In August 1988, Keith Haring drew a joyful figure stepping out of a closet for a new campaign called the National Coming Out Day Project. Nearly four decades later, that drawing still appears on the shirts people wear every 11 October. This year it arrived alongside fresh numbers about what coming out looks like now: one in three LGBTQ+ adults in the United States say they are more out than they were two years ago, even as most say acceptance of trans and nonbinary people has fallen.
The figures come from the HRC Foundation’s 2026 Annual LGBTQ+ Community Survey, released on 8 October ahead of National Coming Out Day. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s announcement of the findings, 85% of LGBTQ+ adults are somewhat or very open about who they are with other people.
What the New Numbers Show
The headline finding is movement, not standing still. A third of LGBTQ+ adults (33%) say they are more open about their identity than two years ago, compared with 22% who say they are less open, while 45% report no change. The overall picture, as the HRC Foundation’s full research summary puts it, challenges the idea that LGBTQ+ people are simply becoming less visible: for most people, being out has stayed the same or grown.
The survey also places the community in context. More than 25 million LGBTQ+ adults live in the United States, according to the research, and HRC says 12% of US adults now identify as LGBTQ+, with 40 of the 50 states home to an LGBTQ+ population above 10%.
Those numbers matter because visibility is not the same as presence. A community can be large and still be unseen in daily life. Coming out, in all its forms, is how people become known to their families, friends, colleagues and neighbours, and that is what the survey is trying to measure.
Younger Adults Are Leading the Shift
Age shapes the story in two different ways. Older LGBTQ+ adults are the most likely to describe themselves as very open, and the most likely to say that has held steady over the past two years. The research notes that many in this generation have lived through decades of organising for visibility and equality, and that the results give no sign of them pulling back from the lives they have built.
Younger adults are moving fastest. About 40% of those aged 18 to 34 say they are more open than two years ago, even though they are a little less likely to be very open right now. That trend carries extra weight, because adults under 35 now make up more than half of the LGBTQ+ adult population, according to the HRC Foundation.
The picture that emerges is of a community in motion: an older generation holding its ground, and a younger one still in the middle of finding where, when and with whom to be out.
The Pressure Falls Hardest on Trans People
The survey is just as clear about the headwinds. More than half of LGBTQ+ adults (56%) say the current political climate makes them less likely to be open about who they are. Among transgender and gender-expansive adults, that figure rises to 70%.
Perceptions of acceptance tell the same story. Some 78% of LGBTQ+ adults believe acceptance of transgender and nonbinary people has declined over the past two years, while 45% believe acceptance of lesbian, gay and bisexual people has declined. The Advocate’s report on the findings framed it as a community becoming more visible and feeling less safe at the same time.
The research is careful about what that means. Trans and gender-expansive adults are a little more likely than cisgender LGBQ+ adults to say that building support for equality encourages them to be out, and much more likely to say that concerns about harassment, discrimination or safety hold them back. Both pressures can be true for the same person on the same day.
Why Being Known Still Matters to the Community
Respondents draw a clear line between being known and winning support. Some 84% say that wanting to build support for equality makes them more likely to be open, and 92% agree that more LGBTQ+ people being out helps build public support for equal rights and protections.
Earlier HRC Foundation research points in the same direction: people who personally know a transgender person, especially those who talk with one regularly, report greater support for transgender equality. Familiarity, in other words, does real work.
The research is equally firm that this cannot become an obligation. Visibility is a personal matter, the HRC Foundation writes, and no one should feel they have to be out when doing so could put their safety or well-being at risk. The responsibility for changing public attitudes, it adds, cannot fall on LGBTQ+ people themselves.
Still Showing Up for Each Other
One of the warmest findings is about connection. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) feel connected to the broader LGBTQ+ community. In the past year, 55% visited an LGBTQ+ bar, cafe, bookstore or community centre, and 49% attended Pride or another large community event.
Those are the places where chosen family is made and where the scene renews itself: the bookshop events, the late nights, the volunteer shifts and the marches. Coming out has always been easier with people waiting on the other side of the door, and the survey suggests those spaces are still being used.
From the QueerPeople.News Curator Team: “The most hopeful number here is not the 85%. It is the one in three who say they are more out than two years ago, in a climate that asked them to be less. Every one of those decisions was made on their own timeline, and the community spaces people keep returning to are a big part of why.”
A Day With Roots in a March
National Coming Out Day was founded in 1988 on the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, when hundreds of thousands of people came to the capital, HRC recalls. Haring’s drawing, created on 6 August 1988 for the National Coming Out Day Project, gave the observance its image, and the project merged with the Human Rights Campaign in 1993, according to HRC’s history of the artwork. HRC has led the observance nationally for decades.
Haring’s figure was always more joyful than solemn: a person stepping into the light rather than being pushed. HRC’s own retelling notes that coming out is not always a single moment, and that for some people it can happen weekly or even daily. A new colleague, a new neighbour or a new doctor can each mean another first conversation.
From Coming Out to Turning Out
This year the observance also has an eye on the calendar. With the US midterm elections less than a month away, HRC is urging LGBTQ+ people and allies to check their voter registration, make a plan to vote early, by mail or on Election Day, and bring two or three friends to the polls. HRC President Kelley Robinson framed coming out as both deeply personal, made on each person’s own timeline, and a way of building support, and said the organisation is carrying that spirit to the ballot box.
Ballot questions are already putting LGBTQ+ lives in front of voters this autumn, as in QueerPeople.News’s explainer on what Virginia’s Question 2 would change about marriage. Whatever happens at the polls, the survey’s central message is about the people, not the politics: most of the community is out, more are coming out, and they are still finding each other.
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