Flag families — the family tree of national flags
How the designs of national flags descend from one another: 208 flags in 13 families, with the revolts, unions and empires whose flags outlived them.
The Nordic cross
One shape, shifted off-centre, holding a region together.
A cross with its vertical arm pushed toward the hoist. Denmark has flown it since the Middle Ages; every other Nordic nation adopted the shape as it gained a flag of its own, making it the clearest visual claim of belonging anywhere in Europe.
Denmark (the Dannebrog), since the 14th century. The oldest national flag still in use. Legend has it falling from the sky during a battle in Estonia in 1219; the documentary record starts in the fourteenth century. Every other flag in this family exists because of it.
Sweden, since the 16th century. The Danish shape in the colours of the Swedish royal arms — blue and gold — adopted while the two kingdoms were rivals.
Åland (autonomous Finnish islands), since 1954. Swedish-speaking islands governed by Finland. The flag is the Swedish one with a red cross inside — a precise statement of who they are and who governs them.
Norway, since 1821. Designed while Norway was in union with Sweden but still using Danish red and white. Adding blue produced a flag that nodded to Denmark, Sweden, and the liberal tricolours of France at the same time.
Iceland, since 1915. Norway’s flag with the colours swapped, adopted while Iceland was still under the Danish crown.
Faroe Islands, since 1919. Designed by Faroese students in Copenhagen and recognised by Britain during the wartime occupation, years before Denmark accepted it.
Finland, since 1918. Adopted months after independence from Russia. Blue for the lakes, white for the snow — and the Nordic cross to place the new country firmly among its neighbours.
The three-band tricolour
A Dutch rebel flag becomes the default grammar of European statehood.
Three plain bands of colour was a radical idea: a flag with no crown, no saint, and no heraldry. The Dutch flew it in revolt against Spain, France made it the emblem of revolution, and most of Europe has been rearranging the same three stripes ever since.
Prince’s Flag (Dutch revolt), 1570s. Orange, white, and blue, for William of Orange and the revolt against Spanish rule. Over the next century the orange band drifted to red — dye that held its colour at sea, most likely, rather than any decree.
Netherlands, since the 17th century. The first modern tricolour, and the ancestor of most of the others. A republic of merchants advertising that it had no monarch to put on a flag.
Russia, since 1693. Peter the Great studied Dutch shipbuilding and brought home a Dutch-derived ensign, reordering the bands. It became the model for Slavic Europe.
Pan-Slavic colours (Prague Slavic Congress), since 1848. Delegates at the 1848 congress adopted Russia’s colours as the emblem of Slavic solidarity. Nearly every Slavic state has drawn from them since, which is why so many are hard to tell apart.
Croatia, since 1990. Pan-Slavic bands under the red and white chequy shield, a Croatian emblem far older than the tricolour beneath it.
Serbia, since 2004. The pan-Slavic order inverted, with the royal arms toward the hoist.
Slovakia, since 1992. Identical to Slovenia and to Russia without its shield — the arms were added in 1992 precisely to end the confusion.
Slovenia, since 1991. Same three bands again, with a shield showing Mount Triglav tucked into the upper hoist.
Czechia, since 1920. The Czech white-and-red bicolour was too close to Poland’s, so a blue wedge was added in 1920 — for Slovakia, which then left the country in 1993 and kept the wedge in the flag it left behind.
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941. The pan-Slavic colours, unadorned, for a kingdom assembled from Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia after the First World War.
Socialist Yugoslavia, 1946–1992. Tito added a gold-edged red star, joining this family to the red banner. When the country broke apart, each republic went back to the same three bands with its own emblem — which is why Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia are still hard to tell apart.
Bulgaria, since 1879. The Russian tricolour with green in place of blue, adopted after Russian armies drove the Ottomans out. Green for the land, and for not being Russia.
Luxembourg, since 1848. So close to the Dutch flag that Luxembourg periodically debates changing it. The blue is lighter and the red brighter, which is easier to argue in a shop than at sea.
France, since 1794. Blue and red were the colours of Paris, white the colour of the monarchy. Whether the Dutch flag directly inspired turning them into three bands is argued over — but the French version is the one that conquered Europe, because it travelled with an army.
Belgium, since 1831. The colours come from the arms of the Duchy of Brabant; the vertical arrangement almost certainly comes from France, though Belgium has never been keen to say so.
Romania, since 1848. Adopted during the 1848 revolutions, explicitly on the French model.
Moldova, since 1990. Romania’s flag with an eagle added — one of the few flags in the world with a different design on each side.
Italy, since 1797. First raised by a republic set up under Napoleon, with green replacing French blue. The oldest surviving copy of the French idea.
Ireland, since 1848. A gift from French sympathisers to Irish nationalists in 1848. Green for the Catholic tradition, orange for the Protestant, white for peace between them — the flag states its own meaning more explicitly than almost any other.
Andorra, since 1866. Blue and red from France, red and yellow from Spain — a flag that shows exactly who the two co-princes of Andorra are. Its resemblance to Romania and Moldova is coincidence.
Mexico, since 1821. The colours belong to the Army of the Three Guarantees and the eagle to Aztec legend, but three upright bands is the French form. Mexico has never credited France, and the resemblance may be no more than the fashion of the decade.
