The International Flag of Planet Earth is an unofficial proposal designed by Oskar Pernefeldt, a Swedish artist and graphic designer, as his graduation project at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm in 2015. Unlike national flags born from revolution, treaty, or tradition, this one came out of a single designer's question: what symbol should represent all of humanity, particularly in space. It has no official status from any government or international body, yet its seven interlocking rings on a deep blue field have turned up in classrooms, design retrospectives, and arguments about the future of human spaceflight.
A graduation project that went viral
In the spring of 2015, Oskar Pernefeldt was finishing his thesis at Beckmans College of Design, one of Scandinavia's better-known design schools. His project wasn't commissioned by NASA, the European Space Agency, or the United Nations. It was an independent design exercise built around a simple question: when astronauts plant flags on other celestial bodies, they plant national flags, but they travel as representatives of all humanity. So what flag should they actually carry?
Alongside the flag, Pernefeldt built an entire usage protocol, complete with polished mockups showing the emblem on astronaut suits, spacecraft hulls, and podiums at international ceremonies. The presentation was thorough enough to look institutional, which made it easy to forget that no organization had asked for it.
Within days of its online publication in May 2015, the project took off. The Washington Post, BBC, Wired, and The Verge all covered it. Design blogs picked it up, and social media did the rest. The speed of the response pointed to a public appetite for symbols of global unity that surprised even Pernefeldt. Not everyone was charmed. Critics called it naive utopianism, and others wondered why anyone would bother when the UN flag already exists.
Seven rings on a blue field
Seven white interlocking rings sit in a "Flower of Life" geometric pattern, centred on a deep blue (#003399) background. That blue isn't arbitrary. It's the blue of Earth as seen from space, a deliberate callback to the "Blue Marble" photograph from Apollo 17 and the "Pale Blue Dot" image captured by Voyager 1. Those images reshaped how people picture the planet, and Pernefeldt wanted that feeling in the flag's most basic element.
The rings are where the design gets more interesting. Each one interlocks with every adjacent ring, forming a flower-like shape at their intersections. The pattern references the Flower of Life, a motif from sacred geometry found in cultures as far apart as ancient Egyptian temples and Chinese ornamental art. The message is connectivity: no single ring stands alone, and removing any one of them breaks the whole pattern. It rejects the division that national flags, by their nature, imply.
Do seven rings mean seven continents? Pernefeldt has been cagey about making that connection too literal. He's said the number has more to do with the geometric harmony of the pattern than a strict continental count. Seven rings produce the most balanced version of the interlocking arrangement, and that, rather than Antarctica's representation, drove the choice.
From a vexillological standpoint, the flag checks nearly every box. The centred composition on a single-colour field stays legible at a distance, in motion, and in reduced-colour reproduction. The white-on-blue scheme avoids associations with any specific nation, political movement, or cultural tradition, which is harder to achieve than it sounds. Most flags lean on red, green, or gold, colours loaded with centuries of political meaning. Deep blue and white feel almost clinical by comparison, which is the point.
The problem of representing everyone
Pernefeldt's flag didn't land in a vacuum. John McConnell designed an Earth flag in 1969, a photograph of the planet on a dark blue field, first displayed at a United Nations ceremony in 1970. Various Earth Day symbols have come and gone. The UN flag itself, adopted in 1946, is the closest thing humanity has to a collective emblem, though it represents an institution rather than a planet or a species.
Vexillology enthusiasts were quick to note that while the design is aesthetically strong, its interlocking rings resemble the Olympic rings and certain corporate logos. That's the cost of geometric simplicity: the fewer elements you use, the more likely someone has already used them.
Political criticism cut deeper. Who has the authority to design a flag for eight billion people? Pernefeldt is a talented designer, and he is also a Scandinavian man working within a Western, minimalist design tradition. The flag's clean lines and restrained palette reflect that sensibility. Would it look the same if designed in Lagos, or Mumbai, or São Paulo? Almost certainly not.
The flag occupies an unusual space. It has no legal standing, no endorsing body, and no formal adoption process. It's an art project, a design proposal, and an aspirational symbol at once. Supporters argue that this is its strength: because it belongs to no government, it could, symbolically at least, belong to everyone.
Where the flag actually turns up
Despite having no official backing, the flag hasn't simply languished on a portfolio website. It's shown up in museum exhibitions on space exploration and graphic design in Stockholm and other European cities. Online retailers sell versions of it, and space enthusiast communities, educators, and advocates of international cooperation have adopted it informally.
Pernefeldt's original project included detailed protocols for display: how the flag should fly alongside national flags, how it should appear on spacecraft, how it should be presented at international scientific events. These guidelines borrowed conventions from established flag etiquette, which lends the project a formality it doesn't technically possess.
No national space agency, not NASA, not ESA, not JAXA, not Roscosmos, has adopted or endorsed the flag, and no intergovernmental body has either. Where the design has found its most natural home is in classrooms, as a starting point for discussion about identity, representation, and whether humanity needs shared symbols for the next chapter of space exploration.
Earth flags before and after Pernefeldt
The idea of a flag for all of Earth predates Pernefeldt by generations. John McConnell's 1969 Earth flag, with its photograph of the planet on a navy field, came out of the same era that produced the first images of Earth from space. The "Blue Marble" photograph, taken by Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972, and Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" image from 1990 gave people a way of thinking about Earth as a single entity, something that could in principle have its own banner.
There's a legal angle too. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 stipulates that no nation can claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, so the American flag on the Moon is symbolic rather than territorial. That makes the case for a collective Earth flag more practical than it first appears: if no nation owns the Moon, why plant a national flag there?
Most proposed Earth flags struggle with the same tension. How do you represent unity without erasing diversity? How do you make something feel universal when "universal" so often means "designed by someone from a specific culture"? Pernefeldt's design stands out among the proposals for its adherence to the principles of good flag design set out by the North American Vexillological Association: simplicity, meaningful symbolism, limited colours, no lettering or seals, and distinctiveness. On those technical merits it outperforms most competitors.
Whether humanity ever adopts a single flag is an open question, and probably the less interesting one. The better question is why so many people keep trying to design one, and why the idea still resonates in an era of resurgent nationalism.
References
[1] Pernefeldt, Oskar. "The International Flag of Planet Earth." Project documentation, Beckmans College of Design, 2015. Available at flagofplanetearth.com.
[2] North American Vexillological Association (NAVA). "Good Flag, Bad Flag: How to Design a Great Flag." Ted Kaye, 2006. Portland Flag Association / NAVA.
[3] Smith, Whitney. Flags Through the Ages and Across the World. McGraw-Hill, 1975.
[4] United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space" (Outer Space Treaty), 1967.
[5] Sagan, Carl. Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Random House, 1994.
[6] BBC News. "Could this be the flag for Planet Earth?" May 2015.
[7] McConnell, John. "Earth Flag / Earth Day: The Story Behind the Symbol." Earth Society Foundation archives.
[8] United Nations. "United Nations Flag Code and Regulations." UN Protocol and Liaison Service.