Chicago Stars Pride Flag

Overview

To let Chicagoans express civic and LGBTQ identity simultaneously, reusing the graphic logic that has made the plain municipal flag a widely worn identity symbol in the city. Enough of the white field survives that the flag still comes across as Chicago's own flag first and a Pride variant second. ^[5][6]

Chicago's municipal flag was designed by poet and self-taught vexillographer Wallace Rice, who wrote the rules for a 1915–1917 flag competition sponsored by the city and then won it himself; the design was adopted by City Council in 1917 with two stars, gained a third in 1933, and reached its current four-star form by 1939. Each of the four red, six-pointed stars marks a historical event (the founding of Fort Dearborn, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the Century of Progress Exposition of 1933–34), and the two blue bars and three white stripes represent the city's geography, including the branches of the Chicago River and the Great Lakes. ^[7][6][8] Rice's design is widely rated by vexillologists as one of the best municipal flag designs in North America for its simplicity and legibility. ^[6] This Pride variant keeps that white field intact and applies rainbow coloring only to the bars and stars: the top bar becomes a pink–red–orange cluster, the bottom bar a teal–blue–purple cluster, and the four stars are individually recolored pink, orange, yellow, and purple, left to right, in place of the municipal flag's uniform red. ^[5]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ community

Subcommunity

Chicago LGBTQ community

Movement

Civic pride, hometown pride, LGBTQ visibility

National Context

United States; Chicago

Chicago has a distinctive culture of civic flag pride: the four-star municipal flag appears on tattoos, storefronts, and apparel far more than most American city flags, a phenomenon that accelerated in the 1990s. ^[6] The Chicago Pride Flag channels that same civic-flag enthusiasm into an LGBTQ context, letting Chicagoans display hometown identity and Queer pride as one combined symbol instead of choosing between them. Enough of the flag's original white field survives that it is still recognizable as the Chicago flag from a distance.

Creators

The Creator

Attribution notes

The design is attributed to PrideFlags.com as its designing organization and manufacturer; no individual designer is named by the seller or in the city’s announcement. PrideFlags.com states in its FAQ that each PrideFlag is designed, cut, sewn and quality-tested in its Chicago studio, which supports an organizational design role. ^[5][9][2]

Origin

Country

United States

Region / state

Illinois

City

Chicago

Place Type

design and production studio / civic Pride design

Associated with Chicago, Illinois, on the traditional homeland of the Council of the Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi), also historically home to the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, and Sac and Fox peoples. ^[10][11]

Indigenous land context

Council of the Three Fires (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi) — traditional and historical homeland (Indigenous name: Niswi-mishkodewin). The Chicago area is the traditional homeland of the Council of the Three Fires — the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations — and has also been home to the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, and Sac and Fox peoples. ^[10] The 1833 Treaty of Chicago forced the migration of Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe peoples to lands west of the Mississippi River, and Chicago later became a destination for coerced relocation under the federal Indian Relocation Act of 1956. ^[11] The city's name derives from the Miami-Illinois word šikaakwa ('wild onion/garlic'), rendered in Potawatomi as zhegagoynak and in Ojibwe as zhigaagong. ^{[12] [10][11]}

Colonial / settler context

Chicago was incorporated as a U.S. city in 1837 following the Treaty of Chicago (1833), which forced the removal of Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe peoples from the region. ^{[11] [11]}

The design combines two independently documented flags: the City of Chicago's municipal flag, adopted in 1917 from a competition-winning design by Wallace Rice and expanded to its present four-star form by 1939, and the rainbow pride flag descended from Gilbert Baker's 1978 original. ^[7][8][13] It does not fill the whole field with rainbow stripes; it keeps the municipal flag's white background and confines rainbow coloring to the two bar positions (each split into a three-hue cluster) and the four stars, each recolored individually. It should not be confused with the City of Chicago's own official practice, in place since 2019, of raising the unmodified Progress Pride Flag over City Hall for Pride Month. ^[14]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2016

City introduction

June 26, 2024

Documented

Documented for sale from 20 June 2016; city introduction 26 June 2024

Creation Bounds

Two histories are recorded separately. The seller’s product record was published 20 June 2016 (its publishOn and addedOn fields), with the artwork file named ChicagoPride_V1, so the design existed in PrideFlags.com’s catalogue roughly eight years before the city took it up. The record was last updated in June 2024 and the current retail title, "The Official Chicago Rainbow Pride", is documented from that later state; whether the product carried the same title in 2016 is not established. Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced the design under the name Chicago Stars Pride Flag on 26 June 2024. No individual designer is named for the original design. The sitewide footer "All flag designs ©PrideFlags.com 2019" is a copyright notice, not a creation or publication date. ^[1][2][5]

