Brazilian Olympic volleyball champion Douglas Souza has married his longtime partner, streamer and programmer Gabriel Campos, after nine years together.
The couple celebrated their wedding on July 8 in São Paulo, surrounded by approximately 150 relatives, friends and figures from Brazilian sport and entertainment.
The emotional ceremony was led by Íkaro Kadoshi, one of Brazil’s best-known drag queens (Outsports).
Kadoshi, the stage name of television presenter and journalist Tiago Liberato, has also worked on anti-discrimination initiatives connected to sport.
For him, the wedding represented more than the union of two close friends.
He described publicly declaring love as an act of courage and said the ceremony carried special meaning for a community in which many people were once denied the opportunity to marry.
Videos shared from the celebration showed both grooms wiping away tears as they exchanged their vows.
Douglas told Gabriel that he had never regretted spending their nine years together and hoped they would remain side by side for the rest of their lives.
He also said he felt incredibly fortunate to have found Gabriel “in this crazy world.”
The couple first began dating in 2017 and announced their engagement in 2023.
Douglas later revealed that the wedding had taken approximately three years to organise around his demanding sporting schedule.
Their custom-made gold wedding rings were decorated with rare tourmaline gemstones.
They were also engraved with the Latin phrase in perpetuum, meaning forever or eternally.
Among the guests were several of Douglas’s current and former volleyball teammates.
Three attendees carried particular significance for LGBTQ+ sports fans.
Douglas Pureza, Adriano Xavier and Maique Reis were all there to watch their fellow openly gay Brazilian national-team player get married.
Alongside Douglas Souza, the four athletes have been part of Brazil’s wider squad for the 2026 Volleyball Nations League.
A photograph of the four men together at the national team’s training camp recently attracted international attention.
They posed smiling beneath a caption celebrating volleyball, representation and respect.
Four openly gay players within the setup of one major men’s national team is highly unusual in elite sport and may be unprecedented.
Douglas is the most established international star of the group.
The outside hitter helped Brazil win Olympic gold on home soil at the 2016 Rio Games and later earned a silver medal at the 2018 World Championship.
He became one of Brazil’s most visible gay athletes after publicly sharing his relationship with Gabriel.
Douglas also developed a large following beyond volleyball after his energetic social-media videos went viral during the Tokyo Olympics.
After stepping away from the national team to focus on his mental health, he returned to the Brazilian setup in 2026 following five years away.
He has said that competing at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles remains one of his ambitions.
His wedding took place in the middle of that comeback season and only days before Brazil’s final preliminary stage of the Volleyball Nations League.
The presence of his three fellow out gay teammates provided one of the celebration’s most quietly powerful images.
Male athletes in team sports still frequently wait until retirement before discussing their sexuality publicly.
Douglas, Pureza, Xavier and Reis are instead competing openly while their careers remain active.
They are also showing that visibility does not have to exist only in interviews, Pride campaigns or formal statements.
Sometimes it looks like three teammates sitting among the guests while their friend promises forever to the man he loves.
The wedding also welcomed Tifanny Abreu, who became the first transgender woman to compete professionally in the top division of Brazilian women’s volleyball.
Together, the guests reflected a sporting community that has become increasingly visible, confident and supportive.
Douglas and Gabriel’s marriage is first and foremost their personal love story.
They met, built a life together, survived the demands of professional sport and finally celebrated the wedding they had planned for years.
However, the images from their ceremony will inevitably mean something more to many LGBTQ+ people watching from around the world.
An Olympic champion married his husband openly, joyfully and with his gay teammates proudly beside him.
That should not have to be extraordinary.
For now, it remains a beautiful sign of how far elite men’s sport can still move forward.
📷 @douglasouza / @augabri
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