Madonna did not, as rumoured, appear on stage at the 2026 edition of London Pride, but she was never the reason more than a million people filled the streets this weekend. They came to celebrate, certainly, but also to stand together at a moment when LGBTQIA+ rights feel increasingly fragile – see: the ripple effects of Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity and equality programmes fuelling a corporate retreat from Pride, with donations to charities such as Stonewall reportedly halving over the last financial year; or Reform-led councils banning Pride flags from civic buildings, restricting access to council-run spaces and withdrawing funding for local celebrations – leaving many determined to reclaim the public space they have been made to feel afraid to occupy.
And so British Vogue dispatched photographer Elliott Morgan to capture the mood on the ground, beginning at Queer Was Always Here’s takeover of Boys, Boys, Boys, where founders Sebastian Croft and Connor Jessup were hosting a pop-up for their Geordie Campbell-designed T-shirts – among this year’s more tasteful Pride collaborations, alongside Erdem’s collaboration with Gay’s the Word and JW Anderson’s exhibition of late 20th-century erotica from Physique Pictorial. What he found as he travelled through Soho Square and on towards to Piccadilly was a cross-section of baby queers in shrunken Hollister polos, drag queens in waist-whittling corsetry, lesbians in cargo shorts and Timberlands, dolls in Carrie Bradshaw-style tutus and kitten heels, and the white-vest-and-bermuda-shorts uniform of gay men everywhere. Oh, and enough rainbow flags, socks, capes, balloons, handheld fans, lanyards and temporary tattoos to give Nigel Farage an aneurysm.
Scroll through the gallery below to see what everyone else wore to London Pride 2026.