The watchlist · 970 brands
Everyone we're watching, and exactly where they stand today
Nine hundred and seventy of the biggest names on X, all on one page, all held to the same simple question: is the flag up, and will it stay? No rankings of worth, no scolding — just a clear, current record of who's showing up. A flag flown is a welcome. We notice the welcome, and we notice when it's withdrawn. And we hold one rule close: presence isn't proof, and absence isn't always betrayal. A flag is where the question starts, not where it ends.
Reading the watchlist…
Live · who just changed
Flags going up, flags coming down — as it happens
This is the heartbeat of the season. Every time one of the 970 swaps its avatar, it lands here within the hour: the before, the after, the timestamp, and which way it went. A flag raised gets a warm welcome. A flag lowered gets noted, plainly and without venom. The feed doesn't editorialise — it just remembers, so you don't have to.
The record · three Junes, 2024–2026
Three Junes on file
Memory is the whole point. In 2024, 139 brands flew the flag. In 2025, only 81 did — and 73 of those had folded it before the year was out. 2026 is being written right now. The receipts don't shout. They just don't disappear.
Leaderboards · the love letter & the receipt
The ones who stayed, and the ones who couldn't pack it away fast enough
Two boards, two honest stories. The Love Letter honours the brands who flew the flag every year we've watched. The Receipt records the fastest folds — up on June 1, gone within days. We name both because both are true. Showing up is worth celebrating out loud. Folding fast is worth remembering — gently, but for the record.
The Love Letter
Honoured for showing up, every year since 2024.
The Receipt
Folded the fastest — noted, without the venom.
About Pride · what it is and why this matters
The first Pride was a riot.
Remember that before you read a logo.
Pride is in June because of one June. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, patrons of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York fought back against a police raid — the kind of raid that, in that era, was often enforced under city rules used to arrest people for not wearing “enough” clothing of their assigned gender. The uprising lasted roughly six days. Trans women of colour were on the front lines: Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who would go on to found STAR to house homeless LGBTQ+ youth. One year later, on June 28, 1970, the first march set out from near the Stonewall Inn and swelled from hundreds to thousands. That is why we mark Pride in June — and why Pride is celebration and protest, joy and a demand, in the same breath. The joy is not a break from the fight. It is part of it.
The flag we count is the Progress Pride flag, designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018 on the foundation of Gilbert Baker's 1978 rainbow. The six stripes carry Baker's meanings — life, healing, sunlight, nature, harmony, spirit. The chevron adds more, and means more: the blue, pink and white of Monica Helms' trans flag, and brown and black for communities of colour and for everyone lost to and living with HIV/AIDS — with the arrow pointing forward, toward the progress still owed. We render it whole, in its true colours, never cropped or restyled into a logo of our own. It is not our mark to remix. It is a flag people fought for.
Recognition came late and in pieces — the first federal Pride proclamation only in 1999, broadened in 2011. None of it was given. All of it was won. So here is the honest part: Pride Watch does not own Pride and does not speak for the community. We just count flags, because the community has long said the quiet truth out loud — we are queer 365 days a year. A logo turning rainbow in June is where the question starts, not where it ends. Presence isn't proof, and absence isn't always betrayal — some brands stay silent in markets where the flag carries real danger to local people, and that deserves grace, not a gotcha. We measure one thing honestly: who keeps showing up. The rest — the year-round work, the policies, the people protected — is the part that actually counts. Actions, not avatars.
Presence isn't proof, and absence isn't always betrayal. A flag is where the question starts, not where it ends. Actions, not avatars.