Liverpool’s Homotopia festival returns next month to venues across the city

Liverpool’s Homotopia festival returns to the city next month promising an unmissable programme of performances, film screenings, exhibitions, walks, talks, workshops and parties.

The 21^st edition of the annual event, the UK’s longest-running LGBTQIA+ arts and culture festival, takes place from 1-30 November 2025.

The theme of this year’s festival is Uprising – a rallying cry, a celebration and a defiant stand.

Homotopia takes place at venues including the Unity Theatre, Everyman and Playhouse, FACT, St George’s Hall, the Royal Standard and the Bluecoat along with two events at St Helens libraries.

And more than 70 percent of the events are FREE to enjoy.

The festival opens with a special launch party at the Unity Theatre on Saturday 1 November, with the Hope Place venue turned into a cabaret-style space for an immersive evening of playful and boundary-blurring performance, community and solidarity.

Highlights of the month-long Homotopia programme include:

Residents in the city centre, on Merseyrail stations and at the Open Eye Gallery from 1 – 30 November. Queer photographer Ming De Nasty has spent the past four months capturing members of the city region’s LGBTQIA+ community on camera. A festival co-commission with the city’s Open Eye Gallery and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, in partnership with Merseyrail and Sahir House.

Remember Nature at FACT on Tuesday 4 November. Homotopia is a partner organisation in a nationwide day of artist-led action honouring Gustav Metzger’s 2015 vision of art as a force for change and has commissioned artist Paul Harfleet to explore his 20-year relationship with Liverpool through The Pansy Project.

Drag Down the Borders at District in the Baltic Quarter on Sunday 9 November. A night of joy and solidarity showcasing the best migrant drag and cabaret talent, and raising funds in solidarity with migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in Liverpool, Palestine, Sudan and Congo.

No Pride in Genocide at District on Monday 10 November. A film programme in partnership with Queer Cinema for Palestine.

Grace Tompkins, an alumnus of Homotopia’s QueerCore development programme, presents Scrambled, a tender and deeply human show about the places people can get lost online – and how we find our way back, coming to the Liverpool Playhouse Studio on Thursday 13 November.

Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular comes to the Unity Theatre on Friday 14 November. An end-of-the-pier show at the end of the world from Harry Clayton-Wright. Commissioned by long-time festival friend Marlborough Productions and with initial research and development support from Homotopia.

And An Evening with Dross at the Unity Theatre on 15 November. Part lip-sync séance, part high-camp ritual, join the Liverpool drag queen and art-activist for a genre-defying mix of film, physical theatre, spectacle and queer resistance.

Meanwhile If These Walls Could Talk is a Queer Places Heritage Trail which is due to take over Liverpool’s walls, windows and streets throughout the month, revealing hidden stories of queer life in the city.

And the four emerging LGBTQIA artists from the city region selected to join the 2025 festival’s QueerCore artist development programme are Willzy, Claire Beerjeraz, HRH Aphrodite and Laura Bee.

Claire Beerjeraz’s interactive art exhibition Rest as Resistance runs from 3 – 28 November at LUSH in Church Street, while HRH Aphrodite is due to present The Fire King – a History of Stephenson’s Rocket in Three Volumes as an hour-long participatory show during the festival.

All four artists will also take part in a Young Homotopia and QueerCore showcase at the Unity Theatre on Wednesday 12 November.

And on Sunday 23 November, the Museum of Liverpool hosts a Sunday Dinner: Scouse Activist Edition, a metaphorical three-course feast of ideas inspired by Split Britches’ Long Table.

Homotopia festival producer Natalie Lloyd says:

“After pausing the festival for a year we’re back with a bang for 2025, with a fantastic and varied programme of the boldest voices and best and most brilliant queer art and culture. This year the festival is also hyper local and proudly Scouse.

“Our theme Uprising is about resistance and solidarity in the face of the creeping tide of fascism. It’s about finding power in the small and every day and turning it into something unstoppable, about doing it yourself when no one else will and refusing to shrink, refusing to wait for permission and refusing to apologise.

“It’s a love letter to our community, our peers, the incredible talent embedded into the city’s very being, and the power of coming together and fighting for maginalised communities, right here and right now.”