Asia

Flag of Georgia

Georgia is a country at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia in the South Caucasus, bordered by Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It is one of the world's oldest winemaking regions, with an 8,000-year tradition of fermenting wine in clay vessels called qvevri buried underground. Georgia adopted Christianity as its state religion in the 4th century AD and has one of the world's oldest and most distinctive alphabets, the Georgian script, dating to at least the 5th century.

CapitalTbilisi
RegionAsia
Current flag since2004
Main coloursWhite, Red
Populationabout 3.7 million
Areaabout 70,000 km²
Flags in history3

Population and area are rounded.

What the flag of Georgia means

The Five Cross Flag is based on a medieval Georgian banner with a large red cross of St George, Georgia's patron saint, and four smaller crosses in the corners. The design was revived by the National Movement in the 1990s and became the official flag in 2004, after the Rose Revolution, replacing the dark red flag of the 1990s.

How to recognise it

White with a large red cross and four smaller red crosses in each quadrant (Five Cross Flag).

Did you know?

Georgia's winemaking tradition dates back 8,000 years — it is considered the birthplace of wine.

Easily confused with

Georgia's flag is often mixed up with these. Learn to tell them apart:

Albania

Flag history of Georgia

Every flag that has flown over Georgia, from today back through time.

2004–present

Five-Cross Flag

Adopted in 2004 after the Rose Revolution, the white flag bears a central red St. George's cross and four smaller Bolnisi crosses, reviving a banner of the medieval Kingdom of Georgia.

1990–2004

Restored 1918 republic flag

In 1990 Georgia readopted the wine-red flag of the 1918–21 Democratic Republic — designed by painter Iakob Nikoladze — which served through the Rose Revolution.

1951–1990

Georgian SSR

Distinctive among Soviet republic flags: a red field with a blue canton containing a hammer, sickle, and star inside a radiant blue sun.

Related historical states

Empires, kingdoms and republics that once covered part of Georgia.

1922–1991

Soviet Union

The gold hammer and sickle beneath a red star stood for the worker-peasant alliance. The exact shade and proportions were fixed by Soviet law in 1955.

1557–1867

Principality of Mingrelia

A white flag with a St George crest, flown by the Dadiani princes of western Georgia until the principality was absorbed by the Russian Empire.

1921–1931

SSR of Abkhazia

For a decade Abkhazia was a full Soviet republic with a hammer-and-sickle flag, before Stalin downgraded it to an autonomous republic within Georgia.

1951–1990

Georgian SSR

A red flag with a sunburst-and-hammer roundel in a blue canton; Soviet Georgia was the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, in the town of Gori.

1922–1936

Transcaucasian SFSR

For 14 years Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan were fused into a single Soviet republic — one of the four founding members of the USSR — before Stalin split them apart.

1918–1921

Democratic Republic of Georgia

A Menshevik-led social-democratic republic with a wine-red flag, conquered by the Red Army in 1921; its flag flew again over independent Georgia from 1990 to 2004.

1008–1490

Kingdom of Georgia

The medieval Christian kingdom that reached its 'Golden Age' under Queen Tamar, ruling much of the Caucasus before Mongol invasions fractured it into rival realms.