Germany, 1848–1852, 1919–1933, since 1949. Black, red and gold were the colours of a volunteer corps in the wars against Napoleon, turned into a tricolour by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848 — the same year of revolutions that gave Romania and Hungary theirs. It has been abolished and restored three times, which makes it a fair summary of German history.
German Empire, 1871–1918. Bismarck replaced the liberal tricolour with black, white and red — Prussia’s colours joined to the Hanseatic ones. The two flags stood for rival ideas of Germany, and the argument outlived the empire: black-white-red became the banner of the far right in the Weimar years and is still flown by it today.
Hungary, since 1848. The colours come from the medieval arms of Hungary; the three-band form arrived with the 1848 revolution, taken directly from the French model.
Ivory Coast, since 1959. A French-form tricolour adopted a year before independence, in colours read as the savannah, peace, and the forests. It is Ireland’s flag reversed, which causes trouble at every event where both turn up.
Chad, since 1959. The French tricolour with pan-African yellow in place of white. It is all but identical to Romania’s; Chad complained to the United Nations in 2004, Romania declined to change, and both still fly.
South Africa (the Union flag), 1928–1994. The Prince’s Flag, orange included, revived in 1928 as South Africa’s national flag — the only twentieth-century state to fly sixteenth-century Dutch colours. The three small flags at the centre are the Union Jack and the two Boer republics, a compromise that satisfied nobody. Replaced in 1994.
Crosses, ensigns, and stripes
Three saints’ crosses that ended up on flags across four continents.
The Union Flag is a stack of three crosses, assembled by two acts of union. As a canton, it travelled with the navy and the trading companies, and when colonies broke away they usually kept the shape of the flag and changed what sat inside it.
Saint Andrew’s cross (the saltire), legendary, 9th century. A diagonal cross, said to be the shape on which the apostle Andrew was crucified. Scotland claims it from a battlefield legend of the ninth century.
Scotland, since the 15th century. One of the oldest national flags in continuous use, and the reason a diagonal cross appears in the Union Flag at all.
Scottish Red Ensign, 17th century. Scottish merchant ships flew a red field with the saltire in the corner — the pattern of canton-plus-field that Britain would export everywhere.
Jamaica, since 1962. The independence committee’s first design was horizontal stripes, dropped because it looked too like Tanganyika’s. William McGhie, a Church of Scotland missionary living in Jamaica, redrew the Scottish saltire in green, black, and gold and passed it to Alexander Bustamante, who carried it to the committee. Jamaica’s own official account credits the committee and never mentions Scotland, but McGhie’s hand is the version the record now generally carries.
Union flag (English version), 1606–1707. James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne and ordered the two crosses combined. English ships flew a version with Saint George’s cross on top.
Union flag (Scottish version), 1606–1707. Scottish ships flew their own version with the saltire laid over the English cross rather than under it. Two rival flags for one union — a fair summary of the period.
Great Britain (the King’s colours), 1707–1800. The 1707 Act of Union made the combined flag official for the new Kingdom of Great Britain. This is the flag that appears in the corner of colonial ensigns before 1801.
United Kingdom (the Union Jack), since 1801. The union with Ireland in 1801 added a red diagonal — Saint Patrick’s cross — offset against the white saltire so neither nation appears to sit on top of the other. Wales is not represented at all.
Red Ensign (the Red Duster), since 1801. The British merchant flag. Colonies and dependencies defaced it with their own badges, and several still do.
Bermuda, since 1910. Almost every British territory was given a blue ensign; Bermuda, the oldest of them, kept a red one. The badge shows a ship wrecking itself on the island in 1609, which is how the colony began.
Blue Ensign, since 1801. The government and colonial ensign. Nearly every British possession in the Pacific was issued one, and several kept it after independence — which is why so many flags on opposite sides of the world share a corner.
Australia, since 1901. Chosen by public competition in 1901, with five entrants sharing the prize for near-identical designs. The Commonwealth Star sits under the union; the Southern Cross fills the fly.
Papua New Guinea, since 1971. Australia administered the territory, and when it drew up a flag in 1971 a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl won the competition. She kept the Southern Cross from the Australian flag, dropped the union entirely, and put a bird of paradise on the other half.
New Zealand, since 1902. Four red stars of the Southern Cross rather than Australia’s six white ones. A referendum to replace it failed in 2016, and the two are still routinely mistaken for each other at summits.
Samoa, since 1949. New Zealand administered Samoa, and the flag adopted in the last years of that arrangement keeps the Southern Cross in a canton while leaving out the union. The fifth small star was added a year later, correcting the constellation.
Fiji, since 1970. Fiji became a republic in 1987 and has announced a replacement more than once. The union is still in the corner.
Cayman Islands, since 1959. A blue ensign with the territory’s arms: three stars for the three islands, a turtle, and a pineapple carried over from Jamaica, which governed the Caymans until 1962.
Falkland Islands, since 1948. The same colonial pattern, with a ram for the wool trade and the ship that first landed there. Argentina disputes the islands; the flag is one of the plainer statements of who administers them.
Tuvalu, since 1978. Nine stars laid out as a map of the nine islands, turned so that east is at the top. Tuvalu removed the union in 1995 and put it back two years later.
