Bogotá

Bogotá has the densest LGBTQI+ scene in the Andean region and one of the most active in Latin America, with more than a hundred bars, clubs and discos aimed at the gay community concentrated in Chapinero.

The big landmark is Theatron, the largest and best-known gay club in the city: a complex with more than a dozen rooms, each with its own music, from pop to electronic, crossover and rock, and capacity for several thousand people, considered one of the biggest gay clubs in South America. It opens on Saturdays and entry includes drinks. Around it there are dozens of bars, and secondary poles in the Zona G and the Zona T.

The Bogotá LGBT Citizenship March is held on the Sunday closest to 28 June, in late June or early July. It leaves Parque Nacional and comes down Carrera Séptima to Plaza de Bolívar. It drew 90,000 people in 2019 and more than 100,000 in 2023.

The first modern march was on 28 June 1983, with around 32 people called out by the Movimiento de Liberación Homosexual Colombiano, many carrying flowers and banners and some with their faces covered so as not to be recognised, under the slogan "Basta ya de andar por la sombra". The movement had been founded on 28 June 1977, by Manuel Velandia, León Zuleta and Guillermo Cortés, and was the country's first political LGBT organisation. The 2020 march went virtual because of the pandemic and returned to the street on 4 July 2021.

Chapinero is Bogotá's historic LGBTQI+ neighbourhood and works as the centre of the city's gay community, with more than a hundred LGBT venues in the area, Theatron included. It is also where the first community centre in Latin America designed specifically to serve the LGBT population was set up.

The nightlife core is on Calle 58, where Theatron is, and along the Carrera 13 axis. Inside the neighbourhood there are subdivisions: the Zona G, the gourmet zone, with expensive gay-friendly restaurants, and Quinta Camacho, residential and elegant, with small cafés and a queer crowd. Blanca Inés Durán Hernández, a former local mayor of Chapinero, is openly lesbian. The TransMilenio, at the Calle 72 and Calle 85 stations, connects with the whole north, and the historic centre is a good fifteen minutes away by taxi.

Bogotá has the most active LGBT infrastructure in the Andean region. Colombia Diversa, based here, and Caribe Afirmativo are the main national organisations, and Sentiido and the Mesa LGBT de Bogotá work at local level. Chapinero is where the first LGBT community centre in Latin America was set up. In 2019 the city elected Claudia López as the country's first openly lesbian mayor, in office between 2020 and 2023. On health, Profamilia runs testing and offers PrEP in some of its services, and the public network treats people without discrimination on grounds of orientation.