QUEER WIEN! - Pride Weekend

The Regenbogen Parade is one of the biggest and best parties in Vienna each summer. We want to back up this street fest with some details about how we came to this point, with loud music, glitter and some insider details on how the scene is developing. JJ now follows Conchita in bringing the Eurovision home to one of the GAY capitals of Europe. Our tour will include many gay anthems, some history, and is a build-up to the big party later the same day, along the Ring.

The visibility and role of LGBTQIA+ people in Vienna life has increased massively in the past 20 years. 11% of visitors to the city now identify as queer, and this is represented in the Ampelpärchen crossings all over the city. At the same time, fully 19% of Gen Z judge themselves as partly Queer, which is something new (at the same time, 40% of 18-30 year olds have never been in in a relationship - so we will also explore the A in LGBTQIA+ - Asexual). We will explore and celebrate the role and contribution of queer people to the cultural, political and business life of Vienna. We recognise their bravery, and the right to individuality and dignity, but also see the struggles they have been through, to live and love the way they want. This tour takes us along the history and contemporary hotspots of Queer Vienna, like the first bar fighting for gay rights (The Gugg), intersectional queer space Villa Vida, a site of historic LGBTQIA+ events during the Nazi regime and turn of the century. We include queer visibility in the city, social services for people of all ages, and the ways queerness influences nightlife, fashion and the mood of Vienna. This tour is about respect and learning, but also dialogue and joy. How have laws changed, where are the tensions right now, why do people react so strongly to trans-rights, and what are the insider details more of us should know? What do those eight digits, LGBTQIA+ mean? Presented by a queer girl and straight-ish boy.

Very few establishments welcomed openly gay people in the 1950s and 1960s. Those that did were often bars, although bar owners and managers were rarely gay. The Stonewall Inn (Greenwich Village, NYC) was owned by the Mafia and catered to an assortment of regulars, popular among the poorest and most marginalized people in the gay community: drag queens, representatives of a newly self-aware transgender community, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth. Police raids on US gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn and attracted a crowd that was incited to riot. And so the pride movement was born, resulting in the parades we see today. We must not forget that Budapest recently followed Belgrade, Istanbul and Moscow in banning a queer parade, for conservative or religious reasons, and populism. And so many big firms here can be accused of rainbow-washing, putting up big flags in front of their HQ, to seem cool and modern, while practising homophobia inside those offices.

Being gay is connected to innovation, about other ways of living, pioneering alternative lifestyles. They must be dynamic and sense situations. What a journey, from illegal to cool! We hope that other movements can make such quick social change – e.g. to become vegetarian, or stop driving and flying.

As well as the scene and colour, we will bring you some of the trends in sexuality happening in our city amongst the youth - the data, and since the pandemic, but also with a new openness to experiment and explore. How does it feel to experience the Pride Parade on the Ring?: Protest or party? Body freedom and no shaming. All shapes and sizes, with not much covering. So much flesh. Like Donauinsel comes into town for one day, but with more performance and beautiful people. This is political beauty, to show your pride and comfort in your different identity. Pride makes queerness visible and real and fun. And sexy. Europride came to Wien in 2019, meaning new city-branding for our city, with an enormous demonstration of inclusion and play. The Regenbogen day on the Ring is actually made up of just as many straight, as gay, people, many of them under 20 years old. The politics of Pride are sometimes lost in the drugs and party - but it started as a riot on Christopher St in Greenwich Village, NYC. In Vienna, it is so free, and easy, with no violence in the air, but that was not always so. The extravagance, the camp, the joy, the Felliniesque theatre must be refreshing for a tourist visiting our city, expecting Sisi & Schnitzel. Like a moving festival with so many sounds, this is free and moving politics and marketing, mixed up with chaos and demo. Toxic masculinity looks so sad compared to this freedom & friendship and curiosity. Why be threatened by it? It is joyous and liberating. Prolly the best moment on the Ring each year?

Some of the questions we will explore: what are the differences between the lesbian and male gay spaces? How do gay people influence the straight (vanilla!) community? What are Renske and Eugene's experience with homo love? Which tips do we have to explore the scene here in Wien? Why do some CIS people feel so threatened by queer people? This being a Whoosh tour, there will be sociology as well as celebration. There are big changes going on in how young people understand themselves and each other. Influenced by pornography, online dating and all of its dangers, a more digital world, anxiety, mental health crisis, less trust, and also differences in politics between young men and women. This has big consequences for the future of relationships, if straight people stop having sex and babies. We explain the 4B movement, born in South Korea, popular since Trump's re-election, and now arriving in Mitteleuropa. How could it happen that Catholic groups were allowed into Austrian schools until 2024, to preach the nonsense that homosexuality can be cured? There have been attacks on Austrian gay people in 2025, filmed and posted on the internet, apparently coordinated be the Identitarians. Where did the protests against drag queens reading remixed fairytales for kids disappear to?

In the context of the new conservatism we see in USA (2,500 trans employees lost their jobs at the Pentagon in February 2025, simply because of their identity), we should remember that PRIDE is pure USA culture gone global. And now under threat in USA! So we choose to make our tour through a district, Mariahilf, with a proudly gay local mayor (Markus Rumelhart, SPÖ).

This is Wien in summer 2025.

Our tour itself will form a bow, so we will make a meta tour, with our shape of walking creating a rainbow shape.

#conchita #regenbogenparade #queerWien #wienistanders