Progress Pride Flag

Overview

To foreground current community needs and increase visibility for transgender people, people of color, and those affected by HIV/AIDS. ^[1]

In 2017, Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs commissioned a new version of the rainbow flag, the Philadelphia Pride Flag, which added black and brown stripes to the existing six to address documented racism within the city's Gayborhood district. ^[2] That intervention established a precedent: the rainbow was no longer untouchable, and its palette could be expanded to name communities it had failed to represent. Daniel Quasar built on this precedent in June 2018 by combining the Philadelphia flag's black and brown stripes with the light blue, pink, and white of Monica Helms's 1999 transgender pride flag, relocating all five colors from the horizontal stripe field into a hoist-side chevron. The arrow shape was intended to convey forward momentum, signaling that progress remained incomplete. ^[1]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ community

Subcommunity

Transgender community, non-binary people, marginalized people of color

Movement

Inclusive pride, intersectionality, anti-racism, trans visibility, HIV/AIDS remembrance

Diaspora Context

Global circulation

Racial / Ethnic Context

Marginalized communities of color

Less tied to one city than the Philadelphia flag and more connected to digital-era circulation and international adoption. ^[3]

Creators

The Creator

Daniel Quasar

Designer

Daniel Quasar (xe/xyr) is a Queer non-binary demiguy and self-described ‘accidental designer,’ artist, and musician born in the mid-1980s in Kentucky, who relocated to Portland, Oregon during childhood. ^[4] Xe holds a BFA in Communication Design from Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) and worked as a freelance designer before and after formal schooling, with professional credits including stage animations for the 2016 RuPaul’s Drag Race ‘Battle of the Seasons’ tour and Jinkx Monsoon’s 2017 ‘Ginger Snapped’ tour, alongside client work for Target, DC Comics, Nike, Reebok, Adobe, Lyft, and Spotify. Quasar now runs quasar.digital and oversees the Progress Initiative, which as of December 2024 has donated over $23,500 to LGBTQ organizations including Trans Lifeline, The Trevor Project, the LGBTQ Freedom Fund, and the Black AIDS Institute; in 2023 the Initiative switched to a ‘Shop For Good’ model with Rainbow Railroad as its primary beneficiary. ^[4][5][1]

It was never my intention for my flag to be a replacement for the original Pride flag.

It's acknowledging that there are things in our community that we need to progress on.

I'm an accidental designer. ^[4]

Motivations

• To foreground trans people, marginalized people of color, and people affected by HIV/AIDS within the pride flag ^[1]
• To place greater emphasis on these meanings by giving them a distinct visual element ^[1]

Stated inspirations

• The Philadelphia Pride Flag’s addition of black and brown stripes^[1][2]
• The transgender pride flag’s light blue, pink, and white elements^[1][3]

Origin

Country

United States

Place Type

digitally disseminated redesign

Digital Origin

true

Digital-origin flag. Creator or earliest documentation associated with the United States, but no specific physical site of creation has been verified. Without a confirmed location, Indigenous land context cannot be responsibly attributed.

The design originated as a digital publication shared on social media on June 6, 2018, and spread through online circulation before Quasar launched a Kickstarter campaign the following day to fund physical production. The flag's rapid transition from a viral image to a manufactured object and, eventually, a museum acquisition illustrates the compressed lifecycle of digitally native symbols. ^[5]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2018

First public use

June 6, 2018

Period in Use

2018–present

Quasar sketched the chevron arrangement during a night of insomnia-driven art-making on June 5, 2018, and posted the finished design publicly the following day. ^[4] The image went viral immediately, Quasar's phone ran out of battery three times that day from notifications. ^[4] A Kickstarter campaign launched on June 7 with a $14,000 goal; Dezeen reported $17,386 from 322 backers during its early coverage, ^[6] and the campaign ultimately closed at $25,802 from 508 backers, funding an initial production run of flags, stickers, and enamel pins. ^[5] Institutional adoption followed quickly: the flag was flown above official buildings in cities including New York, London, Boston, and Sydney. ^[6]

In 2020, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London acquired a bespoke appliqué version (museum number CD.14-2020, manufactured by Art Schaller for Custom Flag Company, Westminster, Colorado) for its permanent collection through the Rapid Response Collecting program; curators Livia Turnbull and Maude Willaerts commissioned it directly from Quasar after finding existing stock sold out. ^[7] The flag is displayed in the Design 1900-Now gallery (Room 74a) in the 'Conflict' section alongside Better Shelter's flat-pack refugee shelter and Chris Ofili's print about the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