Mayor Brandon Johnson introduced the flag on 26 June 2024: "For Pride week, we are raising our brand new Chicago Stars Pride Flag alongside the Cook County Progress Pride Flag, and reaffirming our city as a place where everyone is welcome and love conquers all." It flew at Daley Plaza again in 2025, the mayor highlighting "the Chicago Stars Pride Flag's display for a second consecutive year" at the raising where he called Chicago "a bright spot in the Midwest for inclusivity". At the 55th Chicago Pride Parade on 28 June 2026 a giant version led the parade and the mayor marched carrying a hand-held one. PrideFlags.com sells the design as the "Official Chicago Rainbow Pride", alongside its separate psychedelic "NEW Chicago Pride Flag". ^{[5][4][3][2][15]}

No individual designer is credited anywhere located: not by the seller, and not in the city’s announcement, which named the flag but not a maker. The seller’s product record, published 20 June 2016, precedes the city’s introduction by roughly eight years, settling the earlier open question of which came first. The design is visually distinct from the plainer mashups that fill the entire municipal field with six full-width rainbow stripes, documented separately in this archive. ^[1][5][3]

Lineage

Indirect influences

Rainbow Pride Flag

Related flags

Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Chicago Trans Pride Flag, Progress Pride Flag, The NEW Chicago Pride Flag

A two-parent design, in the pattern of the city's Pride flags generally: the identity flag plus the Chicago flag. The City of Chicago municipal flag (Wallace Rice, 1917, four stars by 1939) supplies the white field and the bar and star positions; the 1978 Baker-Segerblom eight-stripe rainbow supplies the palette, its warm colours clustering in the upper bar and its cool colours in the lower. The municipal flag has no entry in this archive, as a civic rather than Pride flag. ^[7][8]

Colors & Symbolism

The flag keeps Chicago's civic identity as the dominant visual (white field, familiar bar and star positions) while distributing rainbow-pride coloring across the bars and stars, so the two identities layer on top of each other instead of one replacing the other. The bar colors are inherited from the original 1978 Baker-Segerblom eight-stripe rainbow flag — hot pink, red, orange across the top bar and turquoise, indigo, violet across the bottom — carrying Baker's original stripe meanings with them. ^[5][7][13]

This flag has no official digital palette. Color values shown are approximate.

Top bar cluster (hot pink, red, orange)

Occupies the municipal flag's upper light-blue bar position, rendered in the top three stripes of the original 1978 Baker-Segerblom eight-stripe rainbow flag: hot pink (sex), red (life), orange (healing). ^[5][13]

Bottom bar cluster (turquoise, indigo, violet)

Occupies the municipal flag's lower light-blue bar position, rendered in the bottom three stripes of the 1978 Baker-Segerblom original: turquoise (art/magic), indigo (serenity), violet (spirit). Its yellow (sun) and green (nature) stripes are omitted, falling where the white field and stars sit. ^[5][13]

First six-pointed star (pink)

Fort Dearborn, established 1803. Position inherited from the City of Chicago's municipal flag. ^[7][6]

Second six-pointed star (orange)

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Position inherited from the City of Chicago's municipal flag. ^[7][6]

Third six-pointed star (yellow)

The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Position inherited from the City of Chicago's municipal flag. ^[7][6]

Fourth six-pointed star (purple)

The Century of Progress Exposition of 1933–34. Position inherited from the City of Chicago's municipal flag. ^[7][6]

The bar colors are not an arbitrary rainbow: they reproduce, in order, the top three and bottom three stripes of the original 1978 Baker-Segerblom eight-stripe flag, and carry his stripe meanings with them. The two omitted colors, yellow (sun) and green (nature), are the flag's middle stripes, which fall on the white field and star band. The four stars' colors (pink, orange, yellow, purple) do not follow that scheme and have no documented individual rationale; their underlying historical meanings are presumed to carry over from the unmodified municipal flag, since only their color changes, not their position or shape. ^[7][6][13]

No colour specification is published. The values here are measured from the first-party flat artwork file, ChicagoPride_V1.jpg, exposed by the seller’s own product record; they are measurements from lossy retailer artwork, not creator-issued specifications, and they replace values previously approximated by eye. ^[1]

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:2 · manufactured

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

6

Layout

white_field_with_banded_bars_and_multicolor_stars

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Pink, Red, Orange, White, Teal, Blue, Purple

Center Symbol

Four six-pointed stars, individually colored pink, orange, yellow, and purple (left to right), centered across the flag's middle third on a white ground

The seller manufactures the flag in 36 × 54 inch and 60 × 90 inch sizes, both 3:2 in width-to-height terms; the first-party flat artwork file, ChicagoPride_V1.jpg, is 2000 by 1334 pixels, a source canvas recorded separately from the manufactured ratio. The overall white field and the middle-third star placement follow the City of Chicago municipal flag’s documented construction. ^[1][5][6]

On a white field, the municipal flag's upper bar position is rendered as a thin pink stripe, a thicker red stripe, and a medium orange stripe (top to bottom); the lower bar position mirrors this with a medium teal stripe, a thicker blue stripe, and a thin purple stripe (top to bottom). Four six-pointed stars — pink, orange, yellow, and purple, left to right — are centered side by side in the white middle third, in the same position they occupy on the unmodified Chicago flag. ^[5][7][6]

A white flag with the City of Chicago municipal flag's bar positions each rendered as a three-color rainbow cluster — pink, red, and orange (top to bottom) at the top bar position, and teal, blue, and purple (top to bottom) at the bottom bar position — and four six-pointed stars, individually colored pink, orange, yellow, and purple from left to right, centered on the white ground between the two bar clusters.

