FIFA World Cup brings Seattle to global stage during Pride month

As eyes from around the globe turn to Seattle for the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup this month, they won't just be focused on the planet's most popular sport, but also what makes Seattle Seattle. That includes our spirit of inclusion, joy and justice at the heart of the region's LGBTQ+ community.

Kicking off during Seattle's Pride month, local World Cup organizers have embraced the serendipitous calendar alignment and planned community activities around a June 26 Pride Match, created a Pride themed poster contest and launched a How We Pride video and social media campaign.

The Pride Match - which is taking place during Seattle's Pride weekend - was planned long before the match teams were chosen, but the December announcement that the teams would be Egypt and Iran generated international attention.

Both countries criminalize homosexuality and objected to being associated with the Pride Match, with the Egyptian Football Association saying in December, it categorically rejects holding any activities related to supporting (homosexuality) during the match between the Egyptian national team and Iran." But local organizers said the planned activities outside the stadium would go on as scheduled. And despite the ongoing U.S. war with Iran, the head of FIFA affirmed in late April that the game would proceed.

At a joyous launch party in May in Ballard at Rough & Tumble Pub, a women's sports bar, hundreds of people packed in to see the unveiling of the "Welcome to Seattle: This is How We Pride" video campaign. In front of a giant custom-made World Cup Pride orca tail art piece, drag queen Sativa danced to DJ SummerSoft spinning Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club."

More than 50 community leaders including soccer superstars like Megan Rapinoe, former state Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, Lavender Rights Project Executive Director Jaelynn Scott, musician Amelia Day and many LGBTQ+ allies participated in the series of 13 videos, answering the question, "How do you Pride?" The videos will be shown at watch parties and community and sporting events. Organizers are also asking people to create and share their own "How We Pride" videos on social media.

Rapinoe answered the question by saying, "When I think of Pride, it is resistance. But joy and love and being your full self is a really powerful form of resistance, and I think we need that more than ever now."

Puyallup Tribe Councilmember Annette Bryan attended the event and was featured in the How We Pride videos. In an interview last week, Bryan said being an out and proud lesbian tribal leader has helped other tribal members feel comfortable being who they are.

When the local World Cup organizers asked her to be involved, she said she was excited to participate. "We should show the world that it's OK to love who you love and it's OK to be exactly who you are and that we love you unconditionally and that you matter," she said.

Bryan said traditionally, Indigenous communities honored Two-Spirit people, an umbrella term for many gender fluid and LGBTQ+ identities. Two-Spirit people hold important spiritual roles in different Native communities. "There was a place for Two-Spirit people, and they were honored, and their gifts were seen, and they were sacred, just like every other gift of all of the members of our community."

The Puyallup Tribe is an official World Cup Host City Supporter, which Bryan said marked the first time an Indigenous nation was represented in this way at the World Cup. The tribe is organizing numerous public activities.

My longtime friend Bookda Gheisar, director of equity at the Port of Seattle, also participated in the How We Pride video campaign.

She wanted to share her dual identity of being Iranian and being queer and celebrating Pride.

So much of the discourse around the upcoming Pride match centered on the supposed dichotomy between the repressive homophobia of the governments of Iran and Egypt and welcoming and inclusive Seattle that the real-life existence of queer Iranians and Egyptians has become lost, she said.

The problem, she said, lies in "the assumption that we are queer identified, and they are anti-queer identified."

"There are Iranians who don't embrace the queer identity, but there are plenty of Iranians here, of course, more and more over time, who are either queer identified or welcoming, embrace the queer identity of their friends and community members," Gheisar said. This perceived dichotomy between Iranians and LGBTQ+ people "makes us as (Iranian) queer people feel like we're an outsider always," she said.

She said there's a large queer and trans community in Iran and while the government is indeed repressive toward them, people continue to be out and fighting against that repression.

We are also at a moment in the U.S. when rights for trans people in particular and LGBTQ+ people in general are under grave threat. Protections are being rolled back nationwide and queer and trans people were targeted by 530 bills in legislatures across the country in 2026, including some in Washington state, the ACLU said.

Gheisar said in the 40 some years she has been out as a lesbian, a lot has changed. She said there was a time when queer social events in Seattle were very polarized. The queer events were very white, but now there's more diversity.

She said she loves to see so many immigrants and people of color now in local queer spaces. It is a very beautiful and diverse community today that I feel a sense of belonging to," she said, "and I think that it is important to communicate that to all of the travelers coming to Seattle, the visitors to FIFA, that we are a rich and diverse community. And that you know we want to share the stories and voices of all of these communities with you."

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This story was originally published June 1, 2026 at 4:53 PM.