Landing in Berlin on the KLM Pride flight, walking into a city we both know by heart, and dancing on the TUI Cruises truck under a hot July sun. And, unfortunately, also about the fact that we were standing hand in hand at the exact part of Tiergarten that would make headlines only ninety minutes later. But it was certainly not the story we set out to tell when we planned our flights for our trip to Berlin for Couple of Men. But let us show you how we experienced Berlin Pride 2026, a weekend full of joy, visibility, protest, and the terrorist attack.
– in collaboration with TUI Cruises –
Our Berlin Pride 2026 Weekend
CSD Berlin 2026 was the third Pride of our summer, and for one of us it was also a homecoming. We are writing this a few weeks after our trip, so you should know up front that this blog article carries a weight that the weekend itself didn’t have until Saturday night. What started as sunshine, a truck full of queer friends, and a city we love ended with a horrible attack on our community. This article, however, is about the weekend itself: the flight, the reunion with Berlin, the parade, the truck, and the hours we were on the street demonstrating for equality.
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Getting to CSD Berlin 2026: KLM Pride Flight & NH Collection Berlin Mitte
We flew from Amsterdam to Berlin on KLM’s dedicated Pride flight, a short trip with the KLM Cityhopper that turned into its own small celebration before we’d even landed. Pride flags, a rainbow banner, and an entire crew of LGBTQ+ flight attendants and pilots. After we arrived at BER Berlin Brandenburg Airport, we got the chance to sit in the cockpit and take a group picture on the airport grounds in front of the plane. So exciting!
Good to know: From Berlin, it is just under an hour to Amsterdam by air, making CSD Berlin an easy weekend trip if you’re based anywhere in the Netherlands (or visiting from abroad). Just one reason why so many Dutch and German couples treat it as a joint Pride weekend trip, with Pride in Amsterdam just a week later.
We checked into NH Collection Berlin Mitte, right at Checkpoint Charlie (not far from Tiergarten and Potsdamer Platz) and near the start of the parade route, where we boarded the TUI Cruises truck. Our tip for a Pride weekend where you’ll be on your feet for two days straight anyway.
Quick facts for CSD Berlin 2026:
- 48th CSD Berlin, held Saturday, July 25, 2026
- First year organized as a two-day Pride weekend
- Motto: “Haltung ist hot” (having a backbone is hot).
- The demonstration started on Leipziger Straße and moved through Potsdamer Platz, Schöneberg, and Tiergarten to the Siegessäule
- Festival grounds: Tiergarten between Siegessäule and Brandenburger Tor
Berlin, the city Karl left for Amsterdam
Karl lived and studied in Berlin for years before Daan. Long before Couple of Men existed, this city was his home: the streets, the language, and the version of himself that became an adult here. Then we met on one of those memorable nights out in the “capital of parties, events, and nightlife”. Just a few months later, he packed up that life and moved to Amsterdam to be with the love of his life.
So flying into Berlin for CSD 2026 was never going to be a simple work trip for our blog, Couple of Men. It was a return to the place where a big chunk of Karl’s life happened, with the man he moved away from Berlin for sitting next to him on the plane. Many corners of this trip carried that special meaning: the city as it is now and the city as Karl remembers it.
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Friday in Berlin: Back to Piepshow at KitKat
We landed, dropped our bags at NH Collection, and by evening we were standing in line for KitKat Club, the techno institution with the darkrooms and the well-known pool area that has been part of Berlin’s queer nightlife for decades. That night’s party was Piepshow, KitKat’s long-running sex-positive night.
This club holds something specific for us. Thirteen years ago, at this exact party, we met each other for the first time. Everything that followed – Amsterdam, our blog, this whole life we’ve built together – traces back to one night at Piepshow. This time, we were not alone but accompanied by our friends, Stefan and Seby.
A note on photos: KitKat and Piepshow run on strict no-phones, no-cameras house rules once you’re inside. This makes this particular space a queer safe space for us, too. Hence, we are not sharing photos from inside the club but one from the waiting line outside on the streets.
On the TUI Cruises Truck at CSD Berlin 2026
We rode with TUI Cruises, truck number 75, one of over eighty trucks that made up this year’s parade. This lineup brought several hundred thousand spectators to Berlin along the demonstration route. DJane and Berlin drag icon Nina Queer kept the truck’s sound system running.
