Madrid Pride 2026: The Honest Debrief — Including the €24 That Still Don’t Add Up

It took us this long to sit down and write this because we haven’t stopped since MADO ended. Now that the neighbourhood has shrunk back to its normal size, here’s the balance sheet — from the people who live here, with no pandering.

Opinion · PrideChueca · July 2026

Let’s start with the obvious, the thing everyone knows and nobody quite says out loud: people. Enormous amounts of people. Everywhere. The success is wonderful and worth celebrating, but let’s be honest between us: Chueca is not built for this many bodies.

We’re not saying it from some snobbish annoyance at our neighbourhood filling up. We’re saying it because there were stretches where the whole thing simply became too much. You try to walk down Hortaleza and you don’t advance. You look at the square and reconsider your life. It’s one of the best events of the year — and there are also moments when all you want is to bolt down a side street and breathe. That’s part of Pride too, and someone should tell you.

The High Heel Race: brilliant, if you’re tall enough

The famous Carrera de Tacones was a joy, as always. But applying the paragraph above: if you’re not reasonably tall, you will see precisely nothing. Street saturation is total and there is no gap to squeeze into. Advice for next year, and we mean it: either you arrive well in advance to claim a spot, or you settle for watching the heels over other people’s heads. There’s no middle ground.

The maze: when your hotel is right there and you still can’t reach it

This one deserves its own chapter because it caught a lot of visitors off guard. To keep the crowd moving, police enforced one-way streets. And to be clear, we’re not talking about cars: we’re talking about pedestrian traffic. Some streets had a compulsory direction and you couldn’t turn back.

Which means that even if your hotel is fifty metres away, if it’s in the wrong direction, you cannot go. You end up looping half of Chueca until you find the street that lets you in. And here’s the thing: it worked. It genuinely stopped the whole neighbourhood from seizing up. But at times it turned into a maze where you could see your destination around the corner with no humanly possible way of reaching it. If you’re coming next year, factor this into your timings — and don’t book a room assuming “it’s close” means “it’s reachable”.

And now, the €24

With the venues it was a mixed bag. Some treated us beautifully, with that neighbourhood warmth that’s the reason we’re here in the first place. And others… well. What can you say.

In one place we ordered one Coca-Cola and one spirit. They charged us €24.

We’ve tried to find a reasonable breakdown for that number and there isn’t one. Three euros for the Coke and twenty-one for the drink? Seven for the Coke and seventeen for the drink? However you split it, no combination makes sense. Which makes us think a certain opportunism goes around during these dates.

We’re not naming the venue, for two reasons. First, because we don’t want to accuse anyone without proof: maybe those absurd prices are simply their everyday prices and we’re the fools who didn’t check the list. Second, because of a detail that gives us pause — we were speaking English. With all the international people who joined the group during those days, a good part of our conversations happened in English, which could very easily have suggested we weren’t from here.

So we’ll leave it as advice, without further emphasis and without pointing at anyone: if you come to Pride, check the price list before you order. Especially if you’re a tourist. And very especially if they hear you speaking another language. Spanish bars are legally required to display prices — asking to see them is entirely normal here, and nobody will think you’re being difficult.

What did work (which was almost everything)

Beyond that, it went well. Everything ran without incident, it was beautiful and it was decently organised — and that deserves more credit than it gets, because managing something that has grown this monstrous in scale is genuinely hard. The events were fun. The organisation held. The overall feeling was good.

Our one wish for the city council, said with affection: that they consider taking some of the bigger events beyond the M30 — the ring road that circles central Madrid — because the centre has less and less room every year, and there are plenty of neighbourhoods out there with space and appetite for a party. Spreading the weight would help everyone.

And our own bit: the part that isn’t in the photos

As for what happened on our side of things, the best of it by a distance was the international connection that formed. Watching people from completely different countries come together to help each other, accompany each other and look out for one another was, honestly, the most beautiful thing about the entire Pride.

We met genuinely interesting people, and they stayed. Not in passing: as friendships. And that means something very specific and very rare — that there are now people who have a safe place in a country that isn’t theirs, and that we have one in theirs. Someone to message when you land in their city. Someone who tells you where to go and who to go with.

That’s what all of this is actually about. The floats pass, the music stops and the neighbourhood shrinks back to its normal size. What’s left are the names now in your phone and the certainty that in five different cities there’s someone who would open the door for you. Pride lasts a week. That other thing lasts a great deal longer.

Nothing left to say except thank you to everyone who was with us in one way or another during those days.
See you in the bars.