On June 10, 2023, the Biden administration hung a Progress Pride Flag on the South Portico balcony of the White House, centered between two American flags, at what the administration called the largest Pride event ever held there (postponed from the original date due to hazardous air from Canadian wildfires). Senator Roger Marshall called the display 'a disgrace' and alleged a breach of U.S. Flag Code; multiple fact-checkers debunked the claim, noting a U.S. flag flew at a higher point from a rooftop flagpole and that Flag Code provisions are 'declaratory and advisory only.' The episode occurred as state lawmakers had introduced at least 525 anti-LGBTQ bills that year.

In 2025, after Utah and Idaho passed laws banning non-governmental flags on public buildings, Salt Lake City and Boise adopted modified versions of the Progress flag as official city flags, incorporating the state flower to qualify under the new restrictions. ^[3][4][8]

Major revisions

1. 2021

   Valentino Vecchietti created the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, adding an intersex symbol at the chevron’s center. ^[2]

The Progress Pride Flag occupies a central position in the lineage of rainbow-flag redesigns. It descends from both the 2017 Philadelphia Pride Flag and the 1999 transgender pride flag, combining the racial-inclusion and trans-visibility stripes into a single widely adopted composition.

In 2021, Valentino Vecchietti extended the design by adding a purple circle on a yellow triangle to the chevron, producing the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag. The Philadelphia-to-Progress-to-Intersex-Inclusive sequence shows each successive revision adding stripes to name groups the previous design was said to leave insufficiently visible. ^[2]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Philadelphia Pride Flag, Transgender Pride Flag

Indirect influences

Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown)

Direct children

Indigiqueer Pride Flag (cedar-maw), Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Utopian Pride Flag #6 (2040 Progress Flag)

Related flags

Chicago Pride Flag, Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Intersex Pride Flag, Queer Pride Flag, Gilbert Baker Nine-Stripe Rainbow Flag, Original Rainbow Flag (1978), Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978), Rainbow Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2Sanon)

Sibling flags

Chicago Trans Pride Flag, "Fuck Around and Find Out" Trans Pride Flag, Nonbinary Trans Flag, Transfeminine Pride Flag, Transmasculine Pride Flag, Transneutral Pride Flag

Follows the Philadelphia Pride Flag in the Baker-rainbow lineage. The transgender pride flag is a significant related influence, contributing the light blue, pink, and white elements to the chevron. The Philadelphia (2017) to Progress (2018) to Intersex-Inclusive (2021) sequence documents a chain in which each revision added stripes to name groups the previous design was said to leave insufficiently visible. ^[2]

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 13 records across 7 generations.

Ancestors -4

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -3

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Rainbow Pride Flag

Ancestor

Transgender Pride Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag

This record

Progress Pride Flag

Children

Indigiqueer Pride Flag (cedar-maw), Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag, Utopian Pride Flag #6 (2040 Progress Flag)

Generation 3

"Ultimate" Inclusive Diversity Pride Flag, Disability-Inclusive Pride Flag, Progress+ Flag (Disabled Queer Transmasc Variant), 5790/2029 Pride Flag

Colors & Symbolism

The flag combines three existing sets of stripes (the six-stripe rainbow, the Philadelphia Pride Flag's black and brown, and the transgender pride flag's light blue, pink, and white) into a single composition. The chevron's arrow shape points toward the fly, signaling forward motion and that the work of inclusion is unfinished. The design does not replace the rainbow but layers additional stripes onto it. ^[1][3]

flagcolorcodes.com

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

The black stripe’s meaning is the most substantively contested element. Quasar’s own account and the V&A both treat the HIV/AIDS reading as integral to the design’s intent, alongside racial inclusion. ^[1][3] Institutional sources such as HRC include the HIV/AIDS reading as supplementary context, while some summary sources omit it in favor of a race-only interpretation. ^[2] Library.LGBT is the only located source that frames the dual meaning as a controversy. The HIV/AIDS reading is now reported in most long-form sources but is frequently absent from short-form summaries. ^[1]

Quasar’s official files or style guide should be consulted before treating exact digital values as canonical. ^[1] Provisional values only.

