The rainbows are coming down, the bunting's looking tired, and the UK's biggest brands are quietly stepping away from the 'Pridemania' we have seen in the last five years. So what's really going on behind the scenes?

In this episode of This Isn't Working, host Tanya de Grunwald asks why Pride has died in 2026 — looking at it squarely from an employer's perspective. With clear evidence that the UK's biggest brands are losing their appetite for rainbows and drag queens, Tanya breaks down the conversations, calculations, and power struggles happening behind the scenes at the organisations who've bailed — or, as they might put it, "decided to go in a different direction" this year.

Are they stepping away because so-called 'LGBT' rights has become too political? Have they simply worked out it's bad for business as they sharpen their focus on productivity and profit? Or is it just that rainbows and drag queens are no longer fashionable?

This isn't a claim that Pride is dead everywhere — plenty of brands showed visible support in stores, advertising and on social media, and turned up at the Pride in London parade again this year. But Tanya argues those big spenders are starting to look like outliers who either didn't get the memo — or know there is dissent but doubled down anyway.

Adding to Tanya's analysis is James Roberts, managing director of Human Gay Male, who has also been watching the mood shift from the inside.

Between them, they count seven reasons why 2026 might be the year corporate Pride sponsorship finally ran out of road — from cold, hard commercialism and fear of reputational backlash, to the "ick factor," the unreliable partners who oversold their credibility, and the sheer amount of box-ticking admin now required just to be allowed to march.

We ask:

- Is this genuinely a values-driven retreat — or just brands following the money as budgets tighten and "go woke, go broke" becomes boardroom shorthand?

- Why has showing support for Pride month become a reputational liability rather than an easy PR win — and what does the protest against tech giant Cisco last year tell us about the risks of standing under a rainbow flag?

- Did the Pride parade organisers' decision to ban political parties backfire by proving the very point they were trying to play down — that this has always been political?

- What happens when the external "partners" — activist groups, DEI consultants, staff networks and suppliers like Trans in the City — that employers trusted turn out to be far less reliable, and far more combative, than advertised?

- Has Pride simply become too expensive, too risky, and too much hassle for what employers actually wanted all along: an easy, cheap, feel-good bit of branding?

Sharp, unflinching, and unafraid to describe exactly what she's hearing from employers this year, Tanya makes the case that no single scandal killed corporate Pride month — it was death by a thousand convenient, respectable-sounding excuses.

NOTES FOR EMPLOYERS:

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