Last week, we announced Columbia's inaugural t-shirt design contest and it reminded us that Columbia's current flag was born out of a design contest. Let's take a look back to see how our city's flag came to be.

January 10, 2017

The Columbia City Council opened a design contest for a new city flag that was facilitated by a collaboration between the Columbia Design League and One Columbia for Arts and Culture. The design contest had over 540 submissions. Psst, peek at all 547 submissions in this compilation video here.

June 26, 2017

COLAtoday wrote a conversation that recapped the contest, highlighted the 19 finalists, and shared Soda Citizen's thoughts on the designs.

July 5, 2017

We hosted a Mayors Minute guest series where former Mayor Steve Benjamin talked about the flag contest.

September 12, 2019

COLAtoday recapped the history of our flag and explained why we still had the same design two years after the initial announcement in 2017.
Columbia Design League, the Columbia City Council, and former Mayor Steve Benjamin announced a new extended process to adopt a new city flag. Five selected designers were given six weeks to present a design based on the new guidelines.

February 4, 2020

After three years, Columbia adopted a new flag that was designed by Nate Puza. The flag represents the three rivers, that our city is a capital city, and showcases the wing imagery.

March 10, 2020

Columbia City Council unanimously adopted the new design as the official city flag and former Mayor Steven Benjamin raised the new City of Columbia flag the next day.

November 16, 2022

A six-and-a-half week North American City Flags Tournament started on Twitter — thanks to Brian Stokle — where people could vote on the best flag designs in North America.
Out of 80 flags, Columbia's flag came in second. "Second is the best," becauseour flag still had a total of 10,567 votes — taking the top spot for most votes throughout the whole tournament. Talk about some pride in place!

Click here for more information about our flag, its history, and its symbolism.