25 LGBTQ+ Pride Flags and What They Mean

The late artist Gilbert Baker is credited with creating the first pride flag, which he designed in 1978 for Gay Pride Day in San Francisco, per CNN.

Baker's iteration of the flag gives a unique meaning to each color: "hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for harmony, and violet for spirit," he explained.

"We needed something to express our joy, our beauty, our power. And the rainbow did that,” Baker told CNN in 2015. “We’re an ancient, wonderful tribe of people. We picked something from nature. We picked something beautiful."

This iteration of the flag, which omits the pink stripe, has been popular since 1979. Per Old Dominion University, Pride flags were in high demand following the assassination of San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, and Baker opted to omit the pink stripe because the fabric color was difficult to find.

For a time, the Paramount Flag Company sold a seven-stripe flag, that included one in turquoise.

In recent years, the updated pride flag, which includes both black and brown stripes to acknowledge queer people of color, as well as pink, white, and blue (the colors of the transgender pride flag), has become more popular.

"This flag recognizes intersections within the LGBTQ+ community, honoring LGBTQ+ people of color—whose activism inspired the very first Pride—as well as different gender identities," London mayor Sadiq Khan told Forbes.

Monica Helms, a transgender activist and former member of the U.S. Navy, created the transgender Pride flag in 1999. The light pink and light blue are common colors that denote girls and boys, respectively, while the white stripe in the middle is for people who "are intersex, transitioning, or see themselves as having a neutral or undefined gender," per the University of Northern Colorado's Gender & Sexuality Research Center.

Helms also founded TAVA, the Transgender American Veterans Association.

According to Tennessee's TriPride organization, Michael Page first designed the bisexual Pride flag in 1998. Per UNCO, the pink stands for "attraction to those of the same gender identity," the purple for "attraction to two genders," and the blue signifies "attraction to those who identify as a different gender."

In 2017, Philadelphia added two additional stripes to its Pride flag—one black and one brown—intended to symbolize queer people of color. The flag also kept the colors from Gilbert Baker's original.

There have previously been other iterations of the lesbian flag, but this one, created by Emily Gwen, is intended to represent the full range of lesbian identities. Per the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, the colors stand for gender nonconformity (dark orange), independence (orange), community (light orange), unique connections to womanhood (white), serenity and peace (pink), dusty pink (love and sex), and dark rose (femininity).

A person who identifies as pansexual does not see their attraction as something limited by a specific gender or genders. Its flag dates back roughly to 2010, and is meant to be distinct from the bisexual flag.

Per UNCO, the pink represents "attraction to those who identify as female," the blue "attraction to those who identify as male," and the yellow symbolizes "attraction to those who identify as genderqueer, nonbinary, agender, androgynous, or anyone who doesn’t identify on the male-female binary."

Morgan Carpenter, who ran Intersex International Australia, created this flag in 2013, per UNCO. Purple and yellow are used because they are often viewed as gender-neutral.

"The flag is comprised of a golden yellow field, with a purple circle emblem. The colors and circle don’t just avoid referencing gender stereotypes, like the colors pink and blue, they seek to completely avoid use of symbols that have anything to do with gender at all. Instead, the circle is unbroken and unornamented, symbolizing wholeness and completeness, and our potentialities. We are still fighting for bodily autonomy and genital integrity, and this symbolizes the right to be who and how we want to be," Carpenter wrote.

According to Advocate.com, the asexual flag was first made in 2010 and was inspired by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) logo.

The black stands for asexuality, the gray for gray-asexuality and demisexuality, the white for non-asexual partners, and the purple for community.

"Prior to its adoption, people would use things like the AVEN triangle or a half-filled heart, but those had problems which prevented their wider adoption," Asexuality Archive wrote about the need for a distinct asexual flag. "The AVEN triangle is, well, the AVEN triangle. It’s the logo of a single website that not every asexual person is affiliated with."

Those who identify as nonbinary do not fall within the male-female gender binary, and their flag, which was made in 2014 by Kyle Rowan, represents that experience. According to the University of Northern Colorado, the colors stand for people completely outside of the gender binary (yellow), people with multiple genders (white), people whose identity incorporates aspects of male and female (purple), and those who do not identify with any specific gender (black).

The agender pride flag was originally made by Salem X in 2014.

The activist organization OutRight Action International notes that the black and white in the flag stand for the "absence of gender," gray is for "semi-genderlessness," while the green stripe in the middle represents "nonbinary genders."

The flag for those who identify as gender-fluid was made in 2013 by J.J. Poole. According to UNCO, the five colors that are used are meant to symbolize the varying forms of gender-fluidity.

The pink is for the feminine, the blue is for masculine, white is a "lack of gender," purple combines the masculine and feminine, while black represents genders that do not share traits with the feminine or masculine.

Polysexuality is the idea that a person can be attracted to multiple different genders, but not every single one. The pink stands for being attracted to women, the blue to men, and the green to those who identify as nonbinary, per Old Dominion University.

Polyamory refers to being in multiple romantic relationships where all the parties involved are consenting. According to UNCO, the flag was made by Jim Evans in 1995, where the blue stands for "openness and honesty of all parties," the red "represents love and passion," the black is a show of support for people who cannot come out as polyamorous, and the yellow represents emotional connection.

Other versions of the flag replace the pi symbol with a heart interlocking with an infinity sign to symbolize how one can love multiple people at once.

According to the University of Northern Colorado, Marilyn Roxie created the genderqueer Pride flag in 2011. Initially, it was "intended to represent all nonbinary and genderqueer people," but in 2014, Kye Rowan made the dedicated nonbinary flag to reflect the identity of that community.

The use of lavender is meant as a combination of pink and blue, symbolizing a mixture of male and female. Conversely, the dark green is meant to stand for people who identify beyond the gender binary, and stand as the opposite of lavender. The white signifies agenderism.

The demisexual flag is meant to be a symbol for those who say they need to feel a strong emotional connection to someone before they are sexually attracted to them. According to ODU, the colors mean asexuality (black), demisexuality (gray), sexuality (white), and community (purple).

An aromantic person doesn't experience romantic attraction, as opposed to an asexual person, who doesn't feel sexual attraction, per Women's Health.

According to UNCO, green is used in the aromantic Pride flag because it is seen as the opposite of red on the color spectrum, with red often connoting romance or passion.

Per Old Dominion, designer Sean Campbell created the labrys flag in 1999, placing the now-famous image of a two-sided axe atop a purple background. Reportedly, one of the reasons the black triangle is used is because Nazis used them to mark women who did not fit their narrow definition of proper femininity.

Montclair State University defines a bear in queer culture as "a gay or bisexual man who has facial/body hair and a cuddly body." The flag was created by Craig Byrnes in 1995, and each of the colors stands for a different skin tone or hair color of human beings, in order to emphasize inclusivity.