British Red Ensign, 1707–1800. Flown by British merchant ships, including those carrying settlers to North America.
British America, 1607–1783. The thirteen colonies had no flag of their own; they flew the merchant ensign of the empire they belonged to.
Grand Union Flag (first flag of the United States), 1775–1777. Thirteen stripes for thirteen colonies, with the British union still in the corner — a flag for people demanding rights as Englishmen rather than a separate country. Within two years, the canton was replaced by stars.
United States (thirteen stars in a ring), 1777–1795. Congress specified thirteen stars in a new constellation but not how to arrange them, so several patterns were used at once. The ring is the famous one; the attribution to Betsy Ross is family tradition, first told a century later.
United States (fifteen stars, fifteen stripes), 1795–1818. Vermont and Kentucky joined and got a stripe each. It became clear this could not continue, and in 1818 Congress fixed the stripes at thirteen and gave each new state a star.
United States (a star per state), since 1818. Twenty-seven versions and counting. The current arrangement dates from 1960 and has now lasted longer than any before it.
American Colonization Society, 1816–1946. The society that resettled freed African Americans in West Africa flew the American design with a cross in the canton.
Liberia, since 1847. Eleven stripes for the eleven signatories of the declaration of independence, and one star for the only republic in Africa at the time. Liberia’s ship registry means this flag is now one of the most common at sea.
Togo, since 1960. Stripes and a star in a canton, but in pan-African colours. The layout echoes Liberia; whether that was deliberate borrowing or convergent design is not settled.
Federation of Malaya, 1950–1963. Chosen by public competition in 1949 and openly modelled on the American flag: eleven stripes and an eleven-pointed star for the eleven states, with a crescent for Islam.
Malaysia, since 1963. Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined in 1963, and three stripes and three points were added to match. Singapore left two years later; the count was never reduced, and the fourteenth now stands for the federal territories.
Panama, since 1903. Designed in the weeks around independence from Colombia, with the United States midwifing the new republic and its canal. The quartering and the two colours are usually read as a nod to the American flag and to Panama’s two political parties at once; the family has always preferred the second explanation.
Chile, since 1817. A blue square with a single star over white and red. American influence is often asserted and just as often denied — the Chilean design predates most Latin American contact with the US flag.
Cuba, since 1902. Designed in 1849 by exiles in New York who wanted Cuba annexed to the United States, which is exactly what it looks like: stripes, a triangle, and a lone star.
Puerto Rico, since 1895. The Cuban flag with the red and blue exchanged, made by revolutionaries who worked alongside the Cuban independence movement. It was illegal to fly it in Puerto Rico until 1952.
East India Company (under Elizabeth I), 1600–1707. A private company with an army, chartered in 1600, flying red and white stripes with England’s cross in the corner. The stripes are usually traced to the colours of the Majapahit empire it traded against, though nobody can prove it.
East India Company (after the union), 1707–1801. The canton changed with the union of the kingdoms, and the result is startling: red and white stripes with a union in the corner, twenty years before the American revolution. Whether it inspired the Grand Union Flag is one of the oldest arguments in vexillology.
East India Company (after the Irish union), 1801–1874. The last version, with Saint Patrick’s cross added. The company was wound up in 1874, by which point it had ruled India for a century and been stripped of that power for sixteen years.
Hawaii, since 1845. Kamehameha I flew both British and American flags to stay on good terms with both; the compromise was a flag with the Union Jack in the corner and eight stripes for the main islands. It is still the only US state flag with another country’s flag on it.
Spain (Cross of Burgundy), 1506–1785. A ragged red saltire flown across the Spanish empire for nearly three centuries. It shares the diagonal form of Saint Andrew’s cross but arrived through Burgundian heraldry, not from Scotland.
Spain, since 1785. Charles III held a competition for a naval ensign that could be told apart at sea, since half of Europe was flying white flags with royal arms. The red and gold he chose replaced the Cross of Burgundy and outlasted the monarchy, the republic and the dictatorship that followed.
Second Spanish Republic, 1931–1939. The republic added a purple band, said to be the colour of a Castilian revolt against the crown four centuries earlier. It flew for eight years, was abolished by Franco in 1939, and is still carried at protests in Spain.
Saint George’s cross, since the 12th century. A red cross on white, taken up by English crusaders and eventually by English ships. It is also the flag of Genoa, from whom the English are said to have borrowed it — for a fee.
England, since the 13th century. The English national flag, and the second element of the Union Flag.
English Red Ensign, 17th century. English merchantmen flew a red field with Saint George in the canton — the ancestor of every British ensign, and of the East India Company’s stripes.
Guernsey, since 1985. Guernsey flew the plain English cross until 1985, when a gold Norman cross was added inside it to end the confusion.
City of London, since 1381. The English cross with the sword of Saint Paul in the canton — the City’s patron, not, as the story goes, the dagger that killed Wat Tyler.
Aquitaine, since the 12th century. A single gold lion on red, the arms of the duchy Eleanor of Aquitaine brought to her marriage. England’s other flag lineage runs through heraldry rather than through crosses, and it starts here.
