I was walking through Camberwell in early June when a flash of brilliant white caught my eye. Two flags, each emblazoned with the St George’s cross, hung suspended from the windows of a first  floor flat, billowing in the breeze like pillow cases on a washing line. The usual feelings swelled in my chest – anxiety, then sadness, eventually concretising into anger – the sensation all too familiar following the spate of anti-immigration flag-raising in the summer of 2025. In south London of all places, I said to my boyfriend, exasperated. He considered the pair of flags for a moment, then said: Maybe they’re for the World Cup?

He was probably right; I relaxed. But I’m not alone in instinctively tensing up when I see the St George’s cross these days. For many people, especially people of colour, the English flag has come to signify division and hatred rather than national pride.

Of course, the flag has been a contentious symbol for decades, having been associated with far-right political groups from the 1970s onwards. Consequently, every time a national football tournament comes around and England fans reach for the flag to signify their support, that complicated history is raked over again (see: the 2020 men’s Euros, the 2022 World Cup, the 2025 women’s Euros). But the proliferation of England flags feels particularly fraught this summer, thanks to the aforementioned far-right campaign which saw anti-immigrant protestors affix the flag to lampposts and buildings across the UK last year. Organised by Raise the Colours, a self-described “grassroots movement for unity and patriotism”, the campaign was widely interpreted as an attempt to intimidate migrants and people of colour (especially as, in many instances, the St George’s cross was also graffitied on businesses and places of worship belonging to ethnic minorities, sometimes alongside racist language).

It’s been less than a year since then and the country is far from healed. In some areas of the country, flag-raising never stopped, and the hatred underpinning groups like Raise the Colours remains as virulent as ever: far-right party Reform remains the most popular in the UK, and this summer alone has already seen racially aggravated violence in Southampton, Belfast, and Edinburgh. As a result, seeing the white-and-red of the St George’s cross on England’s streets – even if in support of the national football team – is still a jarring sight for many.

21-year-old Rose has also spotted St George’s flags in her native London – mainly “hanging out of people’s windows and little ones attached to cars”, as well as “some St George bunting” in the streets. “You don’t know whether it’s genuine national pride or whether it’s racism,” she says. Fellow Londoner Benjy, 31, says it’s “disorienting” to see the flag everywhere. “The flag has consistently read as a marker of exclusion in recent times, flown at nationalist marches and central to the Raise the Colours movement. Then something like the men’s World Cup starts, and I’m suddenly meant to read it as warm and celebratory.” 27-year-old Um-E-Aymen, who is based in Essex, feels similarly. “As a British-Pakistani, seeing St George’s flags everywhere makes me really, really uncomfortable [...] We’ve seen more racist marches and far-right protests over the past few years, and they’re associated with those flags now. It’s quite sad that that’s what it’s come to.”

You don’t know whether it’s genuine national pride or whether it’s racism

For staunch football fans, the ubiquity of England flags is even trickier to navigate. Benjy says he’ll be “watching and supporting England like anyone else”, but that the experience has been tainted thanks to the far-right’s co-option of the flag. “The support comes with the extra work of judging whether a place flying the flag is actually safe for me,” he explains.

Rose, meanwhile, says she’s still supporting England as wholeheartedly as ever. “I’m still wearing my England top when I go to watch the games,” she says. “It’s kind of a form of protest: like, why should I have to give up supporting my country – that I was born in and grew up in – because of a few small-minded people who have nothing better to do than spread hate?”

After all, supporting England should be entirely at odds with supporting anti-immigration measures. “When you look at our football team, it is predominantly made up of immigrants, and that is exactly what England is about,” says Um-E-Aymen. This makes it all the more sickening to see England’s Black players suffer racist abuse from so-called supporters of the team: “If the Black players for England don’t perform, they end up getting racist abuse from the same people that are putting up these flags,” Um-E-Aymen continues. “Even if you literally play for England, there will always be people who will not look past your skin color.”

While some progressive fans like Rose are seeing the World Cup as an opportunity to ‘reclaim’ the flag and other symbols of Englishness, others believe that – at least right now – the England flag is too closely associated with the far-right, and have found new ways of expressing their support for the team, such as only hanging up the flag while matches are on or using the Three Lions flag instead.

Some are getting more creative. One England fan, 25-year-old Charlie*, has created an alternative flag with “Football not Farage” emblazoned across the St George’s cross. “My inspiration came after seeing people concerned about flying the St George’s flag to support the World Cup,” he tells Dazed. As a result, he wanted to create a flag football fans could use where it was “clear the flag was to support England in the football, not Reform and their policies”. In the first three days of making the flag available to purchase, he accrued over 30 sales.

To be clear, no one is seriously suggesting that waving the English flag should be ‘banned’. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with waving the flag and having pride in your country,” Rose says. “Our discomfort isn’t about the flag. It’s about the recent context in which it’s been used – to mark who does and doesn’t belong here,” Benjy adds. Ultimately, the widespread unease at the sight of flags during this World Cup season is just a stark demonstration of just how hostile an environment the far-right have fostered in the UK. And until we can stamp out the hatred engendered by the likes of Reform and Raise the Colours, it’s likely that the sight of the flag will continue to inspire mixed feelings in many of us – both during the 2026 World Cup and beyond.

*Name has been changed