Prayer Flags: Colours, Meaning and How They Work

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 1 June 2026 · Updated 11 November 2026

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Prayer flags are cloths, traditionally woodblock-printed with mantras, prayers and images, that Tibetans and other Himalayan peoples string across rooftops, hilltops and mountain passes. The commonest design carries the wind horse (lungta), whose name also means the good fortune the flags are meant to raise; as the wind moves them, it is said to carry their blessings to every being it touches.

What is the meaning of prayer flags and how do they work?

The Rubin Museum’s senior curator of Himalayan art, Elena Pakhoutova, describes them as “variously colored cloths imprinted in ink with mantras and images from carved woodblocks”, hung “on high grounds and around sacred sites, temples, and mountain passes.” They work by the wind. The museum’s 2007 exhibition put it this way: “It is said that the wind that touches the flags carries the beneficial power of the prayers and blesses any beings it meets.” Encyclopaedia Britannica draws the comparison with the prayer wheel: “The mantra on a prayer flag is similarly activated by the blowing of the wind.”

They are hung for two kinds of good at once. The Rubin’s 2024 Flag Project page says flags are displayed “to generate merit and increase one’s life force.” Pakhoutova says they are believed to spread the mantras “to pacify local gods and bring about luck and fortune to benefit all”, and Helmut Eimer, in the Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, calls them “a common means of asking supernatural beings for both protection and prosperity.” The Horniman Museum notes that “Typically prayers for the person who mounts the flags are included in prayer flags”, and one of its flags holds both: its inscription “invokes peace (and possibly health) to the patrons or sponsors who put up this or these flags”, and it also carries the wish to “bestow blessings to anybody who happens to see, hear of or touch this or these prayers (flags)”. Guides to the practice stress the wider wish. Karma Phuntsho writes that “One should wish that the teachings of Buddha reach all sentient beings, pacify their suffering and causes of suffering, and help sentient beings obtain ultimate happiness through the teachings of the Buddha”, and the Tibetan Nuns Project advises: “When hanging prayer flags, wish that all beings everywhere will benefit and find happiness.”

The wind horse: lungta

The Rubin Museum gives the Tibetan for prayer flags as “dar cho”, and the Tibet Policy Institute calls the windhorse strings “Lungta darchog” (rLung-rta dar-cog), “air-horse flag”. “Prayer Flags in Tibet are called lungta (‘wind horse’),” writes Jeff Watt of Himalayan Art Resources, and the Tibetan word (rlung rta) names more than the picture. The Bhutanese historian Karma Phuntsho, in a Kuensel column now in the Bhutan Cultural Library, calls lungta “a pan-Himalayan cultural concept denoting good fortune and success”: “When one’s lungta is running high, one is healthy, lucky, successful and prosperous.” The flag printed with the wind horse “is itself called the lungta.” Raising it is a way of raising one’s fortune, and the Tibet Policy Institute notes that “When things are not going well and smoothly, people often hoist Lungta flags”.

On the classic flag the horse stands at the centre. The Rubin Museum describes “a tiger, a snow lion, a man-bird garuda, and a dragon (the four dignities) with a wind horse in the center.” Sources picture its load as a “wish fulfilling jewel” (Tibet Policy Institute) or as “three jewels” (Karma Phuntsho; the Horniman Museum’s “three flaming jewels”), and some use both images. Watt adds that “Many modern prayer flags have, however, replaced the horse with other subjects, such as popular deities and teachers like Padmasambhava.”

The five colours, and where sources differ

Five-colour sets are the familiar ones. The Tibetan Nuns Project gives the order: “The colors from left to right are in this specific order: blue, white, red, green, and yellow.” It is the only source we found that states a fixed order. Karma Phuntsho lists the colours in the same sequence without calling it an order, and the Tibet Policy Institute and the Rubin Museum list them differently.

The colours stand for the five elements, and here the sources mostly agree. The Tibetan Nuns Project and Karma Phuntsho in Bhutan pair blue with sky or space, white with air, wind or clouds, red with fire, green with water and yellow with earth; Karma Phuntsho’s wording is “blue for sky, white for clouds or winds, red for fire, green for water and yellow for earth.” The Tibet Policy Institute’s lists, read in parallel, give the same pairs. The Rubin Museum’s 2024 Flag Project page, read the same way, pairs them differently (“yellow, red, green, blue, and white” for “earth, fire, air, water, and space”), so blue, white and green are not matched the same way everywhere. All four sources agree on red for fire and yellow for earth.

