London Pride parade: Hundreds of thousands descend on capital for annual LGBT+ celebrations

More than 500 groups take part in march, but campaigner criticises limit on participation numbers

More than a million people are thought to have attended London's Pride parade (Getty)

London was awash with rainbows as more than a million people descended on the capital for its annual Pride parade on Saturday afternoon.

The annual Pride in London LGBT+ parade began from Portland Place in Westminster from midday, moving along Oxford Circus, Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus, before ending in Whitehall.

Entertainment is also on offer across four different stages throughout central London into the evening, with hundreds of thousands set to attend the event.

Pride director Christopher Joell-Deshields said this year's parade was the most diverse.

“It's just a day to be proud of really - people are able to just come and be who they are and celebrate whatever they want,” he added.

The parade is staged every year for LGBT+ people and their friends, family and supporters to take a positive stance against discrimination and celebrate progress and diversity, while acknowledging work is still to be done to achieve equality.

Almost 500 groups are set to march in this year’s parade, including representatives from companies, public sector workers, clubs, charities and campaign groups.

However, this year’s parade has come under fire from veteran LGBT campaigner Peter Tatchell, who claimed limits placed on the numbers taking part in the event by organisers felt like “discrimination”.

More than 100 groups were reportedly denied the right to take part in the parade itself after their applications were lodged after the cut-off date.

“The limit on the size of Pride feels like anti-LGBT+ discrimination,” Mr Tatchell said.

“There are no similar restrictions placed on the numbers at the Notting Hill Carnival, which is many times larger than Pride.

“Tiny Dublin, with only a million people, had 60,000 people march at Pride last Sunday. London, with a population over eight times larger, will have half that number marching on Saturday.

“This is a LGBT+ and national embarrassment.”

Organisers expect close to a million people to attend the parade as spectators and to take part in surrounding events.

Laks Mann, of Gaysians, marched with his friend Sasha McCarthy and her daughter Gabriella Morales, aged five.

“We are a group supporting the Asian LGBT community,” he said.

“We launched last year at Pride - I just felt that we needed to come together and have a unified voice.”

The first official Pride event in London took place on 1 July 1972, with around 2,000 participants, growing in popularity in the 1980s before it began to morph into a carnival-style event during the 1990s.

In recent years, the parade has attracted increasingly large crowds, with a more than a million people estimated to have attended in 2015, making it ninth-largest LGBT event in history.

Additional reporting by PA