Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Switzerland on Sunday, 14 June, for the 2026 feminist strike, with major demonstrations in Zürich, Basel, Lucerne and Bern, and marches the day before in Lausanne and Neuchâtel, all united around demands for recognition of unpaid care work, wage equality and shorter working hours.
The 2026 strike falls on a Sunday for the first time in several years, and organisers chose to focus this edition on the theme of unpaid care work, the vast, largely invisible domestic and social labour that statistical surveys consistently show falls disproportionately on women.
The Feminist Strike Collective presented three core demands for 2026: free healthcare for all, a reduction of the working week to 25 hours with full wage compensation, and the socialisation of housing, meaning public or cooperative ownership as a counterweight to the private rental market.
Broader demands echoed across cities included an end to the gender pay gap, greater recognition and redistribution of unpaid care work, and stronger protections against gender-based violence.
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Demonstration Set Off From Langstrasse
The demonstration set off from Langstrasse at 17:15 and wound its way through districts 1 and 4 along a route taking in some of Zürich’s most central arteries: Lagerstrasse, Gessnerbrücke, Usteristrasse, Löwenplatz, Löwenstrasse, Bahnhofplatz, Bahnhofstrasse and Paradeplatz, before continuing via Talacker, Sihlporte, Sihlstrasse, Sihlbrücke and Badenerstrasse to the final gathering point at Helvetiaplatz, where the last participants arrived at 20:30.
According to the Zürich City Police, several buildings and a small number of vehicles along the route were vandalised with graffiti. A few smoke bombs and handheld flares were set off during the march, and one shop window was smashed. With those exceptions, police described the demonstration as peaceful.
Organisers counted approximately 60,000 participants in Zürich. Zürich City Police confirmed the demonstration was peaceful.
Basel, Bern and Lucerne
In Basel, the authorised rally started at 15:00 on Petersplatz. Police counted up to 9,000 participants; organisers said more than 15,000 took part. Demonstrators marched through the city carrying purple flags, banners and musical equipment, calling for, among other demands, a reduction in the working week and equal pay.
In Bern, the strike was marked in a decentralised format, with multiple smaller actions across the city rather than a single large march. Around 5,000 people gathered near the Federal Palace, according to a Keystone-ATS journalist on the ground.
Lucerne also saw several thousand participants in its own demonstration.
Much of Romandy mobilised a day earlier, on Saturday 13 June. In Lausanne, cantonal police counted between 8,500 and 9,000 participants; the organising collective claimed 15,000. Demonstrations also took place in Neuchâtel and other French-speaking cities.
In Geneva, 14 June coincided with the G7 protests, with the feminist strike collective there choosing to join the No-G7 demonstration rather than march separately, combining the two causes into a single, larger mobilisation.
A Tradition With Deep Roots
The feminist strike on 14 June marks the anniversary of the day in 1981 when gender equality was enshrined in the Swiss Federal Constitution, a right that took another decade to translate into law. The first mass strike on this date, in 1991, brought half a million women into the streets. The 2019 edition was the largest political mobilisation in Switzerland in a generation, with an estimated 500,000 participants nationwide.
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