Usage & Adoption

Organizations

PrideFlags.com

Geographic Usage

Chicago, Illinois

Online Usage

Moderate

Event Usage

Chicago Pride Parade (opening of the 2026 parade), Pride Month display in Chicago neighborhoods and storefronts

Current Status

active, regional

Sold by PrideFlags.com from 20 June 2016 by its own product record. Marketed and worn primarily by Chicagoans and Chicago-affiliated LGBTQ people as a hometown-pride variant. At the 2026 Chicago Pride Parade, a large-format banner version opened the parade while handheld mini flags of the same design were distributed to attendees, per Will Montgomery’s eyewitness account and the aerial gallery video; Chicago Tribune photo coverage of the same parade includes marchers wearing "Chicago Pride"-branded shirts alongside an image of the flag. ^{[1][5][16][15][4]}

Image Archive

The city flies it

The 2026 parade

The product

Discourse & Debates

• Whether this banded, white-field version or the plainer full-field six-stripe "classic" mashup (or PrideFlags.com's own chevron-added "NEW" version) should be considered the more representative "Chicago Pride Flag." ^[17]
• Whether this design should be considered Chicago's de facto Queer pride flag. It opened the 2026 Chicago Pride Parade as a large-format banner, with matching handheld mini flags distributed to attendees (per Will Montgomery's eyewitness account); Chicago Tribune photojournalism from the same parade shows Mayor Brandon Johnson personally carrying this flag while marching with a contingent wearing his mayoral office/campaign-branded shirts. Some in the community and archive take this as de facto civic and mayoral endorsement. It falls short of formal government adoption, however: no city ordinance, City Council resolution, or mayoral proclamation naming this design was located, and the City of Chicago's only confirmed official practice remains raising the unmodified Progress Pride Flag over City Hall during Pride Month, a separate flag entirely. This archive marks the flag canonical (the best-evidenced entry in its family) and contested (its official/de facto status is unresolved), but not official. ^{[16][15][4][14]}

Common misidentifications

• Sometimes confused with the plainer, full-field six-stripe Chicago-flag-plus-rainbow mashup documented separately in this archive, which fills the entire field with rainbow stripes and leaves the stars uniformly red.
• Sometimes confused with the City of Chicago's official practice of flying the (unmodified) Progress Pride Flag over City Hall during Pride Month, which is a different flag entirely and a distinct municipal act. ^[14]
• Sometimes confused with Chicago's Boystown/Northalsted rainbow pylons, a separate civic rainbow installation unrelated to this flag design. ^[18]
• This white-field, banded version versus PrideFlags.com's own "NEW Chicago Pride Flag," which adds the Progress Pride Flag chevron. ^[17]
• This version versus the plainer full-field six-stripe "classic" Chicago Pride Flag documented separately in this archive.

Criticisms

• Before the city’s adoption became documented, the seller’s title "Official Chicago Rainbow Pride" drew the objection that it implied municipal endorsement no ordinance showed. The mayor’s introduction of the design as the Chicago Stars Pride Flag on 26 June 2024, eight years into the product’s documented retail life, settled the substance: the flag is the city’s Pride flag by executive practice, raised at Daley Plaza in 2024 and 2025, though no ordinance, resolution or executive order adopting it has been located and the municipal flag itself remains governed by the flag code. ^[1][6][3][2]

“Chicago Pride Flag” is used loosely across retailers and social media for several visually distinct Chicago-flag-plus-rainbow mashups. This entry documents the specific white-field, banded-bars-and-multicolor-stars version sold by PrideFlags.com as the "Official Chicago Rainbow Pride." ^[5]

Editorial note

No individual designer, publication date, or manufacturer specification sheet could be located for this flag. Treat the digital color values here as provisional approximations, not sampled or published figures.

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

white-field-rainbow-bars-and-stars

• The announcement itself: the mayor's post of 26 June 2024, 5:02 PM, introducing and naming the Chicago Stars Pride Flag. The flag's name has no located ordinance behind it; this post is where it enters the record. ^[2] · Credit: Mayor Brandon Johnson (@ChicagosMayor) · X
• The flag of the city of Chicago, in the colors of the rainbow pride flag, seen from aerial view at the Chicago Pride Parade 2026. A crowd of paraders carries handheld versions, then a gigantic banner follows. · Credit: admin · YouTube
• Mayor Brandon Johnson marches in the 55th annual Chicago Pride Parade, June 28, 2026, in the Lakeview neighborhood. · Credit: Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune · Chicago Tribune
• Participants carry a rainbow Chicago flag during the 55th annual Chicago Pride Parade, June 28, 2026, in the Lakeview neighborhood. · Credit: Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune · Chicago Tribune
• The Official Chicago Rainbow Pride mockup, identified by the site owner. ^[5] · Credit: PrideFlags.com · PrideFlags.com