The balance can be tipped on purpose. In a Gesar windhorse rite translated on Lotsawa House, Mipham Rinpoche advises flags “of the five colours with more of the colour of the year element”, and Karma Phuntsho notes that a person may choose a colour “because it is astrologically suitable”. Not every flag is coloured at all. Karma Phuntsho writes that lungta flags “are printed on plain white cloth or on cloths of five colours”, and calls black ink on white cloth “the simplest form”

What is printed on them

Mantras, prayers and images. A woodblock in the Horniman Museum carries several mantras, among them Om mani padme hum and the Vajra Guru mantra of Padmasambhava. Mipham’s instructions for a windhorse flag are to print “the Sampa Lhundrupma, the Vajra Guru mantra, the prayer requesting your wishes, along with mantras that raise the windhorse and so on.” Larger flags may carry a whole scripture. On medium-sized windhorse flags Eimer found “the main part of” the Dhvajāgrakeyūrā dhāraṇī, “almost completely in transliterated Sanskrit”, and some very large ones carry the full text as it stands in the Kanjur, narrative and all; Watt calls it the chief of the Buddhist texts on Tibetan flags. The prayer also fits the purpose: Karma Phuntsho mentions “prayers like oṃ maṇi padme huṃ hoisted for the deceased and prayers like vajra guru hoisted for overcoming obstacles”. In the 84000 translation of that text, the dhāraṇī brings protection when “tied atop a standard” (a battle ensign) “or worn around the neck”, and the translation’s introduction notes that it has become associated with the windhorse, “to eliminate obstacles and adversity and to bring victory and good circumstances.”

The printing was done from carved wooden blocks. The Penn Museum holds one from Lhasa, dated “15th Century - 1889”, that was “probably used to make a prayer flag”; a Horniman block was acquired before 1900. In Bhutan, Karma Phuntsho writes, families once printed flags at home from woodblocks; “Now with mechanisation, not many people print prayer flags from the wood blocks,” and until recently most were imported from India.

When and where they are hung

On high, clean ground. Karma Phuntsho: “on an auspicious day, they are hoisted on mountain passes, hilltops, rooftops, or other places considered clean and pure.” The Horniman Museum adds “from tree to tree or housetops or any point of high elevation”, and the Tibetan Nuns Project bridges and trees. Hanging them on stupas is not a Tibetan custom, the Nuns Project says, though in Nepal, “a melting pot of traditions”, it is done. The day matters: people “often choose an auspicious day or date to hang a Lungta”, the Nuns Project says, selected “based on the lunar calendar and traditional astrological calculations”.

The great day is Losar, the Tibetan New Year. “It is customary to hang new sets of prayer flags at Losar,” says the Tibetan Nuns Project, and Tsewang Gyalpo Arya, writing on the Central Tibetan Administration’s website, says that on the third day, Chokyong Losar, “prayer flags, are hoisted on the hills and around the houses.” In a note for the Tibet Policy Institute, which he once directed, he ties the custom to fortune: “Lungta prayer flags are hoisted on auspicious days, especially during the Tibetan New Year, Losar.”

Besides the strings of square flags there are tall vertical ones. The Tibetan Nuns Project uses darchog for these, “large single rectangles attached to poles along their vertical edge”, and in Bhutan, Karma Phuntsho writes, “there are many kinds of scriptures written on cloth and put up on a pole vertically.” Bhutan also has the lhadar, “a special flag hoisted at the entrance of important establishments”, whose “cloth on the flag is changed annually”. Prayer flags are not only Buddhist. Watt: “Prayer flags are common in the popular cultures of both Buddhist and Bon religions.”

What happens to old flags

Practice varies. Some people leave flags until they fade and hang new ones beside them; the Tibetan Nuns Project writes that “The contrast between old and new is a reminder of impermanence and the continuing cycle of birth and death” (see impermanence). Others take them down. Karma Phuntsho: “Normally one keeps the flags as long as it lasts. Once the prayers are totally faded or the cloth worn out, one can bring them down and properly burn them instead of trampling on it.” At Losar, the Nuns Project says, “Old prayer flags from the previous year are taken down and burned with bunches of fragrant pine and juniper.”

Either way they are treated as sacred. Karma Phuntsho calls it “taboo to treat them with disrespect or desecrate them by stepping on them, throwing them in the rubbish, or using them for mundane purposes”, and the Nuns Project says simply: “They should not touch the ground or be put in the trash.”

Where prayer flags came from

No one knows for sure, and the careful sources hedge. Pakhoutova, drawing on Katherine Anne Paul’s research, writes that the practice “does not appear to be adopted from India, and a practice of raising prayer flags may have predated Buddhism in Tibetan cultural areas.” Watt notes that “The origins of Tibetan prayer flags are attributed to the Bon religion, but are likely an adaptation from an earlier Chinese culture”, and that “The Buddhists of India had no such prayer flag tradition, but they did have prayer banners containing short sutras or long dharani formulas.” Karma Phuntsho stresses a Buddhist root: the concept “partly originates from the culture of worshipping books”, the merit of copying and honouring scripture carried over to flags, and “The tradition of hoisting prayer flags perhaps started with such spiritual background and intention.” The written record is thin: the Tibet Policy Institute quotes Samten Karmay on the manuscript that tells the four animals’ origin, which mentions Kublai Khan and so “cannot pre-date the thirteenth century.”

Even the English name is not a translation of a Tibetan word. Pakhoutova notes that “The term ‘prayer flag,’ like ‘prayer wheel,’ is an English invention that emphasizes prayer over the meaning, intent, and ritual function of these objects and their indigenous terms.”

Prayer wheels: a cousin with its own page

Prayer wheels set a mantra in motion by the turn of a hand, or by wind or water, rather than hanging it in the wind. They have their own guide: how they are built, what is inside, and how they are turned. Both belong to the devotional life of Tibetan Buddhism, alongside mantras, and both are ways of making merit. For the wider family of Buddhist symbols, see our overview.