Rainbow / LGBTQIA+ Pride Flag

Designer: Gilbert Baker / Paramount Flag Co. · 1978/1979

The current six-stripe rainbow flag, the most widely recognised LGBTQIA+ symbol worldwide. Adapted from Gilbert Baker's original 1978 eight-stripe design after hot pink and turquoise were dropped. Those two stripes went for practical reasons rather than because anything was wrong with them: the hot pink fabric was not commercially available in the quantities needed, and turquoise was dropped in 1979 so the remaining stripes divided evenly when the flag was split and hung either side of a parade route. Indigo was replaced by royal blue at the same time. This is the flag almost everyone means by "the gay flag". It has stood for the whole of LGBTQIA+ life rather than for gay men specifically since the 1980s, which is why a separate gay men's flag was made in 2019. Baker's 1978 eight-stripe original is kept as its own entry because it carries a different published colour specification.