Maspalomas

The Yumbo Centrum is a shopping centre by day and a gay village by night, and it is the core of the gay bars, clubs and accommodation of Playa del Inglés, with more than thirty bars and clubs for drag, cabaret, leather and dance, plus terraces. Things start at dusk, around five or six, and peak towards midnight. By day it is an ordinary shopping centre that transforms as soon as night falls and the venues hang out the rainbow flags.

The reference names are the club Mykonos, open until dawn, Ricky's Cabaret, with the longest-running drag show, and dozens more spread across the four levels. The season is strong all year thanks to the climate, with peaks at the Bear Carnival in March, Pride in May and Winter Pride in November.

Maspalomas's gay calendar rests on three big dates a year, all orbiting the Yumbo. The Bear Carnival, in March, gathers more than 3,000 bears and fills the hotels in the area with pool parties. Maspalomas Pride is in May, and in 2026 it ran from the 4th to the 10th, with the parade on Saturday the 9th, and it ranks among the largest Pride parties in Europe, with more than 100,000 people in 2011. And Winter Pride, in November, tops 40,000 visitors. On top of all that comes the Maspalomas Carnival Drag Gala, a national reference broadcast on TVE.

For the Bear Carnival, Pride and Winter Pride it is worth booking more than three months ahead, because hotel prices shoot up in those windows.

Maspalomas has no administrative gay neighbourhood, because the scene organises around two poles. By night the Yumbo Centrum rules, on Avenida de Estados Unidos, holding the nightlife. By day it is the gay beach, in the protected dunes and around kiosks 6 and 7, with a relaxed naturist feel, reached on foot from the Riu Palace area, in about 25 minutes, or along the beach from Playa del Inglés.

Between the two poles there is plenty of gay-only accommodation, from the AxelBeach to the Hotel Ritual, the Club Torso, Vista Bonita and The Birdcage, all a few minutes' walk from the Yumbo.

The LGBT fabric is well established around the Yumbo, led by the GLAY association. On sexual health, Checkpoint Canarias, running since 2022, does free rapid testing for HIV, syphilis, hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections, and it is anonymous, in Maspalomas and Playa del Inglés. PrEP in the Canaries is managed through Canary Health Service primary care, which means through your GP.

Gay-only accommodation is plentiful and the shops are geared to that crowd. For a serious emergency, the Hospital Universitario Insular is in Las Palmas, around 50 kilometres away.