Normandy, since the 12th century. Two lions for the duchy that conquered England in 1066 and held it and Normandy as one realm for a century and a half.
Royal Standard of England, since the 12th century. Richard the Lionheart put Normandy’s two lions with Aquitaine’s one and made three, and they have stood for England ever since — on the royal standard, on the arms, and on every England shirt sold at a tournament.
Saint Patrick’s cross, since the 18th century. A red saltire associated with Ireland, of contested and probably Anglo-Norman origin. It was added to the Union Flag in 1801 and has been argued about ever since.
Jersey, since 1981. Jersey flew a bare red saltire for centuries with no agreed explanation for it. The island’s arms and crown were added in 1981 to make it unmistakably Jersey.
Miranda’s tricolour
A flag designed on a ship, for a country that did not exist yet.
Francisco de Miranda designed a yellow, blue, and red flag for a free Spanish America in 1806. The republic it stood for — Gran Colombia — broke apart in 1831, and each fragment kept the flag.
Miranda’s Flag, 1806. Raised by the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda on an expedition to liberate South America. The expedition failed. The flag did not.
Gran Colombia, 1819–1831. Bolívar’s union of what is now Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama. It dissolved after twelve years; all three successor states are still flying its flag.
Colombia, since 1861. The union flag stripped of its emblem, with the yellow band left at double width.
Ecuador, since 1860. The same bands with a condor over Mount Chimborazo — added to distinguish it from Colombia, which had the same idea at the same time.
Venezuela, since 1954. Equal bands and an arc of stars for the provinces that declared independence. An eighth star was added in 2006 on Hugo Chávez’s instruction, honouring a decree Bolívar issued in 1817.
Sky blue and white
The colours of the River Plate, spread by armies and unions.
Argentina’s pale blue and white was carried north by liberating armies and adopted by a Central American federation that later split five ways. Every one of those five still flies a version of it.
Argentina, since 1812. Manuel Belgrano raised sky blue and white in 1812; the sun of May was added in 1818. The exact shade of blue has drifted back and forth for two centuries and is still argued about.
Uruguay, since 1830. Argentina’s sun in a canton, over stripes borrowed from the United States — two influences in one flag, from a country that spent its early decades between larger neighbours.
United Provinces of Central America, 1823–1841. A federation of five Central American states that adopted the River Plate colours. It collapsed in 1841 and left every member with almost the same flag — a permanent identification problem.
Guatemala, since 1871. Turned the bands vertical to break away from its four near-identical neighbours — the only member of the federation to do so.
El Salvador, since 1912. Returned to the federation design in 1912 after three decades of a flag modelled on the United States.
Honduras, since 1866. Five blue stars for the five members of the federation, arranged as a hope that it might reassemble. It did not.
Nicaragua, since 1908. Kept the federation flag nearly intact, down to the triangle of volcanoes in the arms.
Costa Rica, since 1848. A red band was inserted in 1848, in sympathy with the French revolution of that year — the only member of the federation to break the colour scheme.
Peru (first horizontal design), 1822. Peru combined the red of its earlier flag with the band structure of Argentina, whose liberating army had just arrived.
Peru (turned vertical after a month), 1822. The horizontal version was too easily mistaken for Spain’s at sea, so the bands were turned upright within weeks.
Peru, since 1825. The sun was replaced by the national coat of arms in 1825. The plain version without arms is the everyday civil flag.
The Arab Revolt
Four colours, six countries, and one long argument about who owns them.
Black, white, green, and red were the dynastic colours of four Islamic caliphates. In 1916, they were sewn into a single banner for a revolt against Ottoman rule, and every Arab state that followed took a share of them.
Flag of the Arab Revolt (Hejaz, against Ottoman rule), 1916–1918. Raised in the Hejaz when Sharif Hussein bin Ali revolted against the Ottoman Empire. Each colour recalls a dynasty: black for the Abbasids, white for the Umayyads, green for the Fatimids, red for the Hashemites. The design was assembled deliberately as a flag for all Arabs rather than one country, which is why so many countries could later claim a piece of it.
Jordan, since 1928. The revolt flag with the order of the stripes reversed and a seven-pointed star added, for the seven verses of the opening chapter of the Quran. Jordan’s ruling family are the Hashemites who led the revolt, so this is the most direct heir of the design.
Palestine, since 1964. Adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964 and used essentially unchanged from the 1916 original — the closest surviving copy of the revolt flag.
Kuwait, since 1961. Adopted at independence from Britain. The four colours are rearranged and the hoist becomes a black trapezoid rather than a triangle.
Sudan, since 1970. Replaced a blue, yellow, and green flag after the 1969 coup, swapping a distinctly Sudanese design for a pan-Arab one — a political statement about where the country belonged.
United Arab Emirates, since 1971. Chosen by competition at the federation of the seven emirates. The red bar stands vertically at the hoist instead of forming a triangle.
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara), since 1976. A partially recognised state claiming Western Sahara. It takes the revolt flag and adds the crescent and star, borrowing from two families at once.
Syria (independence flag, back in use), 1932–1958, since 2024. Syria’s flag under the French mandate and first republic. It became the flag of the opposition during the civil war and returned as the national flag after the fall of the Assad government in December 2024 — replacing the red, white, and black design below, which most reference books still show.
