London

In London no single neighbourhood carries all the weight of the LGBTQI+ scene. Soho holds the historic core, with more than thirty venues around Old Compton Street, among them long-standing bars, cabaret and restaurants. Vauxhall is the club and circuit-party pole, south of the river. And Shoreditch and Dalston host the alternative queer end, DIY drag and trans and non-binary parties.

Heaven, beside Charing Cross and open since 1979, is one of the largest gay clubs in Europe. Property pressure has closed many historic venues over the past decade, but the offer is still among the densest on the continent, alongside Berlin and Madrid.

Pride in London is held between June and July and draws more than a million and a half people, according to the organisers' estimate. The march runs along Park Lane, Piccadilly, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square. It is the direct descendant of the UK's first march, on 1 July 1972, organised by the Gay Liberation Front and attended by around 2,000 people.

London hosted WorldPride in 2012. The calendar is rounded off by UK Black Pride, in July at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Trans Pride London, also in July and running from Soho to Hyde Park, and the long season of parties around the main weekend.

Soho is London's historic LGBTQI+ neighbourhood, in the heart of the West End. The core is Old Compton Street and the streets that cross it, Wardour, Dean, Brewer and Greek. It was recognised as a gay village in the early nineties, although the LGBT presence in Soho goes back much further.

The Admiral Duncan, the pub targeted in the bombing of 30 April 1999, is still open and works as a living memorial. Gay's the Word, in Bloomsbury, is the oldest LGBTQI+ bookshop in the UK, from 1979. The Tube stops are Leicester Square, Tottenham Court Road and Piccadilly Circus, all three to five minutes away on foot.

London concentrates the UK's densest LGBTQI+ infrastructure. Stonewall UK, founded on 24 May 1989, describes itself as Europe's largest LGBT organisation. Switchboard, the helpline that started in 1974 as the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard, is still going. Gay's the Word, opened in 1979 in Bloomsbury, is the reference bookshop. And modern activism started here: the British Gay Liberation Front was founded in October 1970 at the London School of Economics and organised the country's first Pride march in July 1972.

Among health services, 56 Dean Street, the NHS clinic in Soho, is the reference in sexual health, with rapid HIV and STI testing and free PrEP for residents. The Tavistock and Portman handles trans care, in the middle of a reorganisation after the Cass review. The NHS is free for residents, and visitors pay according to where they come from.