Given the importance of the Bi Pride event to the bi community, Avi Baylas, Chair of Bi Pride UK, outlines plans for the 2026 event, highlighting efforts to secure funding and support from individuals and businesses. We also discuss the effort required to make our LGBTQIA community truly inclusive.
Last month, we celebrated Bi Month, and many people will be wondering why the Bi Pride event didn’t happen this year. What happened?
No one was more excited than we were for the event this year: a year where the environment is becoming more and more hostile to many in our communities, especially trans people. However, we are an entirely volunteer-run charity, and our volunteers have also been feeling this hostile environment and struggling through it while trying to keep the event on track. Between that, some external delays beyond our control, and general cost-of-living and life stress dialling up for many volunteers, things became too much.
Nothing is more important to us at Bi Pride UK than our volunteers’ welfare, and we had to recognise that the cost of putting on an event that our communities could be proud of would come at the expense of our volunteers. That is not something we were prepared to sacrifice, and so we had to take the difficult decision to cancel 2025’s event. However, we are delighted that we were able to transfer our booking at Kings Place to Saturday, 29th August 2026, so we will be back!
Why do you think there has been a shift by corporations away from supporting Pride events? Is it purely a financial decision, or do you think it is something more sinister?
Like many other Prides in the UK this year, funding has never been more difficult. Bi Pride is and always will be a free event to attend, but we have seen a 50% drop in corporate income this year. Grants have only been able to replace about half of that, leaving a shortfall in our budget, for which we had planned to use some of our charity reserves to make up the difference had the event gone ahead.
We don’t know the ultimate reasons why some of our corporate sponsors have dropped away this year, and we are working hard to restore these relationships if we can, but it’s hard to see the number of businesses cutting their sponsorship of other Prides around the country and not be concerned about what this trend means for the future of business partnerships and funding for charities working in the EDI space.
We are very selective about the businesses we work with, and have always preferred relationships where we can see the work being done internally by the business to improve things for their bi staff and customers – we want to go beyond fair-weather friends. That is where the most beneficial partnerships lie.
How important do you think putting on next year’s Bi Pride event is?
Since we announced the cancellation in July, we’ve been really moved by the outpouring of community support we’ve seen from our communities and beyond. Most people appreciate why an event like Bi Pride is so important, and we know how many people were disappointed to find out that the space they look forward to all year wouldn’t be happening. We have people tell us every year that they’ve never felt so affirmed as at Bi Pride, that they’ve made friends and chosen family for life that they now come back with year on year, that it’s one of only a few places where they don’t have to prove to the world that they’re ‘queer enough’ and the people around them just ‘get it’.
By the time the event comes back next August, not only will it have been two full years since the last Bi Pride, but we’re also seeing how the environment in the UK is getting more and more hostile to so many parts of our beautiful LGBTQ+ communities, and we can only predict how that trend will continue in the next 12 months. We hope that things will have improved, but whether or not it does, bi people are tired and need this highlight of the year back in their calendars.
How are you going to manage to put on next year’s Bi Pride? What kind of event do you hope to put on, and what can people do to help make it happen?
We had decided to go ahead with the event this year despite the tough financial climate, committing some of our reserves to make up the difference. As a volunteer-run and remote charity, our overheads are very low, and the entire purpose of our reserves is to make up the difference on event costs in a difficult funding year.
However, now we’ve got another year until the event, we have a lot more time to fundraise, so we don’t need to dip into reserves, and we can put on an even better event as a result! We’re really excited about bringing Bi Pride to central London, a stone’s throw from King’s Cross station, and our volunteers across the charity are already working hard: from the events team putting the content together, to the comms volunteers promoting the new date, to the access team making sure our event is as accessible as possible, to the fundraising team redoubling our efforts to bring in the funds we need.
We’ll be applying for several large grants this side of the New Year, and are already having promising conversations with new businesses, as well as our returning sponsors who are keen to continue supporting our work. We’ve also been touched by how many people have taken the initiative to fundraise for us – truly, every bit helps.
London is not a cheap place to run events, and it costs us £35-40 per attendee to put on. If you would like to help us towards our goal of running the best Bi Pride yet, we’d love to hear from you – maybe you could organise a fundraiser, or carry out a collection for us, or set up a regular donation. We’ve also got an ongoing crowdfunder campaign that is open to donations – and you’ll get some exclusive merch and your name on our donor wall as a token of our thanks. With your help, we can bring back Bi Pride stronger than ever!
For the rest of the year, do you think the LGBTQ+ scene in the UK caters for the needs of the bi community?
Bi Pride UK exists because we see time and again that spaces which are supposed to be for us often exclude us. Organisations and events which use the acronym ‘LGBT’ often seem to forget what the B stands for, and for many in the bi communities, this hurts more than feeling excluded from wider society. We have been there in the fight for rights and equity from the start, from Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera to Brenda Howard, the Mother of Pride, and yet we are not always given a space at the table. That’s why we run our own Pride event, but we also work with other Prides around the UK throughout the year, helping to increase visibility and inclusion for bi people at their events.
According to the 2021 Census data, there are as many bi people as gay men and gay women/lesbians, and when you look at just the 16-24 age group, there are twice as many bi people as their gay peers. We are a huge part of the community, and it’s not enough just to be ‘welcome’ at events – though many report not even experiencing that – because we should be celebrated and given an equal platform. We would love to hear from any organisation which wants to explore this further!