We weren’t alone up there. Our friends Stefan and Seby, gay handball player Lucas Krzikalla, the influencer couple Dominic and Jonny, and the guys from Gleichlaut joined us on this Pride truck journey. Between songs, we ended up in conversation with first-time Pride visitors, longtime Berlin drag performers, and queer teenagers who came to Berlin to join their first Berlin Pride. Every one of those conversations was a reminder of what a CSD is actually for.
“Mausi, unpolitisch war gestern.”
(translates to “Sweetie, apolitical is so yesterday”)
Banner on the TUI Cruises truck
Pride is a protest, as much as it is a celebration of love, without apology. Both things are true at once every single year.
The parade started late, as these things do when eighty trucks and several hundred thousand people try to move through central Berlin at once, but nobody on the street seemed to mind. A little later, just before we passed by the National Gallery, we jumped off the truck to walk with the crowd.
Families, drag queens in full costume, queer friend groups from across the country, and allies lined the entire route. At several points, the Berlin fire brigade sprayed the crowd with water cannons, not as crowd control but as relief from a day that hit close to 30 degrees Celsius. It was, from the truck, a genuinely joyful few hours.
Being on the truck together like this got us talking about queer spaces on the water, too. If cruising sounds better to you than trucks do, we wrote a full piece on the Rainbow Cruise 2027 with TUI Cruises, five nights out of Palma de Mallorca on Mein Schiff 2 next September.
TUI Cruises’ commitment to LGBTQ+ travelers
Experiencing CSD Berlin as invited passengers on truck 75, alongside our queer friends, was wonderful. Knowing it was more than a one-time marketing gag for TUI Cruises made it even more special. We can say that after being on board a Mein Schiff ship twice now.
Firstly, we sailed on a regular Mein Schiff cruise in January. Although there was no Pride branding on this cruise, there was a Rainbow meet-up included in the usual onboard schedule. Additionally, some crew members were part of the LGBTQ+ community, and we always felt comfortable holding hands without anyone staring. We shared more about that trip, on Mein Schiff 7 around the Canary Islands and Madeira, in our full review of TUI Cruises as a gay-friendly cruise line.
Secondly, the company also offers special queer-focused events. For example, we joined their Pride Cruise, Bunte Horizonte, on the ship Mein Schiff 5 from June 12 to 19, 2026, during Pride Month, with Cologne’s Rainbow Festival as a partner. Over 600 queer travelers were on board this tour of the Greek islands, featuring a fantastic inclusive program. We are already looking forward to being part of the Rainbow Cruise 2027!
Another example of the TUI Care Foundation’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community is its work with the IGLTA Foundation. They support LGBTQ+ travel entrepreneurs worldwide, as well as their guests. This is the same company we joined in Berlin for Pride this year. Therefore, seeing their truck at CSD felt like part of a greater, ongoing effort.
Why CSD Berlin 2026 Mattered
CSD Berlin has never been just a parade, and this year’s motto, “Haltung ist hot,” roughly “having a backbone is hot,” made that explicit before a single truck moved.
Germany, like a lot of Europe, has spent the last few years watching queer rights get used as a political football again. A CSD (CSD = Christopher Street Day, referring to the first queer protests in New York in 1969) is that one day per year when that pressure gets answered in the street instead of in a headline: hundreds of thousands of people showing up in public, together, as a direct claim to visibility, safety, and equal rights. That’s true every year. This year, a few hours after the demonstration ended, it stopped being an abstract point and became a very literal one.
When the night in Berlin changed
After the truck parade and demonstration, we walked back toward NH Collection through the Tiergarten, hand in hand, past people picnicking in the grass and winding down from the day. We had dinner near the hotel and were back in our room when the news started coming in, first via social media, then across all TV news platforms.
At around 10 p.m., Berlin Pride organizers canceled the remaining events at the Brandenburger Tor and told everyone still in the area to leave calmly. They did not mention the reason for this to avoid panic. Because what had happened was just shocking.
A car had driven into the crowd in the Tiergarten, near the Lennéstraße exit of the Tiergarten tunnel, the same area of the park we had walked through roughly ninety minutes earlier. One woman was killed. Twenty-nine people were injured, several of them critically.
We’re not going to walk through the details of that night in this article. We have already written about it, about the ninety minutes, about what it did to the rest of our week, and about why we still believe in showing up for Pride in Do We Still Need Pride? Our Answer After the CSD Berlin 2026 Attack. If you read one linked article from this post, make it that one.
