Fact Check: FAKE Photo Shows Pride Rainbow Flags On Field Ahead Of Iran-Egypt World Cup Match — It Is AI-Generated
Is this a real photo showing Pride rainbow flags on the field ahead of the Iran-Egypt World Cup game in Seattle on June 26, 2026? No, that’s not true: The image is AI-generated, an online detection tool identified it as such by detecting a SynthID watermark. There are no credible reports that Pride flags appeared on the field before the match.
The claim appeared in a post and image (archived here) by the @zachleft account on X on June 27, 2026. It read:
Seattle trolled Egypt and Iran so hard
This is what the image looked like at the time of writing:
Image analysis
Lead Stories ran the image through OpenAI’s tool to verifyOpenAI-generated images (archived here). The tool reached this conclusion:
Lead Stories found an image (archived here) from the actual Iran-Egypt World Cup match in Seattle, and it does not show Pride flags on the field. Instead, it shows the flags of the respective countries:
Lead Stories reviewed a video replay (archived here) of the Iran-Egypt match, which also showed the flags of the two nations on the field, not the Pride flags. This screenshot is from about 30 seconds into the video:
