Ten sovereign countries have orange on their national flags: India, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Niger, Bhutan, Armenia, Sri Lanka, Zambia, the Marshall Islands and Cyprus. To be counted, a flag must have orange as a stripe, field or main design element, and its own law or official description must call the colour orange or one of its named shades, either saffron or copper. India has by far the most people of the ten, and its saffron band was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947. Ireland's green, white and orange tricolour is one of the oldest designs of the ten. It was taken up by the Young Irelanders in 1848 and raised over Dublin's General Post Office in 1916. Several other flags look orange but are left out, because the colour is officially gold, yellow or "chilli red". Those cases matter as much as the list itself.
Saffron, copper and gold: where orange starts and stops
Orange is hard to count because flag laws rarely use the word. Three of the ten raise a naming question. India's top band is officially "India saffron", which Wikipedia gives as approximately #FF671F in RGB, a clear orange on screen. Sri Lanka's flag article describes its two hoist-side stripes as teal and orange but calls the frame around the lion a saffron or golden-yellow border. Here only the stripe counts. Cyprus describes the map of the island on its flag as copper-orange. The first specification in August 1960 gave the shade as Pantone 144-C, and a 2006 update changed it to Pantone 1385. Both are orange tones, so Cyprus is included.
The reverse problem keeps out several flags that many people see as orange. Papua New Guinea's bird-of-paradise and Kiribati's frigatebird and rising sun are both officially gold. South Africa's 1994 flag has a band that many viewers read as orange, but its official colour is chilli red. That choice was deliberate, as the last section explains. Historic and sub-national flags are excluded as well. The Netherlands' orange Prince's Flag has not been the national flag for centuries, and princely-state or provincial banners are not national flags.
The rule used here is that orange must be part of the design itself, such as a band, a field, a disc or a main emblem, and not just a thin outline. With that rule the count is ten. That makes orange one of the less common colours on national flags.
The ten orange flags, from Ireland's tricolour to the Marshall Islands
| Country | Where the orange is | What the orange stands for | Current flag adopted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland | Fly-side vertical stripe | Irish Protestants | 1919–1921 (Article 7 of the 1937 constitution) |
| India | Top horizontal band ("saffron") | Renunciation (Radhakrishnan's explanation) | 22 July 1947 |
| Ivory Coast | Hoist-side vertical stripe | The land, the struggle and blood | 3 December 1959 |
| Niger | Top band and central disc | Usually read as the Sahara, with the disc as the sun (no official meaning) | 23 November 1959 |
| Bhutan | Lower diagonal half | Buddhist spiritual tradition | 1969 |
| Armenia | Bottom horizontal band | Talent and hard work | 24 August 1990 |
| Sri Lanka | Vertical stripe by the hoist | The Tamil community | 1948 (redesigned 1972) |
| Zambia | Fly-side stripe and the eagle | Copper and mineral wealth | 24 October 1964 |
| Marshall Islands | Lower half of the diagonal ray | The Ralik Chain, "sunset", and courage | 1 May 1979 |
| Cyprus | Map of the island | The island's copper deposits | August 1960 |
Four of the ten are tricolours that use orange, white and green, the colours of Ireland, India, Ivory Coast and Niger. Those four are easy to confuse with one another. Ivory Coast's flag has the same three vertical stripes as Ireland's in the reverse order, with orange at the hoist instead of green at the hoist. Niger's flag is a horizontal orange, white and green flag like India's. The difference is the central emblem, an orange disc on Niger's flag and a navy-blue wheel on India's.
Orange for faith and community: Ireland, India, Bhutan and Sri Lanka
On four flags, orange stands for a group of people or a religious tradition. Ireland's orange stands for the Protestant minority, who were supporters of William of Orange, and the green stands for Roman Catholics. A green and orange cockade was worn in Cork in March 1830 as a sign of hoped-for unity, and Emelia Eleanor Hamilton added the white. In 1848 Thomas Francis Meagher of the Young Irelanders said the white stood for "a lasting truce between Orange and Green". The tricolour became the main national symbol after it flew over the GPO during the 1916 Easter Rising. The Irish Republic adopted it during the War of Independence (1919–1921), and Article 7 of the 1937 constitution names it as the national flag. Its history is told in full in our post on the flag of Ireland.
