Flags of the World, by Most to Least Recognized

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When you think of the world’s most iconic and recognizable flags, what comes to mind?

This visual shows results from FlagWhiz.com, a game that allows users to guess the correct country that corresponds to a given flag based on four multiple-choice options. Data is based on 511,581 guesses made from players all over the world.

The Most Recognizable Flags

The following flags were identified correctly over 97.9% of the time:

Country	Flag Description	Recognition Level
Japan	Red sun on white field	Highest
Canada	Red maple leaf between red bars	Highest
United Kingdom	Red and white crosses on blue	Highest
Brazil	Green with yellow diamond and blue globe	Highest
South Korea	Yin-yang with trigrams on white	Highest
Italy	Green, white, and red vertical stripes	Highest
France	Blue, white, and red vertical stripes	Highest
India	Orange, white, green with blue wheel	Highest
Germany	Black, red, and gold horizontal stripes	Highest
China	Red with five yellow stars	Highest

Many of these flags are unique and are from high profile countries, like Germany, Japan, or India.

The U.S. flag was still extremely identifiable, but lagged just a little bit behind these other countries in quiz results. Reasons for this are unclear, but it could be because Liberia, Malaysia, Uruguay, and even Chile have similar patterns with stars and stripes on their flags.

The Least Recognizable Flags

The following flags were identified correctly less than 67% of the time.

Country	Flag Description	Recognition Level
Mauritius	Red, blue, yellow, green stripes	Lowest
Vanuatu	Black-red-green bands, yellow borders, black triangle	Lowest
Togo	Green-yellow stripes, red canton with white star	Lower
Dominica	Green with yellow-black-white cross, red circle	Lower
Namibia	Red-blue-green diagonal, yellow border	Low
Burkina Faso	Red over green with yellow star	Low
Benin	Green vertical, yellow-red horizontal split	Low
Rwanda	Blue-yellow-green with sun in top right	Low
Tonga	White with red canton and white cross	Low
Grenada	Green-yellow X, red triangles, yellow star	Low

Countries here are typically smaller and are located in the Global South, from Africa, Oceania, or the Caribbean.

Some have more complicated designs, which make them harder to identify. Many of these are nations that only recently became independent in the 20th century— and many also tend to use Pan-African colors of red, yellow, and green.

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