Arab Liberation Flag (Egyptian revolution), 1952. Flown by the Free Officers who overthrew the Egyptian monarchy in 1952: red for the struggle, white for the bloodless coup, black for the era being ended. It became the template for a second wave of Arab flags.
Egypt, since 1984. The liberation flag with the golden Eagle of Saladin. Egypt has cycled through several emblems in this spot — two stars, a hawk, then the eagle again.
Yemen, since 1990. Adopted when North and South Yemen unified, and left plain — the only country to fly the liberation design without any emblem.
United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria, merged), 1958–1961. A political union of Egypt and Syria that lasted three years. Two green stars, one per member. The union collapsed in 1961; its flag outlived it by more than sixty years.
Syria (the flag it kept after the union), 1980–2024. Syria left the union in 1961 but readopted its flag in 1980 under Hafez al-Assad. It flew until December 2024, when the independence flag replaced it.
Iraq (three stars), 1963–1991. Iraq adopted the union flag with a third star, in anticipation of joining a wider Arab union that never happened. The Baath Party then held power in both Iraq and Syria, so the two flags stayed near-identical for decades.
Iraq (with the takbir added), 1991–2008. Saddam Hussein added the takbir — the phrase "God is great" — during the Gulf War, reportedly in his own handwriting. In 2004 the script was redrawn in Kufic so it was no longer his hand.
Iraq, since 2008. The three stars were dropped in 2008, ending fifty years of near-identical Iraqi and Syrian flags.
The star and crescent
An emblem older than every state that flies it.
The crescent paired with a star appears on coins from antiquity, was used by Byzantium and by Turkic peoples, and became firmly attached to the Ottoman Empire. From there it spread as a marker of Turkic and Muslim identity, far past any territory the Ottomans ruled.
Ottoman Empire, 1844–1922. The empire standardised the red flag with a white crescent and star in the nineteenth century. The symbol itself is far older and was not originally Islamic — it is inherited, not invented, which makes it a fitting root for this tree.
Turkey, since 1936. The republic kept the imperial flag almost unchanged and fixed its geometry by law in 1936.
Tunisia, since 1831. Older than the Ottoman national flag itself: adopted by the ruling Husainid dynasty in 1831, when Tunis was still nominally an Ottoman province.
Algeria, since 1962. Used by the independence movement well before 1962 and adopted at independence from France.
Libya, 1951–1969, since 2011. The flag of the Kingdom of Libya, abolished after Gaddafi took power and restored by the uprising that removed him.
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 1977–2011. After Egypt made peace with Israel, Gaddafi removed every element from the Libyan flag and left a plain green field — the only monochrome national flag in history, and the only one with nothing on it at all. It lasted thirty-four years.
Pakistan, since 1947. The green field and crescent stand for the Muslim majority; the white bar at the hoist was added for religious minorities.
Azerbaijan, 1918–1920, since 1991. First flown by the short-lived Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and restored in 1991. The star has eight points, usually explained as the eight Turkic peoples.
Mauritania, since 1959. The crescent lies on its back, cradling the star. Two red stripes were added in 2017 by referendum, for blood shed resisting colonisation.
Northern Cyprus, since 1984. The Turkish flag with its colours reversed and two red bars added. Recognised only by Turkey.
Uzbekistan, since 1991. Twelve stars for the months of the Islamic calendar, beside a crescent for the new republic. Adopted within weeks of leaving the Soviet Union.
Turkmenistan, since 1992. The most detailed national flag in the world: a vertical band of five carpet designs, one for each major tribe, next to a crescent and five stars.
Kingdom of Egypt, 1922–1953. Green with a crescent and three stars, for Egypt, Nubia and Sudan. This is the flag the Free Officers hauled down in 1952 and replaced with red, white and black — which is why the pan-Arab family and this one meet here.
Maldives, since 1965. A plain crescent with no star, on green within red. The Maldives flew a plain red flag for centuries and added the crescent in the twentieth, following the same Islamic convention as the rest of this family rather than the Ottomans directly.
Comoros, since 2001. Four stripes and four stars for the four islands of the archipelago, one of which — Mayotte — voted to stay French and is claimed by Comoros anyway. The crescent has been on every version of the flag since independence.
Singapore, since 1959. The official explanation is a young nation rising and five ideals, not the Ottoman emblem. The Malay community had asked for a crescent and the Chinese community for stars, and the design satisfied both — an internal compromise that happens to land inside a very old family.
The Persian tricolour
Green, white, and red, with a changing emblem in the middle.
Iran settled on green, white, and red in the nineteenth century, with a lion and sun at the centre. The band of colours survived a revolution that erased the emblem, and the same three colours anchor the flags of neighbouring peoples.
Imperial Iran (lion and sun), 1907–1979. The lion holding a sword with the sun rising behind it was Iran’s emblem for centuries. It was removed after the 1979 revolution, but the tricolour behind it stayed.
Iran, since 1980. The lion and sun were replaced by a stylised emblem reading "Allah". The phrase "God is great" is repeated twenty-two times in tiny script along the edges of the middle band — a date written as decoration.
