World’s best cities for gay cruising revealed – including two UK cities

The world’s best cities for gay cruising have been revealed, and one UK city has unsurprisingly come out on top. 

The 2025 Global Gay Cruising Index, published by Erobella, scores cities out of a possible 40 points, with international metropolises being examined for how diverse and accessible their scenes are for spontaneous sexual encounters across four categories: gay saunas, cruising clubs, gay bars and public parks. 

Each category is scored on a scale from 1 to 10, adjusted for population size to ensure global comparability. 

Coming in top place for gay cruising – seeking out sexual partners in public, commonly in parks – is London with an impressive score of 29 out of 40 possible points. 

The British capital proved itself to offer a variety of meeting meeting opportunities in public parks (10/10 points) and a strong offer of saunas (8/10) and gay bars (7/10). 

Following behind London is Berlin, with 26 out of 40 points, thanks to its world-famous cruising and fetish clubs, which saw it score a top 10 points in the category. 

Paris came in third place with 25 points out of 40, boasting a top score in the gay saunas and bathhouses category, while Madrid scored 23 out of 40, again standing out for its gay saunas and bathhouses. 

Barcelona scored 18 out of 40, with its cruising and fetish clubs standing out, while New York scored 15 out of 40, a score secured partly thanks to its 10 out of 10 gay bars. 

New York led the US in the index with San Francisco achieving only (11 points), Chicago (10 points), Miami only 8 out of 40 and Los Angeles 7 out of 40 points. They were followed by another UK city, Manchester, and Canadian cities Vancouver and Montreal.

As noted by Erobella, the gap between Europe and North America is the result of profound historical, cultural and political developments dating back to the 1980s, with the HIV/AIDS crisis being responded to differently across the US and Europe. 

“The different strategies of the 1980s still have an effect today. While the European sauna and cruising culture survived the crisis and evolved, the American cruising scene has never fully recovered from this cutting. The closures left a vacuum that could only be filled insufficiently by the concentration on bars, as the Global Gay Cruising Index shows.” 

See the full list below:

London
Berlin
Paris
Madrid
Barcelona
New York
Vienna
Hamburg
San Francisco
Toronto
Chicago
Sydney
Miami
Amsterdam
Cologne
Munich
Los Angeles
Manchester
Montreal
Vancouver

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