Inclusive gateway
A point where the process takes one or more of several paths, depending on which conditions are true. The inclusive gateway is a diamond with a circle inside.
Easily confused with
- Exclusive gatewayA point where the process takes exactly one of several paths. The exclusive gateway is a diamond, often with an X inside.
- Parallel gatewayA point where the process splits into paths that all run, or where parallel paths wait for one another. The parallel gateway is a diamond with a plus sign inside.
How to read it
BPMN 2.0.2 says that, unlike an exclusive gateway, all of an inclusive gateway鈥檚 conditions are evaluated, and every path whose condition is true is taken, so it can create alternative and parallel paths at once. The standard requires a circle or O marker. Politecnico di Milano鈥檚 exercise book calls it the OR gateway and says that as a join it waits only for the paths that were actually started. Montali鈥檚 slides describe the marker as a thick circle.
Also searched as: bpmn inclusive gateway, inclusive gateway symbol, o diamond bpmn, or gateway.
Look-alikes
An Exclusive gateway has an X and takes only one path; a Parallel gateway has a plus sign and takes them all. The circle inside the diamond is a marker, not an event: event circles stand on their own.
Read next
- Next in BPMN symbolsSequence flow and message flowThe two arrows of BPMN. A solid arrow with a filled head is a sequence flow, the order of steps within one process; a dashed arrow that starts at a small open circle and ends in an open head is a message flow, a message passing between two participants.
- The same shape in Emoji meaningsClown face 馃ぁA circus clown鈥檚 face. It is used to call someone, or oneself, a fool, and sometimes for something creepy.
More BPMN symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with circles or diamonds.
Sources
- Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), Version 2.0.2, OMG document formal/2013-12-09, December 2013 (also ISO/IEC 19510), Object Management Group, Section 10.6.3
- Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN): Modeling Exercises, Cinzia Cappiello, Pierluigi Plebani and Monica Vitali, v.1.1, 2016 (CC BY-SA), Politecnico di Milano, Chapter 2, 2.2 Inclusive Gateway (OR)
- Data and Process Modelling, 8a. BPMN: Basic Modelling, Marco Montali, lecture slides, A.Y. 2014/2015, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Slide 13, Main Gateways; Inclusive Gateway
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
Added .