FLAG COLLECTION

Flags With a Sun (18)

18 flags here carry a sun, and the category is less obvious than it sounds. A sun can be a plain coloured disc with no rays at all, a face with wavy and straight rays alternating, or a geometric wheel that reads as a sun only once you know what it is. That ambiguity is why people often search for a star or a circle when what they actually saw was a sun.

Last updated 1 July 2026

Where these 18 flags are in the world

Counting by continent is the quickest way to see whether a design tradition is regional or global. Asia accounts for the largest share of this collection with 8 of the 18.

Continent	Flags	Share
Asia	8	44%
Africa	4	22%
South America	2	11%
Oceania	2	11%
North America	1	6%
Europe	1	6%

The plain disc

Japan's flag is the purest example: a single red circle on white, no rays, no face. Bangladesh uses the same idea in red on green, offset slightly toward the hoist so it appears centred when the flag is flying. Palau's is a yellow disc on blue and is a moon rather than a sun, which is the sort of distinction that only matters when you are trying to identify a flag from memory. Where there are no rays, a sun and a moon are told apart by context and colour alone.

The sun with a face

Argentina and Uruguay both fly a Sun of May: a golden sun with a human face and alternating straight and wavy rays, inherited from the same independence-era iconography and ultimately from an Incan solar emblem. They are easy to confuse, and the tell is the field behind it — Argentina places the sun on a white band between two light blue stripes, Uruguay puts it in a white canton above nine stripes.

Suns that do not look like suns

Kyrgyzstan's red flag carries a yellow sun with forty rays, crossed inside by the roof-frame of a yurt seen from below. Kazakhstan's sun sits above a steppe eagle in flight. North Macedonia's is a stylised sun of eight broad rays that fill the entire field, and India's Ashoka Chakra is a twenty-four-spoke wheel that is a dharmachakra rather than a sun at all. If you remembered rays radiating from a centre, check this list before assuming you saw a star.

Still not the flag you were thinking of?

This page is one fixed filter. The full flag finder lets you combine colours, symbols, patterns and continent at the same time, which narrows things down far faster than any single clue. You can also browse every country guide alphabetically, or spin for a random one and read its guide instead.