Flags of the World
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
144 free Flags of the World trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
84 free flag trivia questions with answers. Did you know that Nepal is the only country with a non-rectangular flag? Test your global flag knowledge with this flag trivia game covering every continent: you will identify iconic symbols, learn flag histories, and discover which nations share unexpected design similarities. The questions run from easy ones almost anyone can get (which flag has a maple leaf) to hard flag trivia questions on colours, crescents, stars and the stories behind them, so it works for a classroom, a family night or a pub quiz round. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source and each question shows its citation once you have answered, so any argument about a flag can be settled on the spot.
30 of 144 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country adopted its present flag only in 1965, after a parliamentary battle remembered as the Great Flag Debate?
Canada
Canada argued for six months before choosing George Stanley's single maple leaf over Prime Minister Lester Pearson's favourite, three leaves between blue bars; the new flag first flew on 15 February 1965.
Q 02Which country is the only one in the world with a non-rectangular national flag?
Nepal
Nepal's flag joins two pennants into one, and its moon and sun express the hope that the country will endure as long as they do.
Q 03Which country's flag is a simple red disc on a white background?
Japan
Japan's sun-disc flag, the Hinomaru, was used for more than a century before any law made it official: the Diet only adopted it as the national flag in 1999, together with the anthem.
Q 04Which country's red flag bears a white cross set off-centre toward the pole?
Denmark
Denmark's Dannebrog is said to have fallen from the sky during a battle in Estonia in 1219; Guinness lists it as the oldest national flag in continuous use, counting from 1625.
Q 05Which country's flag has the Union Jack plus a large white seven-pointed 'Commonwealth Star'?
Australia
Australia's flag pairs the Union Jack with the seven-pointed Commonwealth Star; the star had six points for the federating states until a seventh for the territories was added in 1908, the design winning a 1901 competition.
Q 06Which nickname for the American flag did sea captain William Driver coin for the flag on his own ship?
Old Glory
Old Glory was Driver's name for a 24-star flag sewn by his mother and friends in Salem; during the Civil War he hid it inside a coverlet in Nashville to keep it from Confederates.
Q 07Which African country's flag is a green, white, and green vertical tricolor?
Nigeria
Nigeria's green-white-green flag came from student Michael Taiwo Akinkunmi's winning entry in a 1959 competition of almost 3,000 designs; judges removed his red quarter-sun before adoption at independence on 1 October 1960.
Q 08Which country's flag features a large yellow five-pointed star centered on a red background?
Vietnam
Vietnam's red flag with a yellow star was North Vietnam's; the South's yellow flag with three red stripes fell with Saigon in 1975, and the red flag became the whole country's in 1976.
Q 09What word, coined by Whitney Smith and first printed in 1959, names the study of flags?
Vexillology
Vexillology comes from vexillum, the Latin for a flag or banner; Whitney Smith coined it as a teenager in 1957 and went on to design the flag of Guyana while still a Harvard student.
Q 10What animal appears on the flag of Wales?
Dragon
The dragon was Henry VII's emblem: he marched under a red dragon standard at Bosworth in 1485, and the flag's green and white are the livery colours of his Tudor dynasty.
Q 11Which two countries have square-shaped national flags?
Switzerland and Vatican City
Switzerland and Vatican City fly the only square national flags; Swiss ships are the exception, flying a rectangular version adopted in 1941 so they could be identified on the Rhine and at sea.
Q 12Which country's flag is an off-centre blue cross on a plain white field?
Finland
Finland adopted its blue cross in May 1918, months after independence; the design is traditionally credited to the poet Zachris Topelius, who proposed white for the snow and blue for the lakes.
Q 13Which country's flag shows a single white crescent and star on a plain red background?
Turkey
Q 21Which country's green flag carries the Islamic declaration of faith in white script above a sword?
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's flag bears the shahada, the Muslim creed; because the words are sacred the flag is never lowered to half-mast, and it is made double-sided so the script reads correctly from both sides.
