Flags of the world

Which colours appear most often?

Red is the most widespread flag colour by a clear margin: it fills a significant part of 146 of the 196 flags.White (111), blue (incl. light blue) (96) and green (80) follow. Purple is absent as a main colour; the nearest cases are the dark reds of Qatar and Latvia, which measure as maroon and are grouped with red here. Only 50 flags have no significant red at all.

Flags containing each colour family, out of 196. A flag can count in several rows.

Most flags are built from three main colours (99 flags), followed by two (60) and four (19). The 31 flags whose main colours are exactly red, white and blue range from France and the Netherlands to Cuba, Thailand and Taiwan—one reason those colours dominate any quick “which flag is this?” search. Among the 60 two-colour flags, Indonesia, Monaco and Poland are a classic trap: all are plain red and white bicolours that differ only in stripe order or proportions; see red and white flags for that group.

Colour meanings are set country by country and should not be generalised from one flag to another: the same green can stand for Islam, for agriculture or for forests, depending on the flag law or tradition behind it. Each country’s flag page gives its own explanation. Use the colour filter above to list every flag with a given colour.

Stripes, crosses, stars and crescents

Horizontal stripes are the most common layout (73 flags), well ahead of vertical stripes (26). 54 flags are tricolours—three bands in three different colours—of which 18 run vertically in the style of the French tricolore and 36 horizontally, like Germany’s. Hoist triangles and chevrons (29 flags) are especially common in Africa, the Caribbean and the Arab world.

Stars are the most common symbol: 64 flags show at least one. They range from the single star of Vietnam, Somalia or Morocco’s pentagram to the 50 of the United States. Crescents appear on 15 flags. Most belong to Muslim-majority countries, from Türkiye and Pakistan to Malaysia and the Comoros, but not all: Singapore’s crescent stands for a young nation on the rise, and Nepal’s moon is paired with a sun. 62 flags carry no symbol at all and rely on colour and layout alone.

Symbols are counted only when clearly visible on the flag. “Bird or animal” means the main charge or the dominant figure of an emblem (Albania’s eagle, Bhutan’s dragon), not small figures inside a coat of arms. Bolivia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua are shown with the arms of their state flags, as used on this site.

Flag families: shared colours, shared history

Many flags resemble each other on purpose. Colours borrowed from a liberation movement, a federation or an older empire signal a political or cultural link. Recognising the family is often the fastest way to narrow down an unknown flag.

Shapes and proportions

Flags are not all the same shape. Of the 187 flags with an official ratio recorded in Wikidata, 85 use 2:3 (height to length), 52 use 1:2 and 16 use 3:5; the remaining 34 use 20 other ratios. Galleries that crop every flag to the same box—as most flag sites do—hide these differences. The images on this page keep their own proportions.

The squarest and the longest rectangles: Switzerland (1:1) and Qatar (11:28).

• Square: Switzerland and Vatican City are the only two square national flags.
• Longest: Qatar’s 11:28 flag is the longest national flag, more than two and a half times as long as it is high.
• Not a rectangle: Nepal’s flag of two stacked pennants is the only non-rectangular national flag; its construction is defined step by step in the constitution.
• Unusual ratios: Belgium’s official flag is 13:15, Denmark’s 28:37 and El Salvador’s 189:335. North Korea changed its flag from 1:2 to 20:33 in its March 2026 constitution; Wikidata and our image still show the earlier 1:2 shape.

No ratio is recorded for Afghanistan, Belize, Cape Verde, United Kingdom, Cambodia, Nepal, Syria, Vatican City, Vanuatu. Nepal’s flag has no ratio because it is not a rectangle; the United Kingdom’s national flag is used at both 1:2 and 3:5.

The oldest and newest national flags

Claims about the “oldest flag” depend on whether a legend, the first written record or continuous official use is meant. The defensible answer is Denmark: Guinness World Records recognises the Dannebrog as the oldest continuously used national flag, dating the current design to 1625 and the square-ended shape to 1748. The story that the flag fell from the sky during a battle in 1219 is a legend; the white cross on red is documented from the 14th century.

• Austria: red–white–red arms were adopted by Duke Friedrich II in 1230 and appear in a coloured document of 1232. The tale of a blood-soaked tunic at the siege of Acre in 1191 is a later legend.
• Latvia: the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle describes a red banner with a white stripe around 1279–1280, the first credible mention. The modern flag was used at the proclamation of the state in 1918, fixed by law in the early 1920s and restored on 27 February 1990.
• Netherlands: the orange–white–blue Prince’s flag of the Dutch Revolt (late 16th century) later became red, white and blue. The colours were confirmed by royal decree only on 19 February 1937.

At the other end, these national flags were newly adopted or changed in design since 2000. Changes of shade or official colour specification (Albania 2002, Italy 2006, Honduras since 2022) are not listed.

Afghanistan is a special case. Since August 2021 the Taliban authorities have used a white flag bearing the black shahada, but they are not recognised at the United Nations, where Afghanistan’s seat is still held by a diplomat appointed by the former government. For that reason this gallery and the Afghan flag pageshow the republic’s black–red–green tricolour.

Flags by continent, quizzes and comparisons

Two guides go deeper into identification: flags that look alike compares ten easily confused pairs such as Chad and Romania or Indonesia and Monaco, and red and white flags sorts that large group by pattern.

Frequently asked questions