September 27th, 2026

Today's flags moved from the familiar to the frequently mixed-up: Czechia's blue triangle and red-and-white bands descend directly from the flag of former Czechoslovakia, kept by Prague after the 1993 split. Yemen's simple red-white-black tricolor, echoing the pan-Arab palette, flies over Sanaa, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The two Congos gave everyone the classic mix-up: DR Congo's flag (Kinshasa) uses a diagonal blue-red field with a single yellow star, while the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) opts for the pan-African green, yellow, and red in diagonal stripes — same river, same colors family, very different design logic. Vanuatu closed things out with its distinctive black, red, and green flag centered on a boar's tusk and namele leaves, a rare Pacific design rooted in local custom rather than colonial inheritance, flying over Port Vila.