Q 22Which country's flag features a red circle on a green background?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh's flag of the 1971 independence struggle carried a gold map of the country inside the red disc; in January 1972 the map was dropped and the disc shifted slightly toward the hoist.
Q 23Which Middle Eastern country's flag has a green cedar tree across its central white stripe?
Lebanon
Turkey's flag descends from an Ottoman naval flag of 1793; its star had eight points until about 1844, when the five-pointed version still flown today took over.
Q 14Which country's flag has two blue stripes inspired by the stripes of a traditional prayer shawl?
Israel
Israel's flag was the Zionist movement's banner for half a century before the state existed; its stripes echo the tallit, and the star between them is the Star of David.
Q 15Which country has the only national flag that is different on its front and back sides?
Paraguay
Paraguay's flag shows the national arms on the front and the Treasury seal, a lion beneath a liberty cap, on the back; its red, white and blue were borrowed from the French Tricolour under the dictator Francia.
Q 16What weapon is depicted on the flag of Mozambique?
AK-47 rifle
The AK-47 rifle, crossed with a hoe over an open book, stands for defence, production and study; the opposition has long called for its removal, but a 2005 contest to redesign the flag changed nothing.
Q 17Which Pacific nation's flag shows a gold frigatebird over a rising sun and three wavy stripes?
Kiribati
Kiribati based its flag on the colony's 1937 coat of arms; when heralds in London redrew it with a bigger bird and sun, islanders insisted on the original, hoisted at independence in 1979.
Q 18Which group of stars appears on the flag of New Zealand?
The Southern Cross
The Southern Cross is shown as four red stars edged in white; in 1869 the stars replaced the letters 'NZ' that had marked the colony's blue ensign since 1867.
Q 19Which country's flag centres on an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a serpent?
Mexico
Mexico's emblem shows the sign that, in Aztec legend, marked where to found Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City; the eagle wore a crown under Mexico's emperors and lost it under the republic.
Q 20Which European country's white-over-red flag looks like Indonesia's turned upside down?
Poland
Poland's white and red come from its coat of arms, a white eagle on a red shield that has been in use since the 13th century.
Under the French mandate Lebanon's cedar sat on a French Tricolour; in 1943 a new flag kept the tree but swapped the French colours for red and white stripes.
Q 24Which North African country's red flag carries a green five-pointed star drawn as an interlaced pentagram?
Morocco
Morocco flew a plain red flag, the colour of its ruling dynasty since the 17th century, until 1915, when the green pentagram known as the Seal of Solomon was added to its centre.
Q 25Which country's flag features a trident head?
Barbados
Barbados took the trident from its colonial badge and left off the shaft: only the head appears, to mark the break with British rule at independence in 1966.
Q 26What is the most common color found on national flags around the world?
Red
Red appears on roughly three-quarters of national flags, only just ahead of white; blue, for all the red-white-and-blue tricolours, is on about half.
Q 27Which country's flag shows its own outline in copper above two crossed green branches?
Cyprus
Cyprus adopted a deliberately neutral design at independence in 1960: the whole island above two branches of peace, avoiding the colours and symbols of both its Greek and Turkish communities.
Q 28Which country's flag has light blue, white and light blue bands with a sun bearing a human face?
Argentina
Argentina added the Sun of May in 1818 in memory of the revolution of May 1810 that began its break from Spain; Uruguay's flag carries the same sun.
Q 29From 1977 to 2011, which country's national flag was a single plain colour with no design?
Libya
Libya's plain green flag was Gaddafi's own choice in 1977; after his fall in 2011 the country went back to the red, black and green flag of independence.
Q 30From top to bottom, what are the colours of the three horizontal stripes on the German flag?
Black, red, and gold
Black, red, and gold were the colours of the 1848 revolutionaries and the Weimar Republic; in 1949 the Federal Republic chose that democratic tradition over the Empire's black-white-red.