The Rainbow Map 2026 Drops May 12 — Here's What's Likely to Move and Why It Matters in the Balkans

ILGA-Europe will publish the Rainbow Map 2026 on May 12, six days from today and five days before IDAHOBIT. The annual ranking is the most-cited single document in European LGBTQ+ policy. It scores 49 countries on a 0–100 scale across 76 criteria, divided across seven thematic categories: equality and non-discrimination, family, hate crime and hate speech, legal gender recognition, intersex bodily integrity, civil society space, and asylum. Every government in Europe ends up answering questions about its position on the map within hours of release.

The 2026 edition lands in a different political landscape than the 2025 one. Several things have moved in twelve months — some up, some sharply down — and the rankings are likely to reflect that. Here is what to watch.

What the Rainbow Map actually does

The Rainbow Map is built from documented law and policy, not opinion polling or community surveys. ILGA-Europe’s research team works through each country’s legal code and reviews how policies are implemented, scoring each criterion on whether the protection exists, partially exists, or does not. A maximum score of 100 percent means a country fully meets every benchmark ILGA-Europe has set; the average European country sits somewhere between 30 and 50 percent.

The ranking is published as a single index, with 49 countries ordered top to bottom. In 2025, Malta led the ranking for the tenth consecutive year, with a score above 87 percent. Belgium, Iceland, Denmark, and Spain followed. At the bottom: Russia (in last place), Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Armenia. Among EU member states, the lowest scorer was traditionally Hungary, with Bulgaria, Romania, and Italy clustered just above.

The map’s influence is partly that it gives policymakers and journalists a shared scoreboard. Politicians cite it when their country moves up. Activists cite it when it moves down. Foreign embassies cite it when their citizens travel.

What is likely to shift in 2026

Hungary. On April 21, the Court of Justice of the European Union struck down Hungary’s 2021 anti-LGBTQ “propaganda” law as a violation of EU fundamental values. Hungary has so far refused to repeal it. ILGA-Europe will have to score the country on a moving target — the law is on the books, but it has been declared unenforceable at the European level. The April 12 election also saw the Orbán government replaced; Péter Magyar’s Tisza party takes office in mid-May. The 2026 ranking captures the law as it existed up to early 2026, so Hungary is likely to remain low — but the underlying scoring may begin to reflect what the new government walks into.

Czechia. Czechia’s enhanced same-sex partnership law took effect on January 1, 2025, granting registered partnerships rights “equal to marriage in almost every respect,” with joint adoption as the only major exception. In July 2025 the Health Ministry abolished the requirement that trans people undergo surgery or hormone treatment to change legal gender. Both moves are major rises on Rainbow Map criteria. Czechia is likely to see its biggest year-over-year jump in the index since the early 2010s.

Portugal. Portugal’s parliament voted in March 2026 to advance three bills sharply rolling back trans rights — banning gender-affirming care for minors, requiring medical permission for adults to change their name or sex marker, and restricting “gender ideology” discussion in schools. The bills are still moving through committee and have not been signed into law as of the Rainbow Map cutoff, so the formal score may not yet drop. But ILGA-Europe’s published commentary will almost certainly flag Portugal as a country to watch — a former leader now sliding.

Spain. Spain’s national gender recognition law remains in force; new workplace protections took effect in late 2025. The Madrid regional rollback continues to apply only at sub-national level. Spain is likely to hold or slightly improve its position in the top five.

The Western Balkans. Albania, Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Montenegro are all assessed by ILGA-Europe even though they are not yet EU members. Of these, Montenegro tends to rank highest, thanks to its 2020 same-sex partnership law and reproductive-rights ruling earlier this year. Albania has steadily improved over five years and is the only country in the region with a partial conversion-therapy ban and comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation, although gender-recognition law remains absent. Bosnia’s first hate-speech conviction was upheld on appeal earlier this spring, which is the kind of rule-of-law data point Rainbow Map scoring rewards. Serbia and Kosovo continue to struggle on partnership recognition.

For the Balkans, Rainbow Map placement matters in a specific way: EU accession negotiations are scored, in part, against fundamental rights criteria, and the Rainbow Map is one of the documents the European Commission cites in its annual progress reports. When Albania’s score moves, the next chapter of accession talks moves with it.

What we will be reading for

There are three signals beyond the headline rankings that tend to matter.

The civil society space score. This category measures whether NGOs can operate, register, fundraise, and advocate without legal harassment. It is one of the most accurate early-warning indicators for democratic backsliding. Belarus and Russia have been at zero for years; Hungary’s score on this dimension fell sharply in 2024–25; Slovakia’s has begun to slip.

Asylum scoring. As several countries — including the United States — have effectively closed avenues for LGBTQ+ asylum claimants since early 2025, the European Union’s collective asylum score has become more politically loaded. Watch which countries have raised barriers, and which have made affirming policy changes.

The gap between top and bottom. In 2014, the highest-scoring country (Malta) and the lowest-scoring EU member (Latvia) were separated by about 50 points. In 2025, the gap was over 70 points. A widening gap is a sign that European LGBTQ+ rights are not “Europe-wide” — they are increasingly bifurcated by national politics.

Where to find it

The Rainbow Map goes live on rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org on May 12. ILGA-Europe will publish the full 2026 PDF, country profiles, and methodology notes the same morning. The Rainbow Index, which is a separate document focused on policy commitments rather than legislation in force, typically follows within a week.

We will publish a full country-by-country breakdown for the Balkans and Southern Europe within 48 hours of release. For now, the takeaway is the calendar: in less than a week, every government in Europe will have a new number attached to it. The 2026 number will be the one that gets cited from May 12 onward, every time someone asks how things are going for queer people on this continent.