Moscow Court Fines Booking.com 6 Million Rubles for Pride-Themed Email Campaign

Moscow's Tagansky District Court found the international accommodation booking service Booking.com guilty of violating Russian law. The company was fined a total of 6 million rubles (approximately 59,660 euros). The service was found guilty of promoting LGBT content (the movement is designated as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) and failing to remove prohibited information. On the same day, Pinterest, Twitch, and TikTok also received hefty fines.

What exactly is Booking.com accused of? The court case was prompted by an announcement intended for the service's hotel partners outside Russia. It referred to “accommodating LGBT guests during Pride.” Roskomnadzor discovered the post, which included a photograph, in March 2026 and ordered its removal. Since the agency determined that the content had not been removed in a timely manner, administrative offense reports were filed against the company.

Booking.com was found guilty under two articles of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses:

• Part 2 of Article 13.41 (failure to remove information or a web page where Russian law requires its removal);
• Part 4 of Article 6.21 (promotion of non-traditional sexual relations and/or preferences, gender reassignment, or refusal to have children).

How did Booking.com defend itself in court? The platform's defense insisted that the company was not guilty and presented several arguments:

• The page was deleted six months ago. Booking.com's lawyers stated that the disputed page had been completely removed as early as March 11.
• Roskomnadzor sent warnings “to random addresses.” The company stated that the agency had sent notices to random email addresses, ignoring the dedicated address Booking.com uses to handle official requests from government agencies.
• The site is intended for adults only. In its written objections, the defense emphasized that only adults may use the platform. In response, the judge of the Tagansky District Court asked the company's lawyer: “Does a user have to provide a passport to view posts on the site?”

Who else was fined that day? That same day, Russian courts also ruled in cases involving other major foreign IT platforms — Pinterest, Twitch, and TikTok. They were all found guilty of failing to monitor prohibited content and were fined 3.5 million rubles each:

• The complaints against Twitch stemmed from streams that were deemed to promote drug use.
• In TikTok Three videos were found that, according to the regulators, promoted non-traditional relationships.

In recent years, Russian authorities have repeatedly fined the world's largest online services, including Google, Telegram, Amazon, Twitter, and the Wikimedia Foundation. Most of the fines amount to millions of rubles, some of which have already been collected.