Flag of Sudan

What the flag of Sudan looks like

The national flag of Sudan is made of three horizontal bands of equal height: red at the top, white in the middle and black at the bottom. A green isosceles triangle has its base on the hoist, the side next to the pole, and points toward the fly, covering the full height of the three bands. The proportions are 1:2, so the flag is twice as long as it is high. There is no emblem on it.

The flag is easy to confuse with the flag of Palestine, which uses the same four colors in a different arrangement: black, white and green stripes with a red triangle. It also resembles the flags of Jordan, Kuwait and other Arab states. You can see the design in small form in the Sudan flag emoji.

Sudan flag meaning and symbolism

Red, white, black and green are the Pan-Arab colors, which came from the Arab Revolt of 1916 and were later used by many Arab countries. Each color has a traditional meaning in Sudan. Red is said to represent the struggle for freedom and the blood of martyrs, white stands for peace, optimism and light, and black is for the country itself. The name Sudan comes from the Arabic bilad as-sudan, "land of the blacks", and black is sometimes also linked to the Mahdist uprising of the 1880s. The green triangle is often described as standing for prosperity, agriculture and Islam.

These meanings are traditional and are not set out in detail in law. Different explanations exist, and some sources link the green only to farmland and the fertile Nile valley.

History of the Sudan flag

From 1899 until independence, Sudan was governed jointly by Britain and Egypt under the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, and the flags of both countries flew together. The first flag of the independent republic was raised on 1 January 1956. It was a horizontal tricolor of blue, yellow and green: the blue stood for the Nile, the yellow for the desert and the green for farmland.

In 1969 a group of army officers led by Jaafar Nimeiry seized power. The new government wanted to show a link with the Arab world, and on 20 May 1970 it replaced the old flag with the present Pan-Arab design. The flag is said to have been designed by Abdel Rahman Ahmed al-Jali, who won a national competition. It has stayed in use through several changes of government, including the coups and the civil conflicts that followed, and was not changed after the fall of Nimeiry in 1985 or of Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

In 2011, the south of the country became independent as South Sudan, which has its own flag. The question of the two Sudans' flags comes up often: Sudan uses the red-white-black flag with a green triangle, and South Sudan uses black, red and green bands separated by white, with a blue triangle holding a yellow star.

Sudan flag vs Palestine and other Arab flags

The Pan-Arab colors appear on the flags of Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, Egypt, Iraq, Syria and others. Sudan's flag is closest to those of Palestine and Jordan, which also have a triangle at the hoist, but the order of the stripes and the color of the triangle differ. Egypt, Iraq and Yemen use red, white and black stripes rather than a triangle (Egypt has an eagle emblem, Iraq has Arabic text and Yemen is plain). See the flags of the world for more comparisons.