The heat of June hangs over Battenberg Square, the largest in Sofia. Once the site of civil and military parades during Bulgaria’s communist era, it’s now awash in rainbow mesh.
Thumping pop music clashes with neoclassical facades. Glitter glints in the sun. On the peripheries of the crowd, volunteers hand out signs in Cyrillic that say “Love Is Love” and “We Are People, Not Propaganda.” This is the 18th iteration of Sofia Pride, Bulgaria’s largest march for human rights. It’s also now in jeopardy, thanks to Space Karen Elon Musk and his entourage of Monstro Elisasue-looking DOGE boys.
In 2024, Sofia Pride received $15,000 in support from U.S. federal spending, enabling organizers to secure stages, equipment, and visibility. Then, in 2025, Musk’s DOGE, or Department of Government Efficiency, cut off funding to international initiatives that were apparently wasteful, such as those that provided disaster relief to developing nations, or those that normalized the widespread use of leather chaps.
“We lost grants from ILGA Europe and other international donors linked to DOGE’s cuts,” says Simeon Vasilev, chairman of the GLAS Foundation, which coordinates Sofia Pride. “We hadn’t realized the scale would be so vast. We also lost funding from several major corporate donors. The rest of our business support was significantly reduced. Our world was shattered within a couple of months.”
The funding vacuum was nearly enough to cancel Pride. Organizers were forced to scale down parts of the festival and reduce their budget for platforms and equipment at the event. And yet, while attendees may not have noticed a missing LED light here or a pared-down set there, one question still hounded Vasilev and others at the GLAS Foundation: could Sofia Pride survive another year of austerity?
Equally frustrating was the furor surrounding the funding crisis. DOGE’s cuts had become fodder for Bulgaria’s vocally anti-LGBTQ right. Now on top of their budgetary worries, Pride would also have to fight fake news, a weapon embraced by not only Bulgaria’s right but also Russian misinformation campaigns, emboldened by Trump, that spread falsehoods throughout the Balkans.
On Facebook, conservative political analyst Christian Shkvarek wrote a popular post spreading a false claim that, before 2025, Pride organizers had been receiving 100,000 leva (about $59,000) annually from the U.S. government, and that the self-declared “father of IVF” himself, President Donald Trump, had personally “turned off the tap.” Every part of this was false. Donald Trump has given us little reason to believe that he knows there are countries between Greece and Russia.
The fake news spread rapidly, fueling rumors that Sofia Pride would be canceled in 2025. Pride organizers were forced to respond with a press release stating, “The organizing committee of the largest human rights march is adamant that if Sofia Pride ever ceases to exist, it will only be when LGBTI people in Bulgaria achieve full equality and acceptance.”
This type of battle against the straight-but-definitely-narrows is nothing new for Sofia queers. For several years, a parallel “anti-Pride” has coincidentally appeared on the very same day as Pride, hosting rival rallies and demonstrations. Lately it has increased its numbers, bolstered by a rightward wave that has swept much of the developed world.
“Each year for the last [several] years, an anti-Pride rally dubbed the March for the Traditional Family has been happening on the same day and time as Sofia Pride,” said Vasilev. “It is alarming that this event is growing in numbers and scale. They started organizing a concert, very much copying us.”
Making matters worse, the organizers behind the March for the Traditional Family – or “March of the Breeders,” as some called it – hosted not one but four anti-Pride marches this year, jamming Sofia’s entire downtown and forcing changes to the Pride route and schedule. For one day, it seemed there were two synchronous Sofias: two concerts, two marches, and two visions for the future of Bulgaria. The main difference was that the Traditional Family concert featured the “Fathers from the Sofia Priest Choir,” whereas the Pride concert featured a male musician whose most recent single is about wanting to fuck every guy in Bulgaria.
Homophobia in Bulgaria has deep roots. As in much of Eastern Europe, family and gender roles remain tightly bound to national identity, while the Orthodox Church continues to frame homosexuality as incompatible with Bulgarian values. Meanwhile, nationalist politicians amplify this rhetoric, decrying the LGBTQ rights movement and dubbing it a “foreign import.” It’s a narrative that has been pushed since 1989, when Bulgaria finally staggered into democracy and formed a new conservatism combining nationalism and religion, ultimately painting queerness as a threatening outsider identity. This was a step up from the monarchy’s and then the Communists’ criminalization of homosexuality until 1968, but this new attitude towards queerness foreshadowed the intensifying identity battles to come – and not just in Bulgaria. “The anti-[LGBTQ] movement is gaining dangerous momentum in Eastern Europe,” Vasilev says. “And with the U.S. withdrawing as a key partner, it will only grow stronger.”