India's saffron came from a series of changes to the flag of the independence movement. An earlier design had red, which was replaced with saffron, and white was added in the centre for other religious communities. Jawaharlal Nehru proposed the final design to the Constituent Assembly on 22 July 1947. It has bands of deep saffron, white and dark green with the 24-spoke Ashoka Chakra in navy blue, and it became the flag of the Union of India on 15 August 1947. Our guide to the meaning and history of India's flag follows each stage.
Bhutan's flag is split diagonally from the lower hoist corner, with yellow in the upper triangle and orange in the lower. A black and white dragon, the Druk, lies along the dividing line and holds a jewel in each claw. Yellow stands for the king's civil authority and orange for the Buddhist spiritual tradition, especially the Drukpa Kagyu and Nyingma schools. The lower half was once red. A Bhutanese government account says the king ordered it changed to orange "sometime in 1968 or 69", and the current design dates from 1969. The colours are specified as Pantone 116 and 165.
Sri Lanka's Lion Flag was adopted in 1948 for the Dominion of Ceylon. It was changed in 1953 and redesigned in 1972. Beside the maroon panel with its golden lion are two vertical stripes, one teal and one orange, with the orange one closer to the lion. The orange stripe stands for the island's Tamils, both Sri Lankan Tamils and Indian Tamils, and the teal stripe stands for the Sri Lankan Moors.
Orange for land, sun and copper: Ivory Coast, Niger, Zambia, Cyprus and Armenia
On the other flags, orange stands for landscape, mineral wealth or national character. Ivory Coast adopted its vertical orange, white and green flag by law on 3 December 1959, and Article 48 of the 2016 constitution still defines it. According to Jean Delafosse, the minister of state who presented the flag to the Legislative Assembly, the orange stands for Ivorians' land, struggle and blood. A legislator named Augustin Loubao once proposed changing the orange to red, but the original was kept. Niger's flag was first adopted by the territorial assembly on 23 November 1959. Its upper orange band is usually read as the Sahara in the north, the white as the Sahel, the green as the fertile south, and the orange disc as the sun.
Zambia uses orange twice. It is the colour of the fish eagle and of the right-hand stripe in the block at the fly, where it stands for copper and the country's mineral wealth. Cyprus ties its orange to the same metal. The map on the white field is copper-orange because of the island's large copper deposits, and Wikipedia notes that the island may take its name from copper. Cyprus is one of the few countries whose flag shows a map of its own territory.
Armenia's red, blue and orange flag was first used by the First Republic of 1918–1920 and was re-adopted by the Armenian Supreme Soviet on 24 August 1990. Officially, red stands for the Armenian highlands and the nation's struggle, blue for the sky, and orange for the people's creative talent and hard work. The colour was nearly dropped at the start. When Stepan Malkhasyants proposed the tricolour, several members of the assembly wanted green instead, because orange cloth was hard to obtain in Armenia at the time.
The Marshall Islands flag was adopted on 1 May 1979, the day self-government began, and was designed by Emlain Kabua, the republic's first First Lady. A diagonal band rising across the blue field stands for the equator, and the star above it puts the islands in the Northern Hemisphere. The band is half white and half orange. The white stands for the Ratak Chain ("sunrise") and peace, and the orange stands for the Ralik Chain ("sunset") and courage.
The Netherlands in 1937 and South Africa in 1994: flags that turned orange down
Two countries with strong links to orange decided not to use it. The Dutch revolt against Philip II of Spain was led by Prince William of Orange (1533–1584). His orange, white and blue livery is first recorded at the siege of Leiden in 1574, when Dutch officers wore armbands in those colours, and the Prince's Flag built on it became one of the first tricolours. Red began to replace the orange as early as 1597, and it took over gradually between about 1630 and 1660 as the Republic distanced itself from the House of Orange. In the 1920s and 1930s the old orange flag became popular again among Orangists, conservatives and Dutch fascists. To settle the matter, Queen Wilhelmina issued a royal decree on 19 February 1937 stating that the colours of the Dutch flag are red, white and blue. Orange remained the colour of the royal House of Orange, but it was kept off the flag.
South Africa's flag was proclaimed by F. W. de Klerk on 20 April 1994. In his autobiography The Last Trek, de Klerk wrote that chilli red was chosen instead of plain red, which English-speaking South Africans would have preferred, or orange, which some Afrikaners would have preferred. That decision is why South Africa is not on the list of ten, even though its flag often looks orange in photographs. For the full range of tricolours behind several of these designs, see our guide to flags with a vertical tricolor, where Ireland and Ivory Coast sit side by side.