“It’s great to see so many people coming together, that is what the Gay Games is all about, bringing people from all backgrounds together,” Lisa Lam, co-chair of the Hong Kong event, said. “But it’s only a small step in a long journey [for the LGBTQ community].”
About 2,400 participants from Hong Kong, mainland China, the rest of Asia, the United States, Europe and Australia competed across 18 events in the Games, far short of the 15,000 athletes and 36 sports first envisioned.
“We delivered the first Games in Asia. The Gay Games happening here shows the world that Hong Kong can be equal,” Lam added.
The Gay Games Hong Kong co-chair said the organisers were exhausted after some contributed more than five years of their lives as volunteers to make the event happen.
How Hong Kong’s Gay Games stumbled near finishing line but still made ‘history’
How Hong Kong’s Gay Games stumbled near finishing line but still made ‘history’
Federation of Gay Games co-president Joanie Evans called the Hong Kong event “the benchmark” for future editions.
“It has been the best Games ever,” Evans said at the closing ceremony, adding that everything had been “perfect” in relation to both the sports and the organisation.
One of the few officials to publicly back the event, Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, convenor of the city’s top decision-making Executive Council, attended the opening ceremony and welcomed participants to Hong Kong.
Human rights activists called for the event to be cancelled and a team in Taiwan said they would not attend for fear of breaching the national security law.
Local singers, drag queens and multinational dance groups were among performers at the closing ceremony at Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wan Chai on Saturday afternoon.
The stadium holds about 3,500 people and looked to be about 50 per cent full.
‘Thrilled to be here’: dragon boat racers in high spirits at Hong Kong Gay Games
‘Thrilled to be here’: dragon boat racers in high spirits at Hong Kong Gay Games
A Games veteran, who gave his name as Jon and said he went to college with the founder Tom Waddell, was disappointed by the low turnout.
“I liked it a lot but I’m sad there are so few people here, and there was a lot of talk that the government would interfere with [Gay Games Hong Kong],” said the retired 80-year-old, who travelled from San Francisco with his Chinese husband.
Jon said that at previous Gay Games in the United States and Paris, he had seen thousands of people at swimming events – at which he won three gold medals this time – but in Hong Kong, there were only “several hundred”.
“I knew a lot of people who wanted to come, but they didn’t because they were scared it would be cancelled,” he added.
Hong Kong Gay Games rejects claims event is political or gets foreign state funding
Hong Kong Gay Games rejects claims event is political or gets foreign state funding
A spokesman for Valencia Gay Games 2026 told the Post that organisers were hoping to attract 10,000 participants, about four times as many as in Hong Kong.
He said the local government had promised to provide public venues for all events free of charge, which Hong Kong authorities did not do.
Games participant Owen Liu, 39, from the mainland, said meeting people like Jon was what the event was all about.
“It was great to meet people from different walks of life,” said Liu, a start-up manager from Chengdu, Sichuan province, who also competed in swimming events.
He added that as a gay man who used to live in Hong Kong before returning to the mainland, the Games had given the community a bigger voice.
“The most important thing is that people saw us [the LGBTQ community] doing sports and realised that we are no different to them.”
Ahead of the event, Jan Schneider, vice-president of production at the Federation of Gay Games, also praised the Hong Kong team but said the event had been less visible than previous ones.
“On the one hand, that is to be expected in a city like Hong Kong where there is a lot going on,” he said, referring to a lack of posters around the city. “But you would still expect to see more than there has been.”
But he added that despite the controversy in the build-up, the organisers had done well to get the event on.