There have been some cosmetic concessions to toleration. In 2023, Bulgaria amended its criminal code to penalize discrimination or collective defamation based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as advocacy of hatred or violence. This aligned Bulgaria with European norms – on paper, at least. Laws in the sheets don’t always translate into laws in the streets. Hence the ongoing March of the Breeders, condoned by politicians and presented as a “celebration” of “family values.”
With the culture wars blossoming in the background, the time had come for Sofia Pride to openly enter the political arena this year. Many attendees perceived a sharper edge in the speeches they heard at the event.
“This was intentional,” Vasilev explains. “We wanted to highlight the anti-LGBTI school law passed last year in Bulgaria, so we brought to the stage an openly gay teacher, a same-sex parent, and a non-binary person. Pride has always been political. Unapologetically being yourself – and having fun – is also a political act of protest.”
The event’s slogan We Are People, Not Propaganda, repeated across banners and signs, acted as a direct retort to the law banning LGBTQ topics in schools. Meanwhile, organizers strove to place Pride within the larger context of social movements. “Something that was interesting this year was how they did this very old-school campaign about how there are a lot of bigger problems in society than whether queer people are some type of threat,” says Kosta Karakashyan, a Bulgarian-Armenian writer, choreographer, and director who helped organize this year’s emerging artists stage. “So it was trying to use Sofia Pride as a way to bring attention to other socially important topics and to show that the queer community is in solidarity with other issues.”
On and around that stage, attendees embodied Vasilev’s idea of a political statement: unapologetically being yourself and having fun. The event showcased several artists, including MATEO, whose horny bop “MOI” incited spontaneous dancing among revelers spanning the gender spectrum. (The English-language version is called “Boys Toys.”) In Bulgaria, where queer artistry is often repressed, the very decision to present such a musician at a public festival was an act of resistance.
But the rippling effects of DOGE and its pathologically online former leader persist. This year, Pride organizers were able to stage a massive event despite their lower budget; however, next year’s Pride may prove tougher still to organize. Of course, Prides have been pulled off around the world for less, and Hungarian queers responded to a federal Pride ban this year by orchestrating the largest Pride march the country had ever seen. Homophobia may be gathering forces throughout Eastern Europe, but so are those who oppose it. In this way, Vasilev says it’s more important than ever to support Pride this year, and offers some suggestions on how to do it: “Being present at Pride, speaking up, sharing our content on social media, volunteering, and donations no matter the size.”
He also remains clear-eyed and confident despite the rumblings of antagonism, worsening in intensity, that endure among homophobes in his country and the rest of Europe. He says: “Do not lose hope. All storms eventually pass.”
Beyond Bulgaria and Hungary, many activists around the globe have adopted Vasilev’s attitude. Though a recent far-right wave has swept every continent save for Antarctica, queer communities have announced themselves more proudly than ever. After the president of Argentina equated queer people with child abusers at the 2025 World Economic Forum, millions of Argentinians marched across the country in a “Make Argentina Gay Again” protest. In May 2025, hikers in Yosemite hung a massive trans flag from the iconic El Capitan to protest the Trump administration’s vilification of trans citizens. That same month, activists in Poland rallied to remove the last of its country’s “LGBT-free” zones – municipalities in which the topic of homosexuality had been banned. In September 2025, Orlando locals risked arrests to redraw a rainbow crosswalk with sidewalk chalk after the Florida Department of Transportation painted over it. Even the most historically anti-LGBTQ countries have made recent progress thanks to the work of activists: in 2023, the Kenyan Supreme Court allowed the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission to register as an NGO, and in 2024, Namibia decriminalized homosexuality.
In the news, such advances are ignored in favor of less promising developments: a decline in Pride sponsorships; a fake news post with 10,000 supporters; a parade of protestors, revulsion and righteousness coded into their signs, championing the erasure of queer people. But advances do continue, in the remotest of places and in the most minuscule of ways, and progress never abates. It waits. Meanwhile, when the enemies of progress are, among others, a fraud who can’t hold a 16kg college football trophy correctly and a stable genius who can’t pronounce “acetaminophen,” the hopes of winning, at least in the long run, remain stronger than ever. Also, and just throwing this out there: Tesla just had its worst year since 2017. ~
