Illinois Flag Commission Turns in Their Homework

A day after an extended meeting to move from almost 5000 Illinois state flag design entries to ten finalists, the Illinois Flag Commission has their ten finalists.

The talk at the commission meeting was about keeping the finalist’s styles to the outline of the state, the image of Abraham Lincoln and text (keeping it to founding year/state name). The meeting ended with talk of pushing the reveal of the final ten until January first.

Then yesterday afternoon the ten were unveiled.

Voting between the ten and the three current designs including the centennial Illinois flag and the sesquicentennial Illinois flag will begin starting in January 2025. The commission will bring their presentation of the flags/votes and their perspective to the general assembly April 1^st in Springfield. A vote will then follow to adopt the new flag, stick with the flag we have, or go back to a previous version.

Other states have gone through this exercise in recent years. Most famously in Minnesota where the state flag was changed from a traditional seal to a more stylized representation.