Global Gay Cruising Index 2025: Berlin Ranks No. 2

In London, Berlin and Paris, gay and bisexual men can find spontaneous erotic encounters particularly easily. This is the result of the Global Gay Cruising Index 2025 from the adult portal Erobella.
The study evaluated 20 queer-friendly cities across Europe, North America and Australia according to four categories: the availability of gay saunas, gay cruising or fetish clubs, public park spaces, and the classic gay bars. In each category, a maximum of ten points could be earned, for a total of 40 points.
London leads the list with 29 points. The survey indicates that the strongest aspect here is the supply of cruising parks and saunas. Berlin sits in second place with 26 points. The capital achieves a perfect score in fetish clubs, and cruising parks are also rated highly. Paris, on 24 points in third, is not particularly convincing when it comes to cruising parks, but it does attain the maximum score for gay saunas.

Hamburg, Cologne and Munich Lag Behind

Among other German cities, Hamburg ranks eighth with eleven points — tied with San Francisco and Toronto. The Hanseatic city performs best in the cruising parks category.
Tied for thirteenth place with nine points are Cologne and Munich — sharing that spot with Miami and Amsterdam. At the bottom of the list are the Canadian metropolises Montreal and Vancouver, each with five points.

Europe Outpaces North America

Notably, the top five spots are all European cities, with New York following in sixth place. In the American metropolis, the ranking shows that the offering for gay bars is particularly strong, but there are deficits in all other areas.
Erobella explains the wide gap between Europe and North America with historical, cultural, and political developments that stretch back to the 1980s. The AIDS crisis in the United States, they say, led to politics characterized by fear and moral panic, resulting in the destruction of gay infrastructure such as bathhouses. In Canada, a similar pattern occurred — for example, in the 1980s there was a police raid on a sauna in Toronto in which publicly more than 300 men were arrested.
“In contrast, most European countries pursued a more pragmatic approach,” according to Erobella — the only exception being Sweden, where gay saunas were banned until 2004.