The annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rally, Pink Dot, marked its 10th anniversary at Hong Lim Park on Saturday, July 21, 2018.

Here's the dot — more like an island-shaped splotch — it formed this year:

To commemorate the milestone, a festival known as Pink Fest was also held, for the first time ever, over the two weekends leading up to the rally itself.

Encompassing a range of activities such as movie screenings, workshops, parties and tours, Pink Fest was organised with the aim of engaging with the community beyond the actual rally. 

This year also saw a total of 113 local companies stepping up to sponsor the event through Pink Dot's Red Dot for Pink Dot initiative after a change to the law in October 2016 that required foreign firms to apply for a permit if they wanted to support or fund the event:

And last year, Pink Dot organisers announced they were restricting participation in the event to only Singaporeans and PRs:

Over the past decade, though, Pink Dot has come a long a way since it first started back in 2009.

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We'd trace the size of the annual aerial "dot" picture over the past decade, here:

2009

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400"] Source: Pink Dot website[/caption]

The first time Pink Dot was organised, it drew an estimated 2,500 participants. Its first ambassadors were actors Neo Swee Lin and Timothy Nga, and radio DJ Rosalyn Lee

The event was significant enough to gain international press coverage from the BBC and the New York Times.

2010

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400"] Source: Pink Dot website[/caption]

The second time saw 4,000 people turning up for the event.

This time, veteran actors Adrian Pang, Tan Kheng Hua and DJ Johnson Ong, also known as DJ BigKid – were ambassadors for the event.

2011

This year saw Google Singapore becoming the first international sponsor for Pink Dot.

At the rally, more than 10,000 participants turned up for the event, more than twice the number in 2010.

2012

Source: Pink Dot Facebook

This year was the first time Pink Dot was held at night, and some 15,000 people turned up for the event.

2013

This year saw more international companies coming onboard as sponsors — international banks Barclays (since 2012) and J.P. Morgan as well as contact lens specialist CooperVision, apart from Google.

As many as 21,000 showed up for the event, and they started spilling out of the main park area.

2014

The dot became so sophisticated that it started being captured in gifs:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400"] Source: Pink Dot SG Youtube[/caption]

Pink Dot's corporate sponsors ballooned to include petrochemical giant BP and Goldman Sachs.

In total, 26,000 people showed up to form the dot, in quite a prettily-coordinated light-up sequence.

2015

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400"] Source: Pink Dot Youtube[/caption]

International sponsors this year included all of the above, plus Twitter and Bloomberg. More local companies joined up too, by the way.

This time, a record-28,000 people showed up for the event.

2016

This year saw Pink Dot briefly return to its original daytime format where the torch lights were replaced with placards written with messages of support.

2016 was the year Pink Dot had its largest number of international corporate sponsors:

– Google

– Barclays

– CooperVision

– J. P. Morgan

– BP

– Goldman Sachs

– Twitter

– Bloomberg

– Apple

– Facebook

– General Electric

– NBCUniversal

– Visa

– Microsoft

– Clifford Chance

It was also the final year this was allowed before the change to the law in October 2016 that we told you about earlier.

2017

This year saw significant changes to the organisation of the Dot.

Apart from the barring of foreign sponsorship, barricades were also put up to prevent non-locals from participating in the event:

Nevertheless, more than 20,000 people attended, with Pink Dot theming its event for the year as "Against All Odds":

This time, 120 local companies stepped up to support the event in lieu of the foreign companies.

And here's this year's dot:

Preceding the dot light-up was the light-up of the year's theme: "We Are Ready", which you can see in this short clip:

What will next year bring for Pink Dot?

We'll have to see.

Top Image by Rachel Ng