Many flags around the world are iconic, think the ones of France, Canada, South Africa, the Nordics, etc.
However, there are some that aren’t as good, like the Australian and New Zealand flags, both of which still retain the union jack with little Indigenous symbolism. Speaking as an Australian myself, our flag isn’t all that great! The Southern Cross is cool, but there is no hint of green/gold, and the union jack just looks tacked on. There are also many flags that look good, but the symbolism represents ideas that you’re against. Think Iran’s flag that draws heavily from their sect of Islam and the theocracy, or the PRC’s flag having the smaller stars representing the people surrounding the larger star representing the one party state. There’s also some that are okay, but a bit boring and hard of distinguish from the rest, and an additional element would make it stand out more.
And purple should be on more flags! Republican Spain during the 1930s had some purple, but they lost the civil war and the flag was replaced.
If you could change the national flags of the world, what would be your flag proposals?
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A lot of African countries- green red yellow and a star maybe? Just not a lot of variety and no real character.
Tricolors for others are fine but I wonder what else they could do, ie. Netherlands, etc etc.
Somalia, easily.
Union Jack countries could differentiate more.
Lot of south American countries are similar too… Maybe a bit more variety there as well.
It’s not a national flag but the Washington State flag is horrid.
Ugly as hell, looks even worse at a distance, can’t be read from a distance, terrible shade of green, tells you nothing about our gorgeous state other than why it’s called Washington like that wasn’t obvious. It’s so hard to see at a distance it took me like 20 years of living here to realize it was a portrait, I always just thought it was ugly and never bothered to actually look at it. One of the worst flags in the country for one of the best states.
Lol pixelated pictures for flags before they invented pixels
I’d take out the 13 stripes from the US flag and just use the naval jack.
In general I think any flag that is using seals, crests, or text should probably have a redesign, not necessarily to remove the icons, but to simplify them. (US state flags are the worst offenders here.)
Belize has a flag that looks like it could be the flag of a midwestern state.
The flag of Cyprus is just an outline of the island which, I feel, relies too much on cartography for its symbol. What if you’d never seen a map?
I feel like if the U.S. redesigned their flag, they should definitely put an eagle on it. Birds are cool and should be on more flags!
For New Zealand, I like Hundertwasser’s Koru Flag
I think it looks really cool too!
All of the flags that are just stripes. It’s too easy to get them mixed up with similar-looking striped flags, especially if there are others with the same colors. Obviously people from that country will know which flag they’re looking at, but people from other countries can easily get confused. It kind of detracts from the power of the flag if other people don’t know what it represents or have to search it up every time they see it.
Flags should be immediately distinctive and memorable, IMO. Like, I love how Canada’s flag has a Maple leaf. No one else has a maple leaf, so people can remember that one.
I feel like some tricolours should get a pass. France and the Netherlands are the OGs, but many others are great too! Estonia’s is my favourite colour combination, but Germany, Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria are pretty recognisable too. Sierra Leone and Gabon have pretty underrated tricolours too. There are some that are too similar to others, like those of Russia (very similar to the Dutch), Chad (nearly identical to Romania), and Italy (pretty close to France, in my opinion Mexico did the colour combo better with the cool eagle)
As for the bicolours, you have the triage of Poland, Monaco, and Indonesia who are really similar. Poland should add their eagle back to the flag, birds are cool and it’s deeply tied to their history, and Indonesia needs to spice their flag up to be more interesting. Monaco should probably be annexed into France, maybe they could be an autonomous province or something. Then you have Ukraine, who have a pretty neat flag that is easily recognisable, but yes it is a little boring.
Austria and Latvia are quite similar to each other too, the latter has a thinner strip that’s more unique, but I feel like both could be improved.
Nz flag is good I wouldnt change it for any of the shit alternatives.
I’d change the Swiss flag because its square and I want it to be rectangular.
I would change the Australian flag as it infringes on our flag. I’d change it to the ugly green and yellow combo they love with kangaroo on it.
