Pride flags and symbols explained

Reading a flag without making assumptions

Pride flags offer a visible way to express identity, solidarity and remembrance. Learning their meanings can help you understand a parade or exhibition.

A flag does not tell you everything about the person carrying it. Someone may carry one for their own identity, a friend or a campaign. Ask respectfully if a conversation invites it, and accept that nobody owes you a personal explanation.

This guide distinguishes a designer’s stated meanings from interpretations supplied by community resources. Those explanations do not always agree. That is worth acknowledging, rather than treating every colour as a universal code.

You do not need to memorise the whole collection before attending Pride. Start with the designs you recognise, then use the linked resources to explore others. A badge, hand-held flag or banner can begin a conversation without becoming a test.

Gilbert Baker’s rainbow

The Gilbert Baker Foundation records Baker and collaborators making the first rainbow flags in 1978. Its account gives the original eight colours their symbolic meanings.

Hot pink meant sex; red meant life; orange meant healing; yellow meant sunlight. Green represented nature, turquoise magic and art, indigo serenity, and violet spirit.

Within about a year the hot pink and turquoise stripes were dropped, and indigo became blue, giving the familiar six-colour rainbow of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. The University of California, Santa Barbara’s glossary describes blue as harmony or peace in that version.

The Foundation emphasises that Baker’s stripes were not a separate stripe for each identity. Their meanings expressed shared aspects of human life. That distinction helps explain why individual identity flags can appear alongside a rainbow without replacing it.

The Progress Pride flag

Daniel Quasar’s own account explains the Progress Pride design. It separates the rainbow stripes from a chevron carrying trans colours and black and brown stripes.

The black and brown elements represent people of colour. Quasar also associates black with people living with HIV/AIDS, those who have died and the surrounding stigma. The arrow points forward while its position emphasises that further progress remains needed.

The V&A’s account places the design in 2018 and discusses its relationship with earlier rainbow designs.

For a visitor, the chevron is the easiest feature to recognise. Understanding the design’s stated purpose is more helpful than ranking it against another flag. People may choose different symbols while sharing concerns about visibility and inclusion.

The intersex-inclusive version

Valentino Vecchietti’s project identifies the intersex-inclusive Pride flag as her 2021 design. It includes representation of diverse sex characteristics, alongside orientations and gender identities.

The yellow area and purple circle draw on the intersex flag. Santa Barbara’s glossary attributes that earlier flag to Morgan Carpenter. It describes the circle as wholeness and completeness.

Intersex concerns variations in sex characteristics. It should not be treated as another word for a sexual orientation or for being trans. The flag’s inclusion of this element makes that representation visible.

When using the design for an organisation, read the project’s guidance and consider what practical inclusion accompanies the symbol. A visitor can appreciate the flag while also asking clear questions about the event’s actual facilities and welcome.

The trans flag

The University of Kent’s resource credits Monica Helms and explains the light blue, pink and white stripes. Blue and pink refer to traditional baby-boy and baby-girl colours.

White includes people who are transitioning or understand their gender as neutral or undefined. Bates College’s guide also includes intersex people in the white stripe’s meaning.

Those associations describe the design; they are not instructions about what colours anyone must wear. Nor should the white stripe be used to assume that every person represented by it uses the same identity term.

If someone shares their pronouns, use them naturally. A flag can show an affiliation, but the person’s own explanation is the best guide to how they wish to be addressed.

The bisexual flag

Bates College’s flag guide describes the bisexual flag’s pink, purple and blue. Pink and blue represent same-gender and different-gender attraction; purple represents attraction to two or more genders.

Santa Barbara credits a team led by Michael Page and places the design in 1998. Its explanation describes purple in terms of attraction to more than one gender.

These descriptions overlap without being identical. Neither makes a person’s present partner a reliable test of their identity. Someone’s own use of bi or bisexual should guide the conversation.

At Pride, a bi flag may appear with a rainbow, trans flag or another personal symbol. Treat those combinations as a person’s expression, rather than a puzzle requiring an outside verdict.

Lesbian flags and their variations

Bates College discusses several lesbian flag designs. The orange, white and pink design is associated with Emily Gwen. Its seven-stripe explanation includes gender nonconformity, independence, community, relationships to womanhood, serenity and peace, love and sex, and femininity.

A shorter version combines some of those stripes. This is why counting colours can matter when comparing illustrations. An explanation of one version should not be silently assigned to every lesbian flag.

Historical designs and present choices can carry different personal associations. People can choose the lesbian symbol that reflects their own experience.

When identifying a flag in a photograph, look at the complete design. A central white stripe alone is not enough to establish its identity or the intention of the person carrying it.

The pansexual flag

Santa Barbara’s glossary describes the pansexual flag’s pink, yellow and blue. Pink represents attraction to women, blue attraction to men, and yellow attraction beyond the male–female binary.

The explanation names genderqueer, non-binary, agender and androgynous people within the yellow stripe’s meaning. The resource explains these colours without identifying a creator.

A flag’s stripe explanation is a useful introduction, but it is not a complete definition of everyone’s relationships. Follow an individual’s language rather than asking them to demonstrate that they match a diagram.

Bi and pan people may choose different terms or symbols. Recognising both designs helps you follow a conversation without suggesting that one person must abandon their preferred description.

The asexual flag

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network’s community resource describes black as asexuality, grey as grey-asexuality and demisexuality, white as non-asexual allies, and purple as community.

It explicitly says these meanings are not fixed official rules. Santa Barbara’s glossary instead labels white as sexuality. Both explanations are linked so that the difference remains visible.

The black, grey, white and purple pattern is therefore recognisable without one universally binding reading of every stripe. Avoid turning a community’s flexible symbol into a rigid qualification.

Being asexual does not tell a stranger everything about someone’s romantic life. Leave personal questions to the person carrying the flag, and let them decide what to share.

The non-binary flag

Bates College credits Kye Rowan for the 2014 non-binary flag. It describes yellow as gender outside the binary, white as multiple genders, purple as a mixture of male and female, and black as agender.

Those stripes represent different experiences within a broad group. They should not be read as stages someone passes through, or as a demand to choose one stripe.

A non-binary person may also identify as trans, or may not use that term. Their preferred wording matters more than an assumption based on a flag’s placement in a parade.

For anyone learning, the practical approach is straightforward: listen, use the name and language offered, and ask only questions suited to the conversation.

Pink and black triangles: remember the history

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains the badges imposed on concentration camp prisoners. Pink triangles marked gay men and other men imprisoned for homosexuality. Black triangles marked people classified by the Nazis as ‘asocial’, among other persecuted groups.

The Museum’s account of lesbians under the Nazi regime cautions against a simplified story. Lesbians did not wear pink triangles. Some imprisoned lesbians wore black triangles, but there was no uniform camp badge identifying all lesbians.

Later community use does not erase that coercive origin. Treat these symbols with historical care, especially in remembrance settings. Avoid describing the black triangle as if it were originally a universal lesbian identity badge.

Learning the history behind a symbol can make a Pride visit richer. It also helps keep remembrance, present identity and solidarity distinct when their visual language overlaps.

Sources for Pride flags and symbols explained

Sources checked for this pride flags and symbols guide on 13 October 2026.

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Pride flags and symbols explained.