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Orientation

horizontal field with hoist chevron

Stripe Count

6

Layout

horizontal stripes with chevron

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple

Additional Symbols

Five-color hoist-side chevron (black, brown, light blue, pink, white)

The chevron layers five nested V-shapes at the hoist (left) edge, ordered from outermost to innermost: white, pink, light blue, brown, black. The rainbow field behind retains the standard six-stripe sequence. ^[1]

Usage & Adoption

Geographic Usage

International

Online Usage

Extensive

Event Usage

Pride events worldwide, Institutional displays, Municipal and community use

Current Status

active and globally widespread

In institutional contexts, the Progress flag has largely supplanted the six-stripe rainbow. The V&A acquired a bespoke appliqué version for its permanent collection in 2020 through its Rapid Response Collecting program. Government buildings, corporate offices, and universities increasingly default to the Progress variant during Pride Month. The traditional rainbow flag remains dominant in street-level Pride celebrations and personal use, so the two flags are commonly seen in parallel rather than as replacements for each other. ^[3][9]

Image Archive

Drag March LA protest

Brookfield Place, New York City

Christopher Street Day, Berlin

Chicago Pride Parade

Discourse & Debates

• Whether the design productively foregrounds marginalized groups or narrows a previously universal symbol ^[3]
• Whether the black stripe should be read only as racial inclusion or also as HIV/AIDS remembrance ^[1]
• Whether redesigning the rainbow flag to foreground specific groups represents inclusion or fragmentation. Some older LGBTQ people feel the rainbow flag they fought under is being devalued or replaced; defenders counter that universal symbols often default to the most privileged members of a community, and that explicit naming is needed to name who has been left out. The same tension recurs across the Philadelphia, Progress, and Intersex-Inclusive revisions. ^[3][9]

Common misidentifications

• Often confused with the later intersex-inclusive redesign by Valentino Vecchietti ^[10]
• Sometimes conflated with other people-of-color- or trans-inclusive redesigns that are not Quasar’s ^[10]

Common confusions

• Progress Pride Flag versus Philadelphia Pride Flag ^[11]
• Progress Pride Flag versus Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag ^[2]

Criticisms

• Some argue the original rainbow was already inclusive enough and that each revision implicitly indicts the previous version as insufficient, creating a cycle where no symbol can be final. ^[3]
• The CC BY-NC-SA license sets the Progress flag apart from other major pride flags on licensing terms: Baker did not assert copyright over the rainbow, Helms has stated the trans flag cannot be copyrighted, and Page declared the bisexual flag free for public and commercial use. The Progress flag is widely reproduced commercially by vendors worldwide, and Quasar has not been publicly known to pursue legal action. ^[12]
• Critics argue that the cycle of redesign benefits flag manufacturers and corporate Pride departments more than the communities being named, since each new variant creates new merchandise opportunities. The 'flag fatigue' debate asks whether frequent symbolic revision distracts from material change. ^[9]
• Quartz characterized the flag as 'a design disaster but a triumph for inclusiveness,' arguing that the chevron's visual complexity weakened the design's graphic coherence even as it succeeded as a political statement about whose visibility the rainbow had historically centered. ^[13]

The unmodified name ‘Progress Pride Flag’ refers specifically to Quasar’s 2018 design without the intersex addition. ^[1]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

progress-2018

• Progress Pride Flag during Drag March LA, West Hollywood, California, April 9, 2023. This image places the flag in active protest against anti-LGBTQ legislation rather than decorative festival use alone. · Credit: Sarah Morris / Getty Images · Getty Images
• Progress Pride Flag at Brookfield Place, New York City, June 17, 2023. Installed across a major Lower Manhattan public-commercial facade, the flag appears here as part of a large-scale urban Pride display rather than only parade use. · Credit: ThomPics - SK / Getty Images · Getty Images
• Progress Pride Flag at Christopher Street Day, Berlin, July 22, 2023. The flag appears here within one of Europe's major annual Pride demonstrations, showing its international circulation in large-scale public procession. · Credit: Sean Gallup / Getty Images · Getty Images
• Christopher Street Day march, Berlin, July 22, 2023. A second view of the procession showing the flag's presence across the crowd. · Credit: Sean Gallup / Getty Images · Getty Images
• Aerial view of this massive Progress Pride flag at the Chicago Pride Parade, 2026, courtesy of admin · Credit: admin · YouTube