Flag of the Earth
Is there a flag of the Earth? Officially no, but there are many proposals: the Earth Day flag, Cadle’s, Pernefeldt’s… We go through them in chronological order.
Does the Earth have a flag? Officially, no. There is no flag approved to represent the whole planet. An official flag needs someone to approve it on behalf of everyone, and today nobody does so on behalf of the entire Earth. That has not stopped many people from proposing their own. In this article we present the best-known ones, in chronological order.
1969–1970: the Earth Day flag
One of the best-known proposals, and one of the few that has actually been used, is the Earth Flag by the activist John McConnell. It shows a photograph of our planet on a dark blue background. The current version uses The Blue Marble, taken by the Apollo 17 spacecraft on 7 December 1972; before 1973 it used a photo from Apollo 10, taken on 18 May 1969. It debuted in Central Park (New York) on 20 July 1969 and flew at the first Earth Day, on 22 April 1970.
John McConnell’s Earth Flag, with the Blue Marble photograph.
1970: a flag for looking for life in space
In May 1970, James W. Cadle created another flag: on black, a blue planet, a yellow segment of the Sun on the left and a white Moon at the bottom right. It represents space, the Sun, the Earth and the Moon. It is popular with SETI researchers (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) and entered the public domain in 2003.
James W. Cadle’s flag (1970).
Other versions of the same flag:
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1980s and 2000s: flags with the world’s flags
The World Flag, by Paul Carroll, was presented in 1988 and combines the flags of the countries with a Dymaxion map in the centre: it had 159 flags in 1988 and 230 after the 1992 update, and was updated again in 2006, 2008 and 2011. Around the year 2000 Anne Kirstine Rønhede created another world flag, which represents the Earth with its atmosphere in the middle of the universe.
Anne Kirstine Rønhede’s world flag.
2008: a Spanish proposal
During the 23rd National Congress of Vexillology in Spain, in 2008, Pedro Manuel Quesada López presented another proposal with vertical coloured stripes. Little is known about this flag: the meaning of its colours, including orange, is not documented.
Pedro Manuel Quesada López’s proposal (2008).
2015: the International Flag of Planet Earth
It is one of the most recent and best-known: the Swedish student Oskar Pernefeldt created it in 2015, as a graduation project. It consists of seven interlocked rings, forming a flower, on a dark blue background, in a 2:3 proportion. According to its creator, the blue represents the importance of water and the interlocked rings suggest that everything on our planet is connected, directly or indirectly. It was presented for use on space expeditions and to remind every inhabitant that we must look after what surrounds us. Some media speculated that it could fly on a future crewed arrival on Mars; its website is flagofplanetearth.com.
After 2015
Proposals keep appearing. In 2016, Thomas Mandl created the One World Flag: a blue dot on a transparent 2:3 rectangle, so that the background changes with whatever is behind it; he began distributing it in 2019. Also in 2019, Tijs Bonekamp proposed the Blue Dot Flag: a blue circle on a pale green field, representing biodiversity.
What about the UN flag?
For some, the UN flag is the natural candidate to represent the Earth: it shows a map of the world on a light blue background. But officially it only represents the organisation. Its emblem was adopted on 7 December 1946 and the flag on 20 October 1947.
UN flag.
Earth flags in space
Some of these flags have travelled to space. In 1992, the astronaut Anatoly Berezovoy took McConnell’s Earth Flag with him. And in the 1960s it was even suggested that, during NASA’s Moon landings, the UN flag should be used instead of the US one.
