LGBTQ culture in Chile encompasses the various arts and entertainment events in the country that have a focus on sexual diversity or include LGBTQ people in them.
Museums and archives In 2012, part of the sound archive for the radio program Triángulo abierto, particularly the segments dedicated to lesbian culture, were donated to the National Archives of Chile for preservation as part of the Lesbian Work and Studies fund / Women's Centre at the Salón de Las Preciosas.
On 21 June 2020, the Museo Di, a virtual museum that became the first museum dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of the LGBTQ community in the country, was presented. Through Instagram posts, the museum aims to retrieve stories dedicated to the evolution of sexual diversity in Chile.
On 28 June 2021, the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (MOVILH) presented a site containing the organization's historical archive, including records from 1875 to the present day and focusing on the history of sexual diversity rights movements since 1991.
As a remembrance of the murder of Mónica Briones and to preserve the historical memory of sexual diversity during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the Mónica Briones Fund was started by the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago on 9 July 2022.
On 26 August 2024, the Santiago Severín Library in Valparaíso introduced the historical archives of the Sindicato Afrodita, becoming the first repository for documentation and testimonies about the transgender population of Chile. The official website of the archives was also opened, which in its initial launch compiled ten testimonies from transgender individuals. Part of the archive was showcased in the exhibition "Fuerza Travesti Organizada. Archivo Histórico del Sindicato Afrodita de Valparaíso" in the National Archives of Chile between 20 March and 25 May 2025.
Visual arts Considered to be one of the most prominent figures in contemporary Chilean visual arts, Claudio Bravo was an openly gay hyperrealism painter who reflected his identity in his artworks. Enrique Puelma was another artist known for his homoerotic illustrations, who moved to Germany and later to Switzerland.
Beginning in 1974 with the presentation of his performance titled Happening de las gallinas, artist Carlos Leppe explored themes considered taboo at the time with his art, such as self-exploration of the body, sexuality and in general, frequently using his own body in artistic manifestations.
One of the most widely known lesbian artists is Mónica Briones, a painter and sculptor who was murdered on 9 July 1984 in the first documented lesbophobic attack in the country's history.
Lorenza Böttner was a Chilean-German transgender artist who had both arms amputated since the age of eight; as a result, she learned to paint with her feet and mouth, becoming a multidisciplinary artist who used photography, drawing, painting and street shows as a way to create an artistic and political body.
Between 1982 and 1987, photographer Paz Errázuriz recorded life inside of travesti brothels in Santiago and Talca; her work is featured in the book La manzana de Adán, published in 1990 and further containing texts from Claudia Donoso in which she narrates the challenges that transvestism and prostitution faced during Chile's military dictatorship.
Various openly LGBT artists have contributed to the development of visual arts in their works in contemporary times, such as Seba Calfuqueo, a transgender artist of Mapuche descent who has depicted homosexuality in Mapuche culture and its censorship following the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in Chile in her art.
Cinema Daniel Emilfork was amongst the most prominent Chilean movie actors of the mid- to late 20th century, acting in multiple movies in Europe. In 1949, he decided to leave Chile and move to France following homophobic persecution prevalent in his country at the time. Daniela Vega, starring in A Fantastic Woman, would become the first openly transgender Chilean actress.
Homosexuality in Chilean cinema is a sparsely represented theme, and its more explicit inclusion began at the start of the 21st century. The first gay character in a Chilean theatrical movie was played by actor Luis Alarcón in Candy or Mint in 1990. Subsequently released films that incorporate LGBT themes include Muñeca (2008), Empaná de pino (2008), Lokas (2008), Des/Esperando (2010), Drama (2010), My Last Round (2010), Mapa para conversar (2011), Young & Wild (2012), Otra película de amor (2012), In The Grayscale (2015), Nasty Baby (2015), You'll Never Be Alone (2016), and Best Foreign Language Film winner at the 90th Academy Awards A Fantastic Woman (2017). Further highlighted are feature films Naomi Campbell (2013) and The Guest (2014), as well as the documentaries El hombre nuevo (2015) and Tan inmunda y tan feliz (2022).
Short films centered around LGBT themes include Desde siempre (1996) - considered the first Chilean production tackling sexual diversity as a primary subject -, El Regalo (2002), Blokes (2010), La Santa (2012), Iglú (2013), Solsticio de primavera para un primer amor (2013), Plutón (2014), San Cristóbal (2015), Aguas abajo (2015) and Lost Queens (2015).
Since 2008, the annual LGBTI International Film Festival (Cine Movilh) has been hosted in Santiago, which is the country's largest showcase of national and international films exploring themes of sexual diversity. After the festival concludes, the films are showcased in cities around the country such as Arica, Iquique, Antafagasta, Coquimbo, La Serena, Chillán and Puerto Montt, with the screenings being organized by various groups of the Chilean Federation of Sexual Diversity (Fedisech).
Since 2016, Santiago and Valparaíso host the AMOR Festival, a cinematography competition focused on LGBT productions.