Iraqi Kurdistan, since 1992. A sun with twenty-one rays, a number tied to the Kurdish new year. The flag dates to the 1920s and became official in the autonomous region in 1992.
Tajikistan, since 1992. Tajiks are a Persian-speaking people and the colours are usually read that way, but the flag was designed at independence from the Soviet Union and the resemblance is a matter of shared culture more than direct copying.
The sun disc
One circle on a plain field, and two countries that had to answer for it.
The simplest idea a flag can have: a single disc, centred on nothing else at all. Japan has flown one since the nineteenth century, and the two states that later tried the same thing both spent years explaining that they had not copied it.
Japan (the sun disc), since 1870. The plainest national flag in the world, and one of the oldest ideas on one. Two later flags put a single disc on a plain field, and both have had to answer for it.
Bangladesh, since 1972. Green for the land, a red disc for the sun over Bengal and the blood of the independence war. The disc sits left of centre so that it looks central when the flag is flying. Japanese influence is denied, and the two countries had no relationship in 1972.
Palau, since 1981. A full moon over the ocean, also placed off-centre. Palau was administered by Japan for thirty years, and the designer spent a long time insisting that was not the reason.
Pan-African colours
Two palettes, one continent, forty years of independence.
A newly independent African state had two sets of colours to choose from. Green, yellow, and red came from Ethiopia, the one country never colonised. Red, black, and green came from Marcus Garvey’s movement in Harlem. Nearly every flag south of the Sahara took one or the other.
Ethiopia, since 1897. Ethiopia defeated an Italian invasion in 1896 and stayed independent while the rest of the continent was divided up. Its three colours became the badge of African sovereignty, borrowed by state after state as they left European rule.
Ghana, since 1957. The first sub-Saharan colony to become independent, and the first to take Ethiopia’s colours. The black star comes from Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line, and Ghana became the model everyone else copied.
Guinea-Bissau, since 1973. Ghana’s colours and Ghana’s black star, rearranged into a hoist band. One party led the independence movements of both Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, which is why Cape Verde flew a near-copy until 1992.
Cape Verde (first flag), 1975–1992. One party led the independence movements of both Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and for seventeen years the two countries flew almost the same flag. A coup in Bissau ended the plan to unite the two countries, and the flag did not survive it.
Cape Verde, since 1992. The sharpest break with pan-African colours any African state has made: blue for the Atlantic, and ten stars in a ring for the ten islands. The design deliberately looks European rather than continental, which was the argument against it at the time and remains the argument about it now.
São Tomé and Príncipe, since 1975. Two black stars for the two islands, on Ghana’s palette, with a red wedge borrowed from the pan-Arab habit of putting a triangle at the hoist.
Guinea, since 1958. Guinea refused De Gaulle’s offer of continued association and was cut loose overnight. Its flag summarises that position exactly: the French tricolour form, filled with Ethiopian colours.
Mali, since 1961. Guinea’s flag reversed. A black human figure stood at the centre for a year, removed in 1961 under pressure from religious conservatives.
Senegal, since 1960. Mali’s flag with a green star, adopted when the federation between the two countries collapsed after two months.
Tanganyika, 1961–1964. Green for the land, black for the people, gold for the mineral wealth. Jamaica’s independence committee designed a flag of horizontal stripes in 1962 and had to abandon it because it looked too much like this one.
Tanzania, since 1964. Tanganyika merged with Zanzibar in 1964, and the two flags were merged with them: Tanganyika’s black-and-gold band laid diagonally across Zanzibar’s green and blue.
Zanzibar (People’s Republic), 1964. A revolution overthrew the sultan in January 1964 and this flag flew for three months. In April, Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika, and its blue and green went into the flag of the new country.
Niger, since 1959. Orange for the Sahara, white for purity, green for the south, with the sun in the middle. It is near-identical to India’s flag turned upside down, which is coincidence: the two were designed twelve years and five thousand miles apart.
Cameroon, since 1975. A French-form tricolour in Ethiopian colours. Two gold stars stood in the green band until 1975; when the federation of the two Cameroons was abolished, one was removed and the other moved to the centre.
Benin, 1959–1975, since 1990. Flown at independence, abolished by a Marxist government in favour of a green field and red star, and restored unchanged in 1990.
Burkina Faso, since 1984. Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta and replaced its flag on the same day. The old one had three bands for the three branches of the Volta river.
Congo-Brazzaville, 1959–1970, since 1991. The only pan-African flag divided on the diagonal. Like Benin’s it was scrapped by a Marxist government and brought back unchanged three decades later.
Zimbabwe, since 1980. The soapstone bird from the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, on a red star, over the colours of ZANU. The stripes read outward from black at the centre.
The UNIA flag (Marcus Garvey), since 1920. Adopted in Harlem in 1920 by Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, reportedly in answer to a mocking American song about black people having no flag of their own. Red for blood, black for skin, green for the land.
Kenya, since 1963. Garvey’s three colours with white added for peace, behind a Maasai shield and two spears. It is the clearest surviving trace of a movement founded in Harlem turning into an African national flag.
South Sudan, since 2011. The youngest country in the world, flying the flag its liberation movement had used for two decades. Garvey’s three colours, Kenya’s white fimbriations, and a blue wedge with a star — assembled from its neighbours while fighting the one it left.
