Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago nation, consisting of more than 17,000 islands and home to the world's fourth-largest population. It spans a vast area straddling the equator in Southeast Asia and has extraordinary biodiversity including orangutans, Komodo dragons, Sumatran tigers, and pygmy elephants. Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population while maintaining a pluralistic, secular constitution, and is home to a remarkable diversity of more than 700 languages.
Population and area are rounded.
Red and white, the Sang Saka Merah-Putih, are linked to the 13th-century Majapahit Empire, whose banners used the same colours. Red stands for courage and white for purity. The flag was first officially raised at the proclamation of independence on 17 August 1945; that original flag, sewn by Fatmawati Sukarno, is kept as a national heirloom.
Horizontal red-over-white. Monaco is red-over-white but narrower. Poland is the reverse: white-over-red.
Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago, comprising over 17,000 islands.
Indonesia's flag is often mixed up with these. Learn to tell them apart:
Every flag that has flown over Indonesia, from today back through time.
A simple red-over-white bicolour whose colors trace back to the 13th-century Majapahit Empire. Banned by the Dutch, it was raised on independence day in 1945. It is nearly identical to Monaco's flag but with a 2:3 ratio.
For over a century the islands were governed as the Dutch East Indies under the red-white-blue flag of the Netherlands — the colonial empire built on spices, sugar, coffee and rubber. The red-and-white nationalist flag was banned throughout this period; raising it was an act of defiance, which is exactly what the independence leaders did in 1945 as Dutch rule collapsed after the Japanese occupation.
Gowa was a powerful Makassar seafaring kingdom in southern Sulawesi that dominated the eastern Indonesian spice trade. After a long war, the Dutch East India Company and allied Bugis forces defeated Gowa at the 1669 Treaty of Bongaya, breaking its commercial power.
Tidore was a Moluccan spice kingdom and the great rival of neighbouring Ternate, controlling cloves and nutmeg coveted across the world. It long resisted European domination, allying variously with the Spanish and Portuguese against the Dutch, before being absorbed into the Dutch East Indies.
A Dutch-created federal state in West Java (Sundanese lands), folded into the Republic of Indonesia.
A Dutch-sponsored federal state created to weaken the Indonesian Republic, dissolved into the unitary republic.
A remarkable self-governing republic of Chinese gold miners in West Borneo, often called one of Asia's first republics.
A sultanate at the mouth of the Kapuas in West Borneo, founded by an Arab sayyid dynasty.
A wealthy Sumatran sultanate, heir to the ancient Srivijaya empire, abolished by the Dutch.
The last great independent Javanese kingdom, which the Dutch broke up into the courts of Yogyakarta and Surakarta.
A sultanate of southern Borneo (Kalimantan), rich in pepper and diamonds, abolished by the Dutch after a long war.
A Sumatran sultanate on the Jambi River, a pepper-trading power before the Dutch deposed its sultan.
A Dutch-engineered federal state, one of several meant to dilute the Indonesian Republic before they all merged into it.
A short-lived Dutch-sponsored federal state on the island of Madura, absorbed into unitary Indonesia.
A sultanate of northeastern Borneo, dissolved into the Indonesian republic.
A Malay sultanate of eastern Sumatra whose sultan was among the first to back the new Indonesian Republic.
A Malay sultanate of Sumatra's east coast, swept away in the 1946 social revolution.
A sultanate of West Borneo (Kalimantan), long a centre of gold mining and Malay culture.
A Malay sultanate of northeast Sumatra that grew rich on tobacco and then oil, abolished in Indonesia's social revolution.
Empires, kingdoms and republics that once covered part of Indonesia.
Alternating red-and-white stripes flown by the great Javanese maritime empire — the ancestral colors that became modern Indonesia's flag.
The Alam Peudeueng or 'Sword Standard' — a dark-red field with a white crescent, star, and sword, the crescent reflecting the sultanate's Ottoman alliance against the Portuguese.
The greatest Islamic kingdom of central Java, which fought the Dutch East India Company for decades before being split into the Yogyakarta and Surakarta courts.
The red-white-blue tricolor with the 'VOC' monogram — the flag of the world's first multinational corporation, which ruled much of the Indies before the Dutch state took over.
The dominant Makassarese power of South Sulawesi flew a deep-red field with a white canton and a kris dagger, until it fell to the Dutch after the Makassar War.
A yellow flag with a black ring reading 'the realm of Ternate'. This Moluccan clove kingdom was one of the original Spice Islands powers fought over by Europe.
Ternate's great spice-trade rival in Maluku, whose flag carried Arabic inscriptions. At its height Tidore claimed influence as far as western New Guinea.
A white field with two crossed golden swords, flown by the wealthy pepper-trading Islamic sultanate of western Java until the Dutch abolished it.
A Hakka Chinese mining state on Borneo, sometimes called one of Asia's first republics, with elected leaders — until the Dutch absorbed it.
A Malay sultanate on Sumatra's east coast that grew rich on trade, flying black and yellow bands with a red hoist crest, until it joined the new Indonesian republic in 1945.
A Borneo sultanate founded at the mouth of the Kapuas River by an Arab sayyid, flying a yellow flag with a green crescent and star.
A North Kalimantan coastal sultanate with a simple yellow-over-blue flag, dissolved after a violent 1950s clash with the Indonesian republic.
A Balinese kingdom in the island's east that once ruled neighbouring Lombok, before falling to the Dutch in the early 1900s.
A long-lived island sultanate off southeast Sulawesi, strategically placed on the spice routes, with a distinctive constitution limiting the sultan's power.
A Malay sultanate on Sumatra's east coast that grew immensely rich from Dutch tobacco plantations around Medan, before the 1946 social revolution swept away the Sumatran sultanates.
A Malay maritime sultanate of the islands between Sumatra and Borneo, formed when the British and Dutch split the old Johor realm, dissolved by the Dutch in 1911.
A Dutch-sponsored federal state covering Sulawesi and the eastern islands during the Indonesian National Revolution, dissolved into the unitary Republic of Indonesia in 1950.
A Dutch-backed Sundanese federal state in West Java set up during the revolution, one of several puppet states that were quickly absorbed into the unitary Indonesian republic.
Largely Christian Ambonese proclaimed an independent republic in the Moluccas in 1950; its blue-white-green-red flag is still flown by an exiled government-in-exile in the Netherlands.
The 38 states, provinces and regions of Indonesia with their own flags.
Aceh
North Sumatra
West Sumatra
Riau
Jambi
South Sumatra
Bengkulu
Lampung
Bangka Belitung Islands
Riau Islands
Jakarta
West Java
Banten
Central Java
Yogyakarta
East Java
Bali
West Nusa Tenggara
East Nusa Tenggara
West Kalimantan
Central Kalimantan
South Kalimantan
East Kalimantan
North Kalimantan
North Sulawesi
Gorontalo
Central Sulawesi
West Sulawesi
South Sulawesi
Southeast Sulawesi Maluku
North Maluku
Papua
West Papua
South Papua
Central Papua
Highland Papua
Southwest PapuaIndonesia shares a land border with 3 countries: Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste.
17 other national flags use the same main colours as Indonesia's.
Austria
Bahrain
Canada
Denmark
Georgia
Japan
Latvia
Malta
Monaco
Peru
Poland
Qatar
Singapore
Switzerland
Tonga
Tunisia
Turkey
Malaysia
Papua New Guinea
Timor-Leste