Grindr will disable its location feature and roll out additional privacy protections for users staying at the Olympic Village during the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympic Games.
The company announced the stepped-up security measures on its blog, saying the changes are intended to protect LGBTQ athletes — particularly those from countries where homosexuality is criminalized or punishable by death — from what it described as “real safety risks.”
“Grindr shows users who’s nearby and how far away they are,” the blog post read. “In most contexts, that’s useful. In the Olympic Village where thousands of athletes are packed into a small area, those same features may become a liability.
“Someone outside the Village could browse profiles inside it. Distance data could be used to pinpoint someone’s exact location. And simply appearing on Grindr tells the world something about a person’s identity that, in more than 60 countries, remains a criminal offense.”
The gay dating app first restricted its location features during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and did so again for the 2024 Paris Summer Games — making the 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympics the third cycle in which those protections have been implemented.
Grindr’s enhanced privacy features for the Games will allow athletes, coaches, trainers, and other staff to remain anonymous and use the app discreetly without being forced to out themselves.
For instance, Grindr’s “explore” and “roam” features, which allow users to browse profiles in nearby locations, will be disabled within the Olympic Village for the duration of the Games, preventing people outside the Village from seeing users inside it.
Additionally, the “Show Distance” feature, which displays how far away users are, will automatically default to off for anyone inside the Olympic Village, requiring users to proactively turn it on if they wish to share an approximate distance.
During the Games, users inside the Olympic Village will be able to access features normally behind a paywall, including messages that delete after being read. Users will also be able to unsend messages from both sides of a conversation and enable screenshot blocking to prevent others from capturing profile photos, chats, or images.
A private video feature that allows one-time viewing will be disabled entirely within the Olympic Village. Users will also be able to report a recent chat up to 24 hours after it ends, with names and photos obscured during the reporting process.
The company said it will send users inside the Olympic Village weekly reminders about specific risks and provide links to its multilingual safety and privacy guide. Users inside the Village will see messages only from “Grindr for Equality” focused on health and safety, rather than third-party advertisements.
The enhanced privacy and security features will go live when the Olympic Village opens. The Games run from February 6 through February 22.
At least three players on the U.S. women's hockey team set to compete at next month’s Winter Olympics in northern Italy are LGBTQ, according to the LGBTQ sports website Outsports.
Hilary Knight, a 36-year-old forward and four-time Olympic medalist, is the team’s captain. Her medals include gold at the 2018 PyeongChang Games and silver in 2010, 2014, and 2022.
Knight also captains the Seattle Torrent in the Professional Women’s Hockey League and will become the first U.S. hockey player to compete in five Olympic Games. She previously captained the U.S. Women’s National Team at the 2024 World Championships.
At least 44 out LGBTQ athletes will compete at the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, setting a record for a Winter Games, according to the LGBTQ sports news site Outsports.
The Games, which officially kick off on Friday, February 6, will feature 34 out women and 10 out men -- a roughly 7-to-2 ratio that is significantly lower than the 9-to-1 ratio seen at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
According to Outsports, the lower ratio reflects the fact that the Winter Olympics feature fewer team sports, where out female athletes are more common. In Milan, 22 of the 34 out women are ice hockey players, making hockey the sport with the largest LGBTQ presence.
GLAAD has released new data showing that 1,042 anti-LGBTQ incidents were reported across 47 states and the District of Columbia in 2025 -- a 5% increase over the previous year, according to the organization’s ALERT Desk Anti-LGBTQ Extremism Reporting Tracker.
Anti-LGBTQ incidents were defined as "an act of harassment, threat(s), vandalism, and/or assault against an individual, group, and/or organization," with explicit evidence of anti-LGBTQ bias as a motivating factor.
The incidents included 128 acts of hateful vandalism, 76 violent assaults, 22 threats of mass violence, and 15 arson attempts.
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