Flag of Tonga

What the flag of Tonga looks like

The flag of Tonga has a plain red field with a white rectangle, the canton, in the top left corner next to the flagpole. In the canton is a red cross with arms of equal length, known in heraldry as a couped cross because its arms do not reach the edges. The flag is twice as wide as it is tall, with a ratio of 1:2.

The red and white scheme is bold and easy to tell apart from other Pacific flags. For image files see the Tonga flag download page, and the emoji is at /tonga/emoji/.

Tonga flag meaning and symbolism

The flag expresses the Christian faith of the Kingdom of Tonga. The red cross refers to the blood of Christ and to his sacrifice, and