Sunday in Berlin: Grief, Fear, and a Walk to the Memorial
The night was short. We kept checking the news on our phones instead of sleeping, and grief and shock had already set in long before the sun came up.
Sunday didn’t feel any different. After breakfast, we went straight back to our room. Neither of us knew what to do with ourselves. There was a real sense of powerlessness and uncertainty in our room: the attacker hadn’t been caught yet, and we genuinely didn’t know if it was safe to go back outside. On the news, we saw a large crowd gathering at the Brandenburg Gate.
Late in the evening, we decided to go for a longer walk anyway. It felt right to visit the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism, a short walk from our hotel in the Tiergarten. Police cars kept passing us the whole way there, but we kept going.
At the memorial, political parties and politicians had already laid rows of flowers. Members of the community had added their own small protest signs next to them. We started crying, standing there arm in arm, reading what people had written.
While we stood there, a group of people who looked like they were also part of the community walked past us, heading further into the Tiergarten, toward where the terrorist attack at Berlin Pride 2026 had happened. We followed at a distance until we reached a tree that had been damaged in the attack, now covered in banners, flowers, and wreaths. Standing in front of it, anger and grief mixed with something else: a determination not to back down but to keep going.
That evening, Thomas Coenraadts from the Homomonument Foundation in Amsterdam reached out. They organized a commemoration in Amsterdam for the victims of the terrorist attack at Berlin Pride 2026. And he asked us to speak at the event at the Homomonument just three days later, on Tuesday.
From Berlin Back to Amsterdam
Karl once packed up a life in Berlin to move to Amsterdam for Daan. This time, we packed up for a much shorter trip and flew home carrying something heavier than we’d brought with us.
On Tuesday, July 28, we both stood hand in hand on stage at Amsterdam’s Homomonument in front of thousands of people, doing what Thomas had asked. We’ve written a speech about that night and about the days that followed.
Read more about it and watch the video of the speech here:
Do We Still Need Pride? Our Answer After the CSD Berlin 2026 Attack.
WorldPride Amsterdam 2026: Staying Visible
What came after Berlin wasn’t a retreat from public queer spaces. The entire LGBTQ+ community and we stood together for the opposite. Over the following two weeks, WorldPride Amsterdam gave us many opportunities to show up in public, on purpose, with the WorldPride Canal Parade and WorldPride March as the main events.
- Canal Parade WorldPride Amsterdam 2026: Our Boat Highlights on August 1.
- WorldPride March Amsterdam 2026: A Story after the Berlin Attack on August 8.
Follow the links to learn about those days here.
Important questions about CSD Berlin (FAQ)
Berlin remains one of Europe’s most established gay-friendly cities, and CSD itself is a heavily attended, well-organized event. The attack on July 25, 2026, was a serious exception, not the norm, and cities including Berlin and Amsterdam have visibly increased security at Pride events since. No large public gathering is ever risk-free, so go with whatever precautions feel right for you, and don’t let anyone shame you either way.
Yes. Watching the parade along the route is free. Participating on a truck, as we did with TUI Cruises, usually requires an invitation or a partner arrangement with one of the participating organizations. You can also join the demonstration on foot with posters and flags. Come as you are.
CSD Berlin is held annually in July. Check the official Berlin Pride website closer to the date for the confirmed route and schedule for 2027.
What stays with us from the Berlin Pride 2026 weekend (not the attack)
We came to Berlin for Pride, for a truck, for a city we both know, and for a party where two of us first met thirteen years ago. All of that is still true, and none of it gets erased by what happened later that same night or by the Sunday we spent afraid to leave our hotel room.
We’re holding all of it at once: the joy of that Saturday afternoon, the tears in front of the memorial, and the fact that a public queer space in the middle of Berlin turned out not to be safe for everyone in it.
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But we will keep on being visibly ourselves, thriving for a change, for equality, for the right for everyone to decide whom to love. Happy Pride, everyone, and please let us know if you or any of your acquaintances need help. No one has to stand alone. We got you!
Feel like more of our LGBTQ+ travels, queer outdoor adventures, Pride trips, or other mountain destinations? Then browse our travel guides or write to us if you’re looking for personal tips. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram. We look forward to connecting with you! Karl & Daan.
Important note: Our gay trip to Berlin for Pride was made possible in close collaboration with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and TUI Cruises. Nevertheless, our opinions and texts, as always, are based entirely on our own personal experiences. We took all the photos and videos in this article.