🏳️‍🌈 Education

Pride Flags

Flags are how communities tell their own stories — visibility, history, and belonging, all stitched into color. Here's a guide to many of the flags you may see at Pride, what they represent, and where they came from.

🏳️‍🌈 Umbrella & Pride Flags

These flags represent the broader LGBTQ2S+ community as a whole — you'll see them flown at Pride events, on storefronts, and anywhere someone wants to signal "everyone is welcome here."

Traditional Pride Flag

Also called: the Rainbow Flag

Originally designed in 1978, this six-stripe rainbow has become the most recognized symbol of LGBTQ2S+ pride worldwide. Each color was chosen to represent a different part of the community's spirit and experience.

Colors: Red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), blue (harmony), violet (spirit).

Philadelphia Pride Flag

Also called: People of Color Inclusive Flag

Introduced in Philadelphia in 2017, this flag adds black and brown stripes to the traditional rainbow to highlight and center the experiences of Black and Brown LGBTQ2S+ people, who are often left out of mainstream Pride narratives.

Added stripes: Black and brown, representing LGBTQ2S+ people of color.

Progress Pride Flag

This redesign layers a chevron of stripes onto the traditional rainbow — combining the Philadelphia flag's black and brown stripes with the trans flag's colors, arranged in an arrow shape pointing forward to represent progress still being made.

Chevron colors: Black & brown (people of color), light blue, pink & white (transgender community).

Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag

Updated by Valentino Vecchietti, 2021

This version adds the intersex flag's yellow circle on a purple field to the Progress Pride design, ensuring intersex people — who are sometimes overlooked even within LGBTQ2S+ spaces — are visibly represented.

Added symbol: Yellow circle on purple, representing intersex people, taken from the intersex flag.

Queer Pride Flag

A reclaimed-identity flag

For people who identify simply as "queer" — a term reclaimed from a slur to describe anyone whose gender or sexuality doesn't fit neatly into a single label. This flag offers an alternative for those who feel at home under that wider umbrella.

Colors: Purple, white, and black — chosen to be distinct from other community flags while remaining inclusive.

💖 Sexual Orientation Flags

These flags represent who someone is attracted to — romantically, sexually, or both. Many communities have created their own flags over the years as language and visibility have grown.

Lesbian Pride Flag

Also called: the "Sunset" Lesbian Flag

This widely-adopted version uses warm oranges fading into soft pinks and deep magentas. It has become the most commonly used lesbian flag in recent years, after earlier versions sparked discussion about their origins and inclusivity.

Colors: Shades of orange and pink representing gender nonconformity, independence, community, and femininity.

Gay Men's Pride Flag

A more recent addition

Created as an alternative to the traditional rainbow flag specifically for gay and same-gender-loving men, using greens and blues to move away from the gendered associations some felt the original rainbow carried.

Colors: A spectrum from teal/green through white to blue and indigo, representing diversity within the gay male community.

Bisexual Pride Flag

For people attracted to more than one gender. The overlapping colors aren't an accident — the pink and blue blend into the purple in the middle, visually representing attraction that overlaps and isn't confined to one side or the other.

Colors: Pink (same-gender attraction), blue (different-gender attraction), purple (attraction to both/overlap).

Pansexual Pride Flag

Emerged online, early 2010s

For people attracted to others regardless of gender. Pansexuality is distinct from bisexuality for many who use the term — it specifically emphasizes that gender isn't a factor in attraction at all, including attraction to people outside the gender binary.

Colors: Pink (attraction to women), yellow (attraction to non-binary people), blue (attraction to men).

Asexual Pride Flag

Created by AVEN community, 2010

For people who experience little or no sexual attraction. Asexuality exists on a spectrum — some asexual people experience romantic attraction without sexual attraction, while others don't experience either, and both are valid.

Colors: Black (asexuality), gray (gray-asexuality & demisexuality), white (non-asexual partners/allies), purple (community).

Aromantic Pride Flag

For the aromantic spectrum

For people who experience little or no romantic attraction. Like asexuality, aromanticism exists on a spectrum, and many aromantic people still form deep, meaningful relationships — just not romantic ones in the conventional sense.

Colors: Green tones (aromanticism, opposite of red/romance), white (platonic relationships), gray & black (the aro spectrum and sexuality spectrum).

