New Digital Age’s Media Pride Lunch is returning on Thursday, 1 October 2026, bringing together advertising and marketing professionals to mark and support the LGBTQIA+ community. Now in its fourth year, the event takes place at its spiritual home of Sticky Mango near Tower Bridge, with partners including Publicis Groupe UK, The Independent, 59A and long-term initiative partner Outvertising.
The lunch has become an established fixture in the industry calendar since NDA held its inaugural event in 2023. What started as a single gathering has grown into a broader, year-round Media Pride initiative that includes editorial coverage, interviews, reports and ongoing advocacy work. The annual lunch sits at the centre of that programme, providing a space for members of the LGBTQIA+ community in media and marketing and their allies, to meet, talk and mark Pride in a professional context.
This year’s event will again feature a panel discussion hosted by NDA editor Justin Pearse, drawing on voices from across the industry to address the issues that matter to the community. Previous panels have covered topics ranging from representation in advertising and the challenges of authentic LGBTQIA+ inclusion in brand communications, to broader questions about workplace culture, visibility and the responsibilities of business leaders. Past speakers have included Laura Jordan Bambach, Past President of D&AD and co-founder of SheSays and OKO; Marty Davies, cultural strategist, activist and founder of Trans+ History Week; Jerry Daykin, WFA Diversity Ambassador; and Chris Dunne, Head of Marketing at Thinkbox and joint CEO of Outvertising.
The context in which this year’s event takes place is worth noting. The past 12 months have seen a noticeable shift in the tone of public and corporate conversations around diversity and inclusion, with several large US companies scaling back DEI commitments and a broader shift evident in how some brands approach LGBTQIA+ themes in their marketing. In advertising specifically, the question of whether industry support for the community extends beyond Pride Month activities and whether it holds up under commercial pressure to pull back has become more pressing. Outvertising CEO Chris Dunne, writing for NDA earlier this year, argued that the concept of “values safety” now needs to sit alongside brand safety on marketers’ agendas: the risk to a brand from abandoning its stated values on inclusion is as real as the risk from appearing in the wrong editorial environment.
The Media Pride Lunch is not a conference. It does not produce a set of formal recommendations or issue a communiqué. Its value is more straightforward: it provides a room where people can have honest conversations, where the community is centred rather than treated as a topic to be managed, and where allies can show up in a practical rather than purely declarative way. The panel provides some structure to those conversations, but the lunch itself is the point.
Tickets are available now via Eventbrite, and partnership opportunities for organisations wishing to support the event are available by contacting the NDA team. The event is open to professionals across advertising, media, marketing and technology.
For an industry that regularly talks about the importance of diverse talent and inclusive workplaces, events like the Media Pride Lunch represent an opportunity to translate that language into something more concrete. Showing up matters. The fourth edition takes place on 1 October. Tickets and partnership enquiries are available via the links on the NDA events page.
Tickets for the NDA Media Pride Lunch 2026 are available at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ndas-media-pride-lunch-tickets-1989824379283. Partnership enquiries can be directed to partnerships@bluestripegroup.co.uk.
