Spain Dethrones Malta on the Rainbow Map 2026 — And the Whole Ranking Shifted Underneath
ILGA-Europe's 2026 Rainbow Map went live on May 12. Spain takes the top spot for the first time, ending Malta's decade-long reign — but the more telling story is how much of Europe slid backward this year.
ILGA-Europe published the Rainbow Map 2026 on May 12, and the headline is the one almost no one expected ten years ago: Spain is now the highest-ranked country in Europe for LGBTI rights. Spain takes first place with a score of 89%, jumping 11 points and moving up four spots. Malta — which held the number one spot every year since 2016 — slips to second.
That ten-year reign is over. But the more important story in this year’s edition isn’t Spain’s rise. It’s how many other countries moved in the opposite direction.
What changed at the top
Spain’s leap is the product of actual legislative follow-through. In 2026, the government adopted equality action plans for LGBTI and trans rights, established an independent authority for equal treatment and non-discrimination, and completed full implementation of the depathologisation of trans healthcare. Those aren’t symbolic gestures. They’re the kind of administrative scaffolding that takes years to build and is precisely what the Rainbow Map’s 76 criteria are designed to detect.
The top five looks like this now: Spain (89%), Malta, Iceland, Belgium, Denmark. Notably absent: any country in the Anglosphere. The UK sits at 22nd. Ireland is mid-pack.
The Balkans story: Albania climbs, Serbia slides
For the Balkans, the 2026 map is a split screen.
Albania moved up two places to 24th with a 41% score, propelled by the new Law on Gender Equality that Parliament passed in November 2025. That law explicitly bans discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics — language that didn’t exist in Albanian statute before. ILGA-Europe credited it as one of the bigger upward moves of the year. The catch, which the report flags, is that a conservative coalition is currently collecting signatures for a referendum to repeal the law. The Constitutional Court will likely have to weigh in before that referendum can happen, since Albanian constitutional law prohibits referendums that reduce fundamental rights protections.
Serbia dropped two places to 29th with a score of 34%. ILGA-Europe noted the continued absence of any registered partnership law, the persistent gap between Belgrade Pride’s symbolic importance and what actually changes year to year, and several incidents flagged under hate crime and civil society space.
Montenegro and North Macedonia held roughly steady. Croatia, the only EU member among the Western Balkans, sits comfortably in the middle of the table at 14th.
The EU’s bottom ranks are still in the EU
The Rainbow Map’s most uncomfortable finding for Brussels is that the lowest-ranked EU member states — Romania (42nd, 19%) and Bulgaria (40th, 20%) — are still below several Western Balkans candidate countries. Bulgaria dropped two places this year. Romania dropped one. Both remain well below the 50% mark that separates “minimum legal protections in place” from “structural gaps.” The European Court of Justice’s Hungary ruling earlier this year hasn’t yet translated into measurable progress in those two countries.
Hungary itself improved on paper — the so-called “child protection” law was struck down by the CJEU — but ILGA-Europe was careful to note that enforcement is what the 2027 ranking will measure. The Orbán government has not amended the underlying statutes.
Portugal slips, France stalls
Portugal fell one place to 12th with a score of 67%. The reason: no new affirmative legislation since the 2024 conversion practices ban, and the three anti-trans bills the right-wing parties advanced in March threaten to undo the 2018 gender self-determination law. If those bills become law, Portugal’s 2027 score will drop sharply.
France didn’t move, which in this year’s map is itself a story. France failed to properly implement its existing national action plan, and the report calls out increasing far-right pressure on local-level Pride events as a civil society space concern.
The bottom of the table
The bottom three are unchanged: Russia (49th, 2%), Azerbaijan (48th, 2%), Turkey (47th, 5%). Russia has been at the bottom since 2024. Turkey’s score is notable because the rollback is active and accelerating — draft legislative amendments targeting trans healthcare, the dissolution of an LGBTI youth organisation, and a sharp increase in criminal lawsuits against activists. ILGA-Europe describes Turkey as “the country where conditions deteriorated most visibly in 2025–2026.”
Why the Rainbow Map is still worth reading
The Rainbow Map measures law and policy, not lived experience. ILGA-Europe says this every year, and every year people misread it anyway. Spain’s #1 ranking doesn’t mean Spain is safe. The country’s own LGTBI+ Federation reported a 15% rise in physical assaults against LGBTQ+ people since 2024. Malta is still extraordinarily livable for queer people; second place doesn’t undo a decade of leadership.
What the map does well — and why it still matters in May of every year — is force governments to answer for the same 76 questions, in the same way, year after year. It’s not flawless. It’s the closest thing Europe has to a shared scoreboard.
The full results are at rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org.