Polysexual Pride Flag

Related to, but distinct from, pansexual

For people attracted to multiple, but not necessarily all, genders. While it overlaps conceptually with bisexuality and pansexuality, some people find "polysexual" describes their experience more precisely.

Colors: Pink (attraction to women), green (attraction to non-binary people), blue (attraction to men) — echoing the pansexual flag with green instead of yellow.

Omnisexual Pride Flag

A newer identity flag

For people attracted to all genders, where gender still plays a role in their attraction — distinguishing it slightly from pansexuality, where gender is often described as not factoring in at all.

Colors: Pinks represent attraction to femininity, blues represent attraction to masculinity, with the dark background tying them together.

Demisexual Pride Flag

For the demisexual spectrum

For people who only experience sexual attraction after forming a strong emotional connection with someone. Demisexuality is often described as being on the asexual spectrum, which is reflected in the flag's similar color palette.

Colors: Black, white, purple, and gray — echoing the asexual flag's palette in a vertical arrangement with a purple triangle (often shown on the left).

🏳️ Gender Identity Flags

These flags represent gender identity rather than who someone loves — covering transgender identities, non-binary identities, and everything in between and beyond the binary.

Transgender Pride Flag

The light blue and pink stripes represent the traditional colors for baby boys and girls, while the white stripe in the center represents people who are transitioning, non-binary, or feel they have no gender. The pattern is the same read top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top — meaning it's always "correct," no matter how it's flown.

Colors: Light blue & pink (traditional gender colors), white (transitioning, non-binary, or genderless identities).

Non-Binary Pride Flag

Created by Kye Rowan, 2014

For people whose gender identity doesn't fit exclusively into "man" or "woman" — this can mean identifying as both, neither, somewhere in between, or something else entirely. Created as a complement to (not a replacement for) the genderqueer flag.

Colors: Yellow (genders outside the binary), white (many or all genders), purple (a mix of male and female), black (genderless identities).

Genderqueer Pride Flag

One of the earlier flags for identities outside the gender binary. "Genderqueer" can describe a non-binary identity, a queer relationship to gender itself, or both — the term and the flag predate "non-binary" becoming widely used.

Colors: Lavender (androgyny, blending of masculine & feminine), white (agender identity), green (identities outside of and independent from the binary).

Genderfluid Pride Flag

Created by JJ Poole, 2012

For people whose gender identity shifts or changes over time — someone might feel more masculine on one day and more feminine, both, or neither on another. The fluidity itself is the identity, not any single point along the way.

Colors: Pink (femininity), white (lack of gender), purple (combination of masculinity & femininity), black (all genders), blue (masculinity).

Agender Pride Flag

Created by Salem X, 2014

For people who don't identify with any gender, feel genderless, or see themselves as gender-neutral. The green stripe in the center represents non-binary genders, while the black, gray, and white stripes represent the absence of gender.

Colors: Black & white (absence of gender), gray (semi-genderlessness), green (non-binary genders).

Bigender Pride Flag

For people with two gender identities

For people who identify as two genders, either at the same time or shifting between them — the two genders don't have to be "man" and "woman" specifically, and the experience of bigender people varies widely.

Colors: Pink tones (femininity), blue tones (masculinity), purple & white (blending and overlap of identities).

🪶 Two-Spirit

An Indigenous Identity — Not a Flag

"Two-Spirit" is a term used by some Indigenous people in North America to describe a person who embodies both masculine and feminine spirits, or whose gender and role in their community goes beyond a Western binary understanding of gender and sexuality. It's an umbrella term that English doesn't translate perfectly — each Nation has its own words, roles, and traditions that long predate colonization.

Because Two-Spirit identity is rooted in specific Indigenous cultures and Nations rather than a single shared community, there isn't one universal "Two-Spirit flag" the way there is for many other identities on this page — and we don't want to flatten that into one symbol. What Two-Spirit people share is sacred and specific to their own Nations and traditions.

Dakota OutRight's own logo — a bison carrying an eagle feather in Progress Pride colors — is our way of honoring the Two-Spirit and Indigenous members of our community here in North Dakota, on Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Dakota, Lakota, and Anishinaabe homelands. If you'd like to learn more about Two-Spirit identity, the best teachers are Two-Spirit people themselves and the Nations they belong to.