Literature In early 20th-century Chile, artistic and literary circles were mainly based in Santiago, where homosexuality was practiced freely but not openly. Multiple gay figures in literature were influential at the time, such as authors Augusto d'Halmar and Benjamín Subercaseaux, and literary critic Hernán Díaz Arrieta. There were furthermore artists at the time whose homosexuality was well known, such as writer Luis Oyarzún, poet Eduardo Molina Ventura and painter Roberto Humeres.
Chilean literature of the era began to produce several stories with gay themes, beginning with the 1915 novel La sombra inquieta by Hernán Díaz Arrieta, where the first effeminate character in Chilean literature was included. The novel Pasión y muerte del Cura Deusto, published in 1924 by Augusto D'Halmar, winner of the first National Prize for Literature in Chile in 1942, subsequently narrates the tragedy of a priest in love with another man. Though the novel was first published in Spain, it is considered the first in Latin America which explicitly tackles a same-sex relationship.
In 1935, Joaquín Edwards Bello described a lesbian character in La chica del Crillón, which is seldom mentioned in the story.
Various heterosexual authors such as Alejandro Jodorowsky and Enrique Lafourcade collaborated with homosexual artists who helped in launching their careers. Lafourcade devoted significant attention on homosexuality in his first works such as Pena de muerte (1952) and Para subir al cielo (1959). The relatively open nature of the subject matter in aristocratic, intellectual and artistic circles permitted the publication of some external literary works that also displayed homosexuality, influenced by events in Europe.
In spite of this relative openness, its rejection outside of the particular circles was widespread, leading to many important authors hiding their homosexuality in public. This was the case for José Donoso and winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature Gabriela Mistral, two of the biggest writers of the country's literature. Shortly after the murder of both of them and the publication of their epistolary personal works at the start of the 21st century, their sexuality was discovered, which had been a taboo subject for an extended amount of time. Both Mistral and Donoso reflect their feelings of pain over not being able to live out their personal relationships in their letters.
Standout authors from the mid-20th century include the likes of Adolfo Couve (died 1998) and Mauricio Wacquez (died 2000), whose novels featuring gay themes were limited in reach.
From the end of the 20th to the beginning of the 21st century, more authors began to appear that, in addition to being openly homosexual, reflected on the different forms of homosexuality in their works; amongst them is the writer Alberto Fuguet and works of his such as Aeropuertos and Missing. In 2015, he released the novel No ficción, a work that explores the scenario of a homosexual world.
Pedro Lemebel is considered to be an influential author for homosexual literature and protest whose irreverent style has become known in Latin America. As a performance artist and writer, his work is characterized by the use of provocation and explicit resentment as tools for social and political criticism. In 1995, he published his first book of chronicles titled La esquina es mi corazón; other important works include De perlas y cicatrices (1998) and Adiós mariquita linda (2005). Lemebel died in January 2015 from laryngeal cancer.
Pablo Simonetti is a writer who began writing literature in 1996 and won the short story competition of the magazine Paula the following year; in 1999, he published his first book and has since maintained a successful career. Simonetti is a devout activist for sexual diversity rights in Chile.
Communication media In 1998, the website gaychile.com, the first website focused exclusively on the Chilean LGBT community, was launched. It ceased operations in 2008 when its owner, José Víctor Jorquera, replaced all of its contents with homophobic and transphobic messages after joining the Biblical Missionary Church of Paraguay. In June 2025, the domain was acquired, and the site was relaunched with content aimed at the LGBTQ community under new management.
Print media The first periodical aimed at the Chilean LGBT community was the magazine Lambda News, the first issue of which appeared in January 1995; it was published monthly and targeted an adult LGBT readership. It was created by the Lambda Chile Center, founded in 1993 by Luis Gauthier and Roberto Pablo to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention and care. The publication ran until 2004.
Between 1995 and 2000, the magazine Ama-zonas was published by the Lesbian Coordinating Committee and is considered the first Chilean periodic publication aimed specifically at lesbian readers; in May 1996, the magazine Cihom was launched, published by the Homosexual Initiative Committee; it was renamed El Otro Lado in December of the same year and was published until September 2000.
On 4 May 2002, OpusGay, Chile's first LGBT newspaper, was officially launched. It was sponsored by the Homosexual Integration and Liberation Movement (Movilh) and published eight print editions up until December of that year before transitioning to a digital format. A few days after the launch of OpusGay, the digital magazine Rompiendo el Silencio was launched; it was one of the first to address lesbian issues and also produced print editions between June 2008 and April 2010.
In October 2008, Revista G, a Chilean LGBT publication featuring content on gay men and aimed primarily at the high-income sector, was launched. It was edited by Daniel Chang and published 25 monthly print editions until October 2012.
Agenda kuir is a periodic publication that has been released annually in Valparaíso since 2013. It compiles visual and written content and transcends the LGBT spectrum, broadly focusing on topics of sexual dissidence from a transfeminist perspective.
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