It's time to come out, sprinkle the glitter and enjoy the Pride of London

From how to see the parade to the best after-parties, here's your ultimate Pride guide

- BY DAVID ELLIS

As the blinds roll down on a sweltering June and Pride Month, London is readying itself for perhaps the biggest party of the year — the Pride march, which this year falls on Saturday July 5 (Trans+ Pride follows on Saturday July 26, and UK Black Pride on Sunday August 10).

More than 35,000 people are expected to attend, from more than 500 LGBTQ+ community groups; each will be marching not just in celebration, but in protest. It is sometimes forgotten, obscured by all the sequins and rainbows, that Pride began and remains an LGBTQ+ protest against the discrimination and injustice that many of the 1.8 million British adults in the queer community still face, sometimes with depressing regularity.

Pride has been marching in London since 1972, inspired in heavy part by the June 1969 riots in Greenwich Village, New York, when gay bar Stonewall was raided by police from the “Public Morals Division”. The raid itself was not unusual — the NYPD unit of the 1960s enforced all “vice” laws, and had the power to arrest gay people by force — but the bar fighting back was. The officers barricaded themselves inside, and the riots ran for the five following nights.

The idea of Pride — of people standing up for themselves, their sexuality, their freedom — was born.

Since those early marches in the 1970s, the Pride march has changed somewhat, becoming what Londoners might recognise today — a joy-filled day of unfiltered, unadulterated self-expression, of music and dancing and more than a handful of outfits that make Carnival goers look demure. A day, at heart, of love.

From the parade itself to the unmissable parties and artsy ways to celebrate, here's where and how to get involved.

THE PRIDE PARADE

The main event. The parade, on Saturday July 5, is this year themed around “the power of communities”, recognising the positive change that solidarity among minorities can enact.