Some global LGBTQ travelers are skipping America this Pride season

Safety concerns, a hostile political environment and uncertainty about border policies are causing some LGBTQ travelers to rethink visits to the U.S. this summer.

For many European gays, the festive Eurovision Song Contest each May marks the unofficial kickoff to the global Pride season.

As usual, there were soaring highlights and scandalous lowlights among the competing Eurovision nations at the 2025 edition of the contest in Basel, Switzerland, this month. But another country was on the lips of many queer jet-setters this year: the United States, with its spate of new anti-trans and anti-immigrant policies that are causing some LGBTQ travelers to reconsider their upcoming American itineraries.

Several European countries, including Denmark, Finland and Germany, have issued official cautions for LGBTQ travelers visiting the U.S., particularly those with an “X” gender listed on their passport. Meanwhile, out of concerns for participant safety, Canada’s leading LGBTQ rights group, Egale Canada, pulled out of participation in WorldPride DC, and the African Human Rights Coalition has called for a boycott of this edition of the international Pride event, coordinated by InterPride and usually held every two years.

“It doesn’t feel right to at the moment,” Karl Krause told NBC News at Eurovision in Basel, referring to travel to the U.S. Krause, who is German by birth, lives in Amsterdam with his Dutch partner, Daan Colijn, and together they are travel-focused content creators known to their followers as Couple of Men. In 2021, Lonely Planet awarded them its first Best in Travel LGBTIQ Storyteller Award, a nod to their work for the LGBTQ community.

Daan Colijn and Karl Krause during Fort Lauderdale Pride in 2023.Couple of Men“As gay men traveling to the U.S., we are probably still the more privileged part of the community,” Krause said. “But we had some interesting conversations recently in Bilbao with a trans person who was like, ‘I cannot, I literally cannot travel to the U.S., because I have no idea how they would receive my diverse passport, if I would be put in detention or whatever. I have my little daughter — I’m not going to risk any of this.’”