, the Chamber of Deputies voted on marriage for all couples. The Czech Republic became the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to vote in the Chamber. But unfortunately, equal marriage failed to pass. Also in 2021, a two-year emancipation programme for young queer people under 30, #beheard, was launched. 

At the beginning of 2022, our LGBT+ Community Centre in Prague will be open for business. In addition to our weekly open Thursdays for a full afternoon each week, LGBT+ Community Centre hosts events by partner organisations, sbarvouven.cz’s counselling support group, and we have begun to add our own programme such as film screenings and Queer Sensitive Yoga. 

In February 2022, after the start of the war in Ukraine, we started to help people fleeing from Ukraine and also from Russia. Towards the end of the year, we added individual counselling to our services and held a Christmas dinner and get-together for the “queer people who have it cold at home”. Helping people from Ukraine absorbed a large part of our Café agenda. We mapped the situation, created an online information guide, helped six queer couples cross the border with legal assistance, accompanied them to necessary places, helped them with the language barrier and with the housing search. 

In 2022, we broke the record for attendance at the Prague Pride Festival again. 60,000 people walked with us in the rainbow parade. 

But then the news of the terrorist attack on two young queer people – Juraj and Matúš – outside the Bratislava gay bar Tepláreň hit us all. This was the second brutal attack that year in which queer people died. The first one took place during the 40th Oslo Pride. The heinous act in Bratislava (and not just that one) demanded action. Within a week, we wrote a “Together Against Hate” appeal, in which 24 organisations and nearly 70 well-known personalities called on the government and parliament to pass legislation to protect LGBT+ people, families and children. A week later, we organised a rally and concert together against hate in Wenceslas Square, where 10,000 people gathered, 14,000 more watched the online stream and more than 23,000 people subsequently added their signatures to our appeal. 

In 2022, we also focused on the #ozvise campaign, which encouraged queer people not to be afraid to report biased violence. We also put a lot of effort into supporting regional LGBT+ groups across the country, through mentoring, support in organising events in the regions (whether financial or mentoring) and through networking and sharing experiences.

A great joy of 2023 for us was the performance of the queer musician LP at the Prague Pride Festival. LP made a music video in Prague and at the festival that was seen by 2 million people around the world.

The second major success was the launch of the project and the website ucimolgbt.cz, which offers free methodological sheets, teaching materials, webinars and training to teachers so they can bring LGBT+ topics into the classroom. Last but not least, 2023 also brought the transformation of the Pride Business Forum into a foundation, creating a unique opportunity to help new initiatives in our country to promote equality for LGBT+ people.

In 2023 We are Fair continued to work hard on efforts for equal marriage and the situation looked really promising this year. An avalanche of public calls to support equal marriage was launched, with 66 companies sending an open letter to Prime Minister Fiala demanding the acceptance of marriage equality for all couples. By the end of 2023, the appeal had more than 100 signatures. Nearly 50 theatres and arts associations, over 30 cinemas and nearly 50 clergy and church representatives and sbarvouven.cz mentors joined in. Marriage for all couples was supported by 19 university senates, over 80 representatives of the dance scene, and children from families with two moms or dads. A total of 170,000 people signed a petition to adopt marriage for all. 

The year 2024 brought perhaps the most anticipated event for queer couples, families, and equal rights advocates: in February, the third reading of the Marriage for All Couples Bill passed in the Chamber of Deputies. There was great hope. However, the Chamber of Deputies passed an amendment that does not allow same-sex couples to enter into marriage and makes it more difficult for them to adopt children together. Czech society remained divided and rainbow families and couples remained second-class citizens in the eyes of the state. There has been a great deal of frustration, but despite this, We Are Fair has not relented in its pursuit of truly equal marriage for all couples. 

In May, to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), which falls on 17 May, we launched a major new campaign, Rainbow Ribbon, which we took from our Slovakian colleagues from the organisation Saplinq. The campaign aims to publicly declare support for LGBT+ people, to show the world that we refuse to discriminate against people based on who they love or who they are.