Portsmouth took centre stage on Saturday as it hosted the UK Pride 2025 celebrations. 

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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).

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The celebrations "shined 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 turned up at the main event, described as the focal point to the pride season by UKPON, on Southsea Common despite the poor weather conditions. 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."

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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 was the "product of a year of work", said CP.

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Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud headlined 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.