Malawi, since 1964. A rising sun on the black band, for the dawn of independence across Africa. A 2010 redesign made the sun full and white; it was reversed in 2012.
Saint Kitts and Nevis, since 1983. Garvey’s colours in the Caribbean, set on the diagonal, with a star for each island. Garvey was Jamaican, so the colours travelled back across the Atlantic to where he came from.
The red banner
A flag exported by a state that no longer exists.
A plain red field was the flag of revolution across nineteenth-century Europe. The Soviet Union turned it into a national flag with an emblem in the upper hoist, and every socialist state that followed borrowed the arrangement: red field, gold symbols, a star.
Soviet Union, 1922–1991. The hammer for industry, the sickle for agriculture, the star for the party. Everything sits in the upper hoist, and every socialist flag that followed put something there too.
China, since 1949. Chosen from nearly three thousand public entries in 1949. The large star is the party; the four smaller ones, each turned to face it, were the classes of Chinese society.
Vietnam, since 1955. Flown by the Viet Minh from 1940, nine years before the Chinese flag existed. The star’s five points are the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals, and traders.
North Korea, since 1948. Replaced the traditional Korean taegukgi in 1948, breaking with the design the South kept. The red star sits in a white disc taken from that older tradition.
Angola, since 1975. A machete and half a cogwheel, openly modelled on the hammer and sickle. Angola abandoned Marxism in 1991 and has been debating a replacement flag ever since.
Belarus, 1951–1991, since 1995. The flag of the Byelorussian Soviet republic, minus the hammer and sickle. A referendum in 1995 discarded the white-red-white flag of the independence period and brought this one back — the only former Soviet republic to return to its Soviet-era design.
Mozambique, since 1983. The only national flag carrying a modern rifle: an AK-47 crossed with a hoe, over a book, on a yellow star. Parliament has voted on removing it more than once and kept it each time.
Short lineages
Descents two or three flags deep: too small to be a dynasty, too clear to leave out.
Not every design conquers a continent. These are the short chains — a flag, its parent, sometimes a grandchild — where the borrowing is beyond argument even though almost nobody followed it. Several are among the most recognisable emblems on earth.
Caucasian Iberia (claimed medieval origin), attributed to 1008–1490. Georgian tradition traces the five-cross flag to the medieval kingdom. The documentary evidence is thin and disputed by historians, but the story carried enough weight to bring the design back.
Georgia (the five-cross flag), since 2004. Adopted in 2004 after the Rose Revolution, replacing the flag of the first Georgian republic. The opposition had campaigned under it for years, which made the change feel like a restoration.
Georgia (naval ensign), since 2004. Navies borrow from each other as readily as nations do. Georgia’s ensign lays its red cross over a white saltire on dark blue — the pattern of the Russian naval ensign, adopted the same year Georgia turned decisively away from Russia.
Cyprus, since 1960. Deliberately empty of anything Greek or Turkish: a map of the island in copper, and two olive branches. A flag designed to avoid saying anything at all.
Kosovo, since 2008. The competition rules forbade anything that favoured one community, so the winner did what Cyprus did: put the country’s own outline on the flag, with six stars for its ethnic groups.
Armenia, 1918–1920, since 1990. Red, blue, and orange, adopted by the first republic in 1918 and restored as the Soviet Union broke up.
Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), 1992–2024. The Armenian flag with a stepped white pattern at the fly, marking a territory separated from Armenia. The self-declared republic was dissolved in January 2024 after Azerbaijan took control of the region.
Bahrain, since 1932. Bahrain and Qatar both flew plain red flags. Britain asked them to add white so their ships would not be mistaken for pirates, and the serrated edge between the two colours is what they settled on.
Qatar, since 1949. The same idea as Bahrain, with nine points instead of five and a maroon that reportedly came from red dye bleached by the Gulf sun. It is also the only national flag much wider than 2:1.
Switzerland, since the 14th century. A white cross that stops short of the edges, carried by Swiss confederate troops since the Middle Ages. Switzerland and the Vatican are the only two countries with square flags; this drawing is standardised to the same shape as the rest of the site, so it is wider than the real thing.
The Red Cross, since 1863. The Swiss flag with its colours reversed, adopted in 1863 to honour the country that hosted the conference. It is the only emblem here designed to be neutral ground rather than to claim any — and probably the most widely recognised derived flag in the world.
The Red Crescent, since 1929. Ottoman medical units refused the cross during the war of 1876 and flew a crescent instead. It was tolerated, then formally recognised in 1929, and a third emblem — a red crystal — was added in 2005 for anyone who wanted neither.
Empire of Brazil, 1822–1889. Green for the House of Braganza, gold for the Habsburgs — the dynastic colours of the emperor and empress, not of anything Brazilian. The lozenge and the two colours have survived every change of government since.
Brazil (the provisional flag), November 1889. For four days in November 1889 the new Brazilian republic flew this: the American flag in Brazilian colours, with a star for each state. It was rejected almost immediately on the grounds that Brazil should not look like a copy of another country, and the imperial lozenge was brought back instead.
Brazil, since 1889. The republic kept the imperial lozenge and swapped the crowned arms for the night sky over Rio on the morning of the coup, banded with the positivist motto. A star was added for each new state, most recently in 1992.
