Douglas Wilhelm Harder

World history and world flags are of interest to me and I thought others may find the map shown in Figure 1 to be useful—it is a compilation of a reasonable percentage of the world's flags with almost 800 national flags and other flags (states, provinces, territories, cultures, districts, and the occasional city) represented including various indigenous peoples. Enjoy, and select a larger format if you want to print this. Please note, it is almost impossible to arrange all the flags in the world in close-to-correct proximity without some distortion. Islands and larger countries have the fortune of having more room to draw the flags while regions such as the Caribbean, Europe, Africa and the Middle East are significantly more dense. Please let me know if there are any errors or omissions. Where room allows, I have included provincial, state, or department flags, including Canada, the United States, Mexico, Greenland, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and Micronesia. In other cases, some of the sub-national flags are shown, including Russia, the United Kingdom, Venezuela, Ecuador, South Africa, Botswana, Indonesia, Marshall Islands, Spain, Portugal, and a few others. In some cases (e.g., China and India), countries do not permit states to have separate flags and thus none are displayed even though it appears room is available. The islands of the Caribbean swing out into the Atlantic so that the relative order of the islands is preserved while still having flags that are visible. If you think it is possible to include additional flags, please let me know.

In my last pass, I updated the districts of Greenland, corrected what was Camberra and the Federal District of Mexico, added numerous first-nations flags, added a number of first-nations flags mostly in Canada and the United States, and added some interesting flags that were by request: Bavaria, Brittany, Flanders and Wallonia, Venice (which does indeed have a very interesting flag) and the two breakaway republics from Ukraine —someone on reddit pointed this out. I also corrected the flag of Sahrawi, as I had read a claim that only the reverse had the crescent moon and star; however, this appears to not be supported. B.t.w., why doesn't anyone ask me these directly, and only comment on reddit?

Oh yes, the primary reason for most flags is space available. That's mostly it. Trying to include as many flags as possible while still keeping a pleasing display is, as you may guess, difficult. I did include Gdansk, but that is of personal interest to me, and it is a significant city in history; after all, it was again a city-state only a century ago.

Please note, I do not try to judge the merits of breakaway republics, nor do I include breakaway regions only if I agree with their stand; I certainly do not agree with ISIS, but it is still an extant political entity.

This was last updated on June 10, 2020.

Figure 1. Flags of the World.

Sizes: 500 × 1000, 1000 × 2000, 2000 × 4000, 4000 × 8000, 6000 × 12000

Note: the the image says that this may be printed for personal or academic use. If you are a printing company, and someone wants to print this for themselves, please feel free to do so. I simply do not want companies to print this on mass for commercial sales.

Note: Any corrections or recommendations or suggestions that are acted upon will result in your name being added to the list of acknowledgements at the bottom of the poster (that is, if you wish). Please e-mail me if you have any such comments at dwharder@gmail.com.

The source for the flags is the Flags of the World website and Wikipedia and the source of the map image is the Wikipedia copy of the CIA World Factbook Political World Map.