This year sees two significant milestones for BLUF. First, BLUF was founded in 1997 by Leon, and so this year we'll be celebrating our fifteenth birthday - making us one of the longest running internet-based clubs for leather guys around the world.

Our second milestone was passed on 23rd April, when the 3000th member was added to the site; of course, over the years, we’ve had more than 3000 members in total, as some have left and others have passed away. But today marks the first time that BLUF has had 3000 members active on the website.

And of those 3000 members, we can proudly say that the vast majority of them really are active members: over 48% of our members have visited the site in the last week, 65% in the last 30 days, and 73% in the last sixty days - a pretty remarkable level of engagement.

Much of this is due to the hard work of the many, many people who help with different aspects of BLUF, whether it’s donating time to review the photos that are uploaded to the site, or organising events around the world, which helps make sure that as well as just a social web site, BLUF is also something that you can go along to, and meet like minded leather men, whether you’re an old hand, or new to the scene.

Later this year, we’ll be marking our birthday with a presence in the London parade for World Pride Day, and leather or fetish folk - whether BLUF members or not - are welcome to come and join us on the march.

We’ll also be having some parties around the date of our birthday, which is 20th November, so do keep an eye on the BLUF Calendar for more updates.

Of course, just because we’ve passed these milestones doesn’t mean we’re resting; we’ve got a team of volunteers working to make the BLUF site available in Spanish later this year, hopefully opening us up to a new group of members from around the world, in addition to the German and French speakers who make up around a quarter of our membership at present.

What will the next fifteen years hold? BLUF has been through quite a few changes in its fifteen years already, as you can read on our About page. What I can say is that we remain committed to providing a site that’s free for men who meet our dress code. And to making sure that we all have as much fun in leather for the next fifteen years, too.