Kingdom of Portugal, 1830–1910. Blue and white were the monarchy’s colours for centuries, with the shield of Portugal across the middle.
Portugal, since 1911. The republic threw out the monarchy’s blue in 1910 and chose green and red instead, over an armillary sphere — the navigator’s instrument that carried Portuguese ships around the world. The shield stayed; everything around it changed.
The taegukgi (Joseon Korea), since 1883. Designed for a Korean diplomatic mission in 1882 and adopted the next year: a red-and-blue disc for the balance of opposites, with four trigrams from the Book of Changes at the corners. Korea was one country when it was drawn.
South Korea, since 1948. The South kept the old flag and standardised its geometry in 1949. The North abandoned it the year before for a red star, which makes this the clearest case on the site of one design surviving on one side of a border and being deliberately discarded on the other.
Saudi Arabia, since 1932. The shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, above a sword. Because the words are sacred the flag is never flown at half-mast, never printed on merchandise, and is made double-sided so the text reads correctly from both sides.
Somaliland, since 1996. A self-declared republic recognised by no country, flying the shahada over a tricolour. Afghanistan’s flag carries the same words on white; a handful of movements use them too, which makes this one of the few designs on the site that travels by faith rather than by empire.
The United Nations, since 1946. A world map seen from the North Pole, wrapped in olive branches, on a blue chosen to be the opposite of red — the colour of war. Two countries took the blue itself as the emblem of a future the UN had promised them.
Somalia, since 1954. Somalia was a United Nations trust territory heading for independence, and its flag took the UN’s blue directly. The five points of the star are the five territories Somalis lived in, only two of which ended up in the country.
Micronesia, since 1978. The same borrowed blue, from the flag of the UN trust territory that administered the islands. Four stars for the four states, arranged as a compass.
Thailand, since 1917. Rama VI added a navy band to the existing red and white in 1917 — partly for nation, religion, and monarchy, partly to match the Allies Thailand had just joined in the First World War.
Laos, 1945–1946, since 1975. Designed by a Lao nationalist historian in 1945, with a white disc for the moon over the Mekong. The banded structure follows Thailand’s closely, which is awkward for a flag meant to assert that Laos was not Thai.
The Swaraj flag (Indian National Congress), 1931–1947. Gandhi wanted a spinning wheel at the centre: home-made cloth as the emblem of self-rule. The colours were rewritten as courage, truth, and faith after objections that they stood for religions.
India, since 1947. Days before independence the spinning wheel was replaced by the Ashoka Chakra, a wheel from a pillar of the third century BCE. Same flag, older symbol, and one that belonged to no single movement.
Blue Sky with a White Sun (Kuomintang party flag), since 1895. Designed by a revolutionary who was executed in 1895, with twelve rays for the twelve two-hour periods of the Chinese day. It began as a party emblem and ended up in a national canton.
Republic of China (Taiwan), since 1928. A party flag placed in the canton of a red field, which is very close to what Britain did with its ensigns. It has flown over Taiwan since 1945 and over nothing else since 1949.
The Ulster banner (the de Burgh arms), since the 13th century. Gold with a red cross and a red hand, the arms of the Norman earls of Ulster. The hand is the piece everyone remembers: the story goes that a chieftain in a boat race for the province cut off his own hand and threw it ashore to touch land first.
Ulster Banner, 1924–1972. The medieval hand, moved onto Saint George’s cross with a six-pointed star for the six counties. It has had no official status since the Northern Ireland parliament was suspended in 1972, but is still flown — and still contested.
Look-alikes
Flags that appear to be relatives and are not.
Resemblance is not descent. These flags are near-identical and share no ancestor at all, which is the best argument for drawing the rest of this site carefully. Every line here is dashed, because every line here is false.
Austria, since 1230. Legend has it a duke’s tunic soaked in blood except where his belt had been. Whatever the origin, it is one of the oldest flags in the world and predates every tricolour in this collection by five centuries.
Latvia, 1918–1940, since 1990. Also red-white-red, also medieval, also from a legend about a bloodstained sheet. The two have nothing to do with each other: Latvia’s red is darker and its white band narrower, which is the entire difference between them.
Lebanon, since 1943. The third red-white-red flag on this site, and the third with no relation to the others. It was drawn in the margin of the constitution on the day of independence in 1943; the cedar in the middle is the tree the Phoenicians sold to Egypt and the psalms compare the righteous to.
Indonesia, since 1945. Red over white, from the banners of the Majapahit empire and used as a nationalist symbol since the 1920s. In 1945, a Surabaya crowd tore the blue strip off a Dutch flag flying over a hotel and produced this one exactly — a coincidence Indonesians enjoy, and not the origin.
Monaco, since 1881. The same two bands, from the heraldic colours of the Grimaldi family, in use for centuries before Indonesia existed. Indonesia was told about the clash in 1945 and pointed out that its own design was six hundred years old. Monaco’s is shorter and squarer; that is the entire difference.
Poland, since 1919. White over red, from the white eagle on a red field in the Polish arms since the thirteenth century. It is Indonesia and Monaco upside down, and related to neither.