Rainbow Index 33.69 %,
from the ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map,
which rates the legal and policy situation for LGBTQ+ people in each country.
Legal status
Cyprus is two legal orders on one island, and both belong on this page. The Republic of Cyprus, an EU member, decriminalised homosexuality in 1998 — five years after losing a case in Strasbourg over a law it was not even enforcing — and gave same-sex couples a civil partnership in 2015. The north repealed its colonial-era ban only in 2014, the last territory in Europe to do so, and has nothing since. What the Republic still has not done is almost as telling as what it has: no marriage, no adoption of any kind for same-sex couples, no anti-discrimination protection outside the workplace, and no working procedure for changing legal gender.
Here is the historical overview of the legalisation of homosexuality and gay rights in Cyprus.
Phase I: A British Law and a Strasbourg Judgment (1960–1998)
Independence in 1960 left the colonial criminal code in place, including the section punishing "unnatural offences" between men. It went unenforced for decades and stayed on the books anyway.
1993: The European Court of Human Rights rules in Modinos v. Cyprus that the section violates the right to private life. The applicant, Alecos Modinos, headed the Gay Liberation Movement; the government's defence was that nobody was being prosecuted, which the Court held to be beside the point.
1998: Parliament finally repeals the provision, five years after the judgment and under sustained pressure from the Council of Europe. The age of consent is equalised at 17 in 2002.
Phase II: EU Accession, and Where the Protection Stopped (2004–2014)
Joining the EU brought Cyprus its anti-discrimination law — and, two decades on, that law still marks the outer edge of what is protected.
2004: Cyprus joins the European Union and transposes the Employment Equality Directive. The Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation Law bans discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation at work. Nothing comparable was ever adopted for goods, services, housing, education or health, which is why an EU member state scores under 20 % in ILGA-Europe's equality category.
2014: The first Cyprus Pride is held in Nicosia. In January of the same year the Turkish Cypriot assembly in the north repeals its inherited ban, which had carried up to five years' imprisonment — the last decriminalisation anywhere in Europe.
Phase III: Civil Partnership (2015)
2015: Parliament passes the Civil Partnership Law in November against loud opposition from the Orthodox Church, and it takes effect in December. It gives registered couples most of what marriage gives — inheritance, next-of-kin standing, social insurance, property — while withholding the name and the children. Joint adoption, stepchild adoption and access to assisted reproduction for female couples all remain closed.
Phase IV: Hate Crime, Conversion Therapy, and the Things That Did Not Move (2017–2024)
The decade after civil partnership brought real criminal-law protection and one genuine first, while family law and gender recognition stood still.
2017: The Criminal Code is amended. Article 35A makes prejudice on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity an aggravating circumstance at sentencing, and Article 99A criminalises public incitement to violence or hatred on the same grounds, punishable by up to three years. The maximum fine is raised to 10,000 euro in October 2024.
2022: Men who have sex with men are allowed to donate blood.
2023: Conversion therapy is banned in May. In the same year, for the first time, half of Cypriots surveyed by Eurobarometer agree that same-sex marriage should be allowed throughout Europe — up from three quarters disapproving of homosexuality outright in 2006.
Throughout: legal gender recognition has no statutory framework at all. Changing the gender marker on documents has in practice required proof of surgery, there is no provision for non-binary people, and Cyprus scores 15.71 % in that category — its second worst after intersex bodily integrity, where it scores nothing.
Phase V: A Strategy on Paper (2025–2026)
2025: The Nicosia Pride march is held in June under the slogan "Love is not afraid". In September, United by Pride runs for the fourth year: two processions set out, one from Eleftheria Square in the south and one from Kuğulu Park in the north, and meet in the UN-administered buffer zone at the Ledra Palace.
2026: The government adopts a National LGBTQIA+ Strategy for 2026–2028, which commits for the first time to a legal gender recognition framework based on self-determination and free of medical requirements. It is a strategy rather than a law, and nothing has yet been enacted under it. Marriage equality and adoption are not part of it, and no bill on either is before parliament.
