Country ranking🌍

ILGA World counted 64 criminalizing UN member states in May 2025 and 65 in June 2026, after Burkina Faso criminalized and Trinidad and Tobago reversed its decriminalization; Erasing 76 Crimes counts 66 after Niger's June 2026 law. On our list 68 states sit in Tier 4, criminalized or dangerous, and 12 allow the death penalty.

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, the twelve northern Sharia states of Nigeria, Brunei, Mauritania, Afghanistan, Uganda (for "aggravated homosexuality"), Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. In Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen it is applied; in the others it is a legal possibility with prison in practice.

39 countries on our list have full marriage equality, from the Netherlands (2001) to Nepal (2026), plus the territories that inherit it from their sovereign state. Another dozen have civil unions or partnerships, including Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Latvia, Bolivia and Montenegro.

Tier 1, free and accepted: marriage or strong unions, protections and acceptance beyond the big cities. Tier 2, accepted in the cities: legal, open in the major cities and tourist areas, less so elsewhere. Tier 3, legal but discreet: not a crime, but few protections, real stigma or propaganda laws. Tier 4, don't go: illegal in law or practice, or severe persecution, with death-penalty jurisdictions flagged.

Each of the 250 countries and territories is placed in a tier using ILGA World, the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Dignity Trust, the Williams Institute, Pew, the Spartacus Gay Travel Index, Equaldex and national court rulings. Where two tiers are plausible we choose the more cautious one. Last reviewed September 2026; updated whenever a law changes.

It tiers the legal status and social acceptance of gay men and LGB people, with notes on trans legal status where it changes the picture, such as the UK's 2025 Supreme Court ruling, Georgia's ban on legal gender recognition and the 2025 US executive orders.