The flag of North Macedonia
Знаме на Македонија · since 1995
Back to North MacedoniaA golden-yellow sun on a red field, its eight rays widening until they reach the edges and corners of the flag. It was adopted on 5 October 1995 to replace the sixteen-rayed sun of 1992, known in the country as the Kutleš star and in Greece as the Vergina Sun, which Greece had contested as a Greek symbol. The sun is read as the new sun of liberty of the national anthem.
At a glance
- Adopted
- 1995
- Proportion
- 1:2
- Colours
- Earlier flags
- 3
- Designers
- 2
The colours
The colours of the flag of North Macedonia, in the order it has them
- 0168.5%
Red
црвенаThe field and the ring around the sun disk
- HEX
#D82126- RGB
216 33 38- CMYK
0 100 90 0- Pantone
485 C- RAL
3028
- 0231.5%
Golden yellow
златно-жолтаThe sun and its rays
- HEX
#F8E92E- RGB
248 233 46- CMYK
0 0 100 0- Pantone
108 C- RAL
1016
No law gives these codes. HEX and RGB are the colour this site draws the flag in; CMYK, Pantone and RAL are the values most often published for it.
Construction
How the flag is drawn
A red field with a golden-yellow sun at the centre, ringed in red, from which eight rays widen outwards to the edges: two horizontal, two vertical and four along the diagonals to the corners.
- Sun disk
- Diameter one seventh of the flag's length, 40 units
- Centre
- The centre of the sun is where the flag's diagonals cross
- Rays
- Eight, running diagonally, horizontally and vertically and widening towards the edge
- Taken from the drawing
- The law gives no other dimensions. Read from the annexed drawing: horizontal and vertical rays 28 units wide at the edge, diagonal rays 42, one edge of each diagonal ray on the flag's diagonal, and the red ring around the disk reaching a diameter of 50
Meaning
What each part stands for
- The sun
- The new sun of liberty of the national anthem, Denes nad Makedonija. The article in Macedonian traces the sun as a symbol through the Kutleš star, folk art, church carving and the flag of Krste Misirkov's Macedonian scientific and literary society
- Red and gold
- Described in the Macedonian article as the traditional Macedonian colours. The Socialist Republic was the only Yugoslav republic whose flag did not use the Pan-Slavic colours
Who drew it
- Miroslav Grčev
- Professor of urban planning commissioned by the government in 1995, who drew twelve proposals; the last, with the rays across the whole field, was adopted
- Kostadin Tančev-Dinka
- Professor who wrote in a monograph of 2019 that he prepared, at the request of the President's office, a design identical to the one voted
History
How the flag of North Macedonia got here
- 1944
People's Republic of Macedonia
Dec 1944 → 31 Dec 1946
Adopted at the second plenary session of ASNOM in December 1944: red, with a large outlined five-pointed star with rounded points in the centre. It was probably based on the flag of the Goce Delčev battalion, without that flag's gold borders.
- 1946
Socialist Republic of Macedonia
31 Dec 1946 → 11 Aug 1992
Red with a gold-edged red five-pointed star in the canton, under Article 4 of the constitution of 1946. Its red was darker than that of the flag before it.
Image: Unknown author Unknown author , but under the authority of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia., CC BY-SA 3.0
- 1992
The sixteen-rayed sun
11 Aug 1992 → 5 Oct 1995
Proposed to the Assembly by Todor Petrov on 6 August 1992 and adopted on 11 August: a golden-yellow sun with eight main and eight secondary rays on red. Greece regarded the symbol, found at the royal tombs of ancient Aigai, as Greek, blocked the flag at the United Nations and imposed an economic blockade from February 1994. The blockade was lifted in October 1995 on an agreement that included changing the flag. Under the Prespa Agreement of 2018 the country undertook to remove the symbol from public use.
- 1995
The eight-rayed sunIn use
5 Oct 1995 → today
Adopted by the Assembly on 5 October 1995. Grčev's proposal was 5:8 with rays joined to the disk; the Assembly changed it to 1:2 and added a red ring separating the rays from the disk, a change Grčev said broke the graphic rules of the design. For some years both flags were flown, and between 1995 and 1998 municipalities run by VMRO-DPMNE flew only the old one.
The law
What defines it, and who flies it
- 17 November 1991
Constitution of the Republic of Macedonia, Article 5
Names the coat of arms, the flag and the anthem as state symbols, to be adopted by law with a two-thirds majority of all members of the Assembly.
- 5 October 1995
Act on the Flag of the Republic of Macedonia
Promulgated the same day by Decree No. 08-3359/1 and published on 6 October 1995. Describes the flag, fixes the ratio and the size of the sun disk, and makes the design illustration part of the act.
In use
The national flag is also the ensign
Related flags
The flags it is confused with or comes from
Greece- Contested the sixteen-rayed sun of 1992 as a Greek symbol; the flag was changed under the 1995 agreement that ended the Greek blockade.
Coat of arms
The arms of North Macedonia
