The Ten Worst Flags in the World

The flag of a nation, usually you want it to be a strong symbol for your country, a beautiful and powerful image that your country can rally behind. Maybe the flag symbolizes important aspects of the country, like the rising sun of the Japanese flag, or the 50 stars of the American flag.

Some counties though, well, let's just say they put the bar a little lower.

So, without further distraction, check out the 10 worst flag ideas in the world!

10. Bangladesh

Now this flag could have been a good idea, after all, it is the beautiful Japanese flag, only with one minor adjustment. Unfortunately, adjusting the background color to a very unsightly green didn't do much to elevate this design. And anyways, just ripping off another design and changing the colors a bit? That works in web design, but when you're creating a flag for a country, it would be nice to see a little more effort than a copy and paste.

9. Nepal

We've all done it, we've sat around with our friends, having a few beers, just shooting the breeze and coming up with these excellent ideas that would just be totally craaaaazy! Like, we should pave the streets with money, that way no one would be poor, and other ideas that are great while drunk, but mercifully forgotten the next day. True, some times you will find that some less fortunate ideas and experiments might have broken one of your limbs, or worse got put on youtube, but in a couple of weeks, that stuff just fades away and no one will think of it again.

That's what happened with the Nepal flag, some guys were sitting around, smoking some opium, and started talking about their flag. "Wouldn't it be AWESOME if the flag was a triangle instead of a square!" (giggles) "No, no, wait, what if it was a triangle on top of a triangle!!!". That's what happened, but for some reason this crazy idea actually became reality, against all good judgment. To this day, the Nepali flag serves as a slap in the face, of those poor folks who came up with this idea, never really meant to survive into sober reality. Not to mention the hate that Nepal gets from flag makers world wide.

8. Libya

Yeah, I get it, I get what you tried to do here. Green is the color of Islam, and the flag represent that there is nothing above Islam and the flag is a representation of a clean tribute to your religion. But COME ON! You guys have the chance to do anything you want with the flag, get creative, put some soul and effort into the design, and of all the possibilities, the best your country's designers can come up with is this? A blank green canvas? I truly and honestly feel, that if a flag like this is the very best you can come up with, you don't deserve to have your own country. Give the country to someone else, someone who will at least try.

7. Swaziland

In a way, I kind of like this flag, if it wasn't a flag, but maybe some interesting wall art at the World Market, I might quite like it. The colors go well together and the design is interesting. Unfortunately, this is not a kitchen towel, but a national flag, and as a national flag, this is just no good. While I am sure the shield and spears are traditional and part of Swaziland culture, it just sends the wrong message having weapons in your flag, not to mention the poor school children in Swaziland, trying to make an accurate drawing of this flag for independence must be a nightmare.

6. Christmas Islands

Actually, The Christmas Islands deserve recognition for avoiding some of the most obvious lichee's that must have been tempting for the designers if the flag, there's no Santa Claus or Christmas trees in the flag, and for that I applaud you, Christmas Islands. However, after avoiding some embarrassingly obvious pitfalls, the wheels quickly fell of the wagon for the designer on this one. First of all, the color combination blue green is challenging to begin with, and in this particular effort, they clash with great vigor. To make matters worse, there's a weird blob in the middle of the flag. Presumably a map of the island which is a horrible idea to begin with, but to make matters worse, the shape looks like a snail on a twig to anyone not intimately familiar with Christmas Island geography. Simply awful, and I haven't even mentioned the big yellow bird thing.

5. Belize

This flag could have been OK, not great, but OK. If they had left it at the blue with the two red stripes, no one would ever think twice about this flag. It would meddle with the many other unspectacular but good enough flags out there. Well, Belize just had to slap a big weird coat of arms in the middle of their flag and propel it right to the bottom of flag designs. Apparently lumber jacking is a big deal in Belize, fair enough,but did you really need to put a picture of a lumberjack right there on the flag? And what is the baseball player doing next to him? The flag goes from weird to downright creepy when you translate the motto though: 'I flourish in the shadow'... Two guys with an ax and a bat that flourish in the shadow? That sounds like they are looking to mug someone. Creepy.

4. Kazakhstan

The more colors you try to put in a flag design, the more likely you are to fail, keeping it simple will often be a good idea. So, Kazakhstan has that going for them, a limited color palette. If you decide to make your palette yellow and blue however, you are rolling the dice of good taste. These colors are harder to match than many others, only a handful countries have tried, and even fewer have succeeded. Kazakhstan on the other hand, has come up with the worst of all the yellow and blue designs, they have possibly picked the two shades of blue and yellow that are the least compatible, and topped it off with some horrible designs. Now, if they had just put the sun in the center of the flag, and left it at that, this flag would be nowhere this list, but for some unknown reason, it felt imperative to put in a badly drawn eagle soaring right into the sun. At this point, it seems like the flag designers gave up, realized failure and just added some traditional pattern to also unbalance the flag and make it horribly complicated.

3. Turkmenistan

In a way, I feel sympathy for the people who set out to create the flag for this new nation. Obviously, they felt compelled to underline the country's Islamic roots and so the green flag with the white crescent and stars becomes a confining starting template, when you also need to add an orange oriental carpet design to your flag, it's very difficult to create something that is not horribly ghastly. To difficult for whomever created this flag apparently, as the flag is horribly ghastly.

2. Central African Republic

Many flags have been made incredibly busy by adding elaborate drawings and colorful complex patterns, the Central African Republic on the other hand, has managed to make an incredibly busy flag with just five straight lines, and one lonely star. While this flag looks horrible enough as it is, if it is seen waving in the wind, it actually induces seizures.

1. Guam

Guam might feel that the rank is unfair, and they have a point. This is the only of the US territories that have made it to this list, but that is just to spread the shame a little, the US territories generally have flags so awful that they could probably lay claim to the entire list. Well, only one was picked, and the one picked Guam. This flag is horrible, it looks like they just bought a t-shirt from the nearest souvenir shop and put it on a flag pole. Even if this is the case, I have a hard time believing that they couldn't find a better looking t-shirt.