How to learn the flags of the world

The families

• The Nordic cross. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland all have the same off-centre cross and differ only in colour.
• White, blue and red stripes. Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia share the Slavic colours. Slovakia and Slovenia are told apart by their shields.
• Green, yellow and red. The colours of much of Africa: Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Cameroon, Benin. Mali and Guinea are mirror images of each other.
• Red, white and black. The Arab colours, often with green: Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and Sudan are the clearest.
• Yellow, blue and red. Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela were once one country and kept its flag.
• Blue, white, blue. Central America: Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua in horizontal stripes, Guatemala in vertical ones.
• The Union Jack in the corner. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Tuvalu.
• The crescent and star. Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and others.

The look-alike pairs

A few pairs are close enough that they have to be learned together:

• Indonesia and Monaco. Both red over white. Poland is the same two colours the other way up.
• Romania and Chad. Blue, yellow and red in vertical stripes, almost identical.
• Ireland and Côte d'Ivoire. Ireland starts with green at the flagpole, Côte d'Ivoire with orange.
• The Netherlands and Luxembourg. Red, white and blue; Luxembourg's blue is lighter.
• Australia and New Zealand. Australia's stars are white and there are six. New Zealand's are red and there are four.
• Italy and Mexico. The same green, white and red; Mexico has its eagle in the middle.

The ones that stand alone

The flags that belong to no family are the easy ones, because nothing competes with them: Nepal's, the only one that is not a rectangle; Canada's maple leaf; Japan's red disc; Brazil's globe; the square flags of Switzerland and Vatican City. Collect these early.

Practise it

A flag quiz shows you a flag to name, or a name with four flags to choose from. Take one continent at a time, because a continent's flags are mostly one or two families, and the differences are what you are learning. Flags you miss come back in Review.

• Flags of Europe, Flags of Africa, Flags of Asia, Flags of the Americas, Flags of Oceania.
• Flags of the world: all of them.