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Portland is very gay, statistically speaking.
Portland Pride 2026
According to census data from 2024, same-sex couples make up 3.8% of Portland households, the highest concentration of any U.S. city. The Advocate once dubbed Oregon “the queerest state,” citing data from the Williams Institute that estimated 7.8% of Oregonians identified as LGBTQ+.
Politically, Portland elected the first openly gay mayor of a major metropolitan area, Sam Adams, in 2009, and Oregon the first openly LGBTQ+ governor in U.S. history, Kate Brown, in 2016.
Culturally? The city just named a park for a drag queen, and 70,000 people join its Pride parade and festival annually, which this year falls on Saturday and Sunday, July 18 and 19.
That’s all to say, you won’t find many lists of queer-friendly cities that skip Portland.
Still, it is not an easy time to be out and proud. The current presidential administration has consistently enacted policies hostile to queer Americans, including an executive order to explicitly erase transgender identity altogether and a June 30 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld laws banning trans athletes. The fight for equality is far from settled.
Perhaps Portland records the highest numbers of openly LGBTQ+ residents not because more queer people live here, but because more people feel safe and empowered to celebrate their queer identities here.
We devoted this year’s Pride Issue to exploring what that looks like in practice, seeking out places that feel like distinct products of one of America’s queerest cities—365 days a year. Like Bombshell Transformations, the St. Johns salon one hairstylist built specifically to serve trans clients after helping her trans daughter with her hair. Or the film series devoted lesbian cinema that another Portlander grew from a backyard party into one of the city’s most popular movie clubs.
Finally, we checked in on the city’s queer geography. Does Portland have a so-called gayborhood?
The answer there is something like, why stop at only one?
