Which national flags would you change?

All of them.

Change them all to plain black, with no other designs or colors.

I think that the Australian and New Zealand ones are okay from a technical standpoint.

We have a lot of really bad state flags in the US. A lot of them originally involved slapping the state seal (not optimized for flag use, usually more-detailed) on usually some shade of blue.

That being said, a bunch of them have been revised. Utah ("The Beehive State" did a 2024 revision, which I think is a pretty strong improvement (and follows the "originally just the state-seal-on-blue" pattern):



to



And honestly, I think that most of those warrant a change more than most national flags.

However, if I were going to make changes to national flags...hmm. Well, there are a whole bunch of countries that have extremely similar flags. Nobody wants to back down on their flag, but honestly, the present state of affairs just kind of sucks from a functional standpoint, seeing as the purpose of flags is to let one easily identify something as being associated with a country. It'd be nice if they'd flip a coin or something and have one of the countries pick something more-distinctive.

One of the most-egregious is the flag of Chad:



And the flag of Romania:



There are a bunch more that look very similar at a distance or at small sizes or if one is being flown upside-down. I won't list them all here, but it'd be awesome if those would get sorted out.

Also, while the tricolor, as with the above flags, is associated with republicanism, and thus a lot of countries use it, and technically, it's nice (simple, easy to identify, no text), there are similar alternatives that would help make flags a lot more distinguishable. Take the flag of Czechia, for example:



Still three colors, but looks pretty different from most other national flags. You don't get into the "tricolor with very similar colors" problem.

Can I say I'd change them all by getting rid of the concept altogether?

For the NZ flag I'd probably go back to the united tribes flag. It was the first flag for NZ. It's still recognized by our government, but it's not the primary flag

Bravo on all the effort in that. Utah’s updated flag looks great. Another example of crazy close flags is Poland and Monaco along with like 5 other countries.

I really like the flag of Greenland.

Shall we do away with name too? All identity?

Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/MO0zP-SB5hk

I'd be ok with just getting rid of nationalism... Nothing wrong with identity, but nationalism fosters an us vs them mentality that fucks over people in most of the world.

Lazer Kiwi or nothing!

Individual identity is good. National identity is bad.

What is a nation, but for a flag, a name, and some imaginary lines in the dirt to fight wars over?

great post

Let's make a tierlist sbout how urgent it is for them to change:

S:
- Poland's flag is supposedly derived from a white bird against a setting sun. To me it would make sense to include that imagery on the flag, or a historical coat of arms.
- I think places like Syria, Egypt, Libya, Iraq need to agree on a different colour scheme for themselves. At the moment they're confusingly similar
- Russia's current flsg i bslieve it's literslly just copying the french and netherlands colours because Peter the Great was so inspired by them.


::: spoiler The old fashioned, imperial russian flag was beautiful:


But even better is with a crest:



Which can be simplified for a stylish modern design (as i bekieve all credts should be when possible)



Alternatively, a bear could look good on their flag:



:::


A:
- Israel (changing flag after a hopeful regime change would be prudent because it's like a symbol of genocide now.)

B:
- Luxembourg (too similar to Netherlands),
- China (i find china's flag really dull even if it is iconic. They surely want to invoke their historical longevity rather than just Communism. Stars represent the key chinese regions, which seems like a good feature - the red does not.)

F:
- I don't think i'd change it, but Canada seems as/more close to britain than Australia so it makes more sense to give a little Union Jack in the top left corner.

Poland and Indonesia; Bahrain and Qatar; and Chad and Romania need to do something. The Bahrain/Qatar one isn't the worst, but it is hard to recall which is which sometimes.

Petition for you to add flag emoji to each country mention, e.g. "🇵🇱 Poland", for those of us (me!) who are vexillologically challenged and don't remember any flags.

Edit: an attempt, based on gboard's emoji search functionality and with zero verification:

great post

Let's make a tierlist sbout how urgent it is for them to change:

S:

- 🇵🇱Poland's flag is supposedly derived from a white bird against a setting sun. To me it would make sense to include that imagery on the flag, or a historical coat of arms.

- I think places like 🇸🇾Syria, 🇪🇬Egypt, 🇱🇾Libya, 🇮🇶Iraq need to agree on a different colour scheme for themselves. At the moment they're confusingly similar

A:

- 🇮🇱Israel (changing flag after a hopeful regime change would be prudent because it's like a symbol of genocide now.)

B:

- 🇱🇺Luxembourg (too similar to 🇳🇱Netherlands),

- 🇨🇳China (i find china's flag really dull even if it is iconic. They surely want to invoke their historical longevity rather than just Communism. Stars represent the key chinese regions, which seems like a good feature - the red does not.)

F:

- I don't think i'd change it, but 🇨🇦Canada seems as/more close to britain than 🇦🇺Australia so it makes more sense to give a little 🇬🇧Union Jack in the top left corner.

Australia’s official flag is ho-hum, but you already have an incredible flag you could use instead