Tricolour flags are to plain and confusing so I’d ban tri colour flags. If you have a tri colour flag you got to put a symbol on it at least.
There are many valid opinions, but these aren’t, I’m sorry to say
Laser kiwi is cool, and the proposals to include more Maori symbolism are great too!
The Swiss flag should stay the same, since all squares are rectangles! Plus you have the Vatican being quite square too
As an Aussie, green and gold is not an ugly combination, it’s one of the greatest!
Tricolours are cool, and they’re not all bad! Estonia’s is probably my favourite (all the Baltics have great flags), but France and the Netherlands were some of the OGs, and Germany is pretty distinct too. Gabon and Sierra Leone have pretty underrated tricolours too.
Laser kiwi is a cool meme flag but a terrible national flag. All the proposed flags we got shown look souless and have no meaning. We already got Maori symbolism on our flag its the southern cross constellation.
I didnt know about the Vatican being square but stretch that out to.
The square Swiss flag works well because of the cross. If it were oblong, it would look unbalanced with the cross in the middle.
And the Swiss flag can be easily represented with a 5x5 grid of pixels, which is pretty cool!
I’m Australian and our flag is awesome, if I had to change it i would replace the union jack with the aboriginal flag and put new Zealand down by the side of the southern Cross
You’d take Scotland out, but leave Northern Ireland?
I voted for independence in that referendum.
murican flag should be the “pedobär”
Wait, that’s an actual flag? What the heck people are weird man
It is always a little strange for me to see the flag of Mozambique. I don’t really know anything about the country, but the flag with its AK47 in there has the vibe of a terrorist organization.
Australia’s official flag is ho-hum, but you already have an incredible flag you could use instead
Way better! Finally got rid of that union jack. This is how it should be.
The Union Jack itself only represents 3 of the 4 countries in the UK. And since the missing one, Wales, has a dragon on their flag, it seems like an easy fix that will make the country as a whole cooler
I’d like to see Ireland use the green field with harp flag. I get the symbolism of the tricolor but it’d be nice to move past the Catholics vs Protestants and leave religion out of it. Maybe, if re-unification happens.
I think that the Australian and New Zealand ones are okay from a technical standpoint.
We have a lot of really bad state flags in the US. A lot of them originally involved slapping the state seal (not optimized for flag use, usually more-detailed) on usually some shade of blue.
That being said, a bunch of them have been revised. Utah (“The Beehive State”) did a 2024 revision, which I think is a pretty strong improvement (and follows the “originally just the state-seal-on-blue” pattern):
to
And honestly, I think that most of those warrant a change more than most national flags.
However, if I were going to make changes to national flags…hmm. Well, there are a whole bunch of countries that have extremely similar flags. Nobody wants to back down on their flag, but honestly, the present state of affairs just kind of sucks from a functional standpoint, seeing as the purpose of flags is to let one easily identify something as being associated with a country. It’d be nice if they’d flip a coin or something and have one of the countries pick something more-distinctive.
One of the most-egregious is the flag of Chad:
And the flag of Romania:
There are a bunch more that look very similar at a distance or at small sizes or if one is being flown upside-down. I won’t list them all here, but it’d be awesome if those would get sorted out.
Also, while the tricolor, as with the above flags, is associated with republicanism, and thus a lot of countries use it, and technically, it’s nice (simple, easy to identify, no text), there are similar alternatives that would help make flags a lot more distinguishable. Take the flag of Czechia, for example:
Still three colors, but looks pretty different from most other national flags. You don’t get into the “tricolor with very similar colors” problem.
Bravo on all the effort in that. Utah’s updated flag looks great. Another example of crazy close flags is Poland and Monaco along with like 5 other countries.
I really like the flag of Greenland.
Nepal. I’m all for non-rectangular flags, but couldn’t they have chosen a different aspect ratio than
Why though? What is the significance of this ratio?
Edit: Looked it up and it actually makes sense. The flag is not a rectangle.
When constructed according to the stated geometric construction law, the ratio of the height of the flag to the longest width is an irrational number. This is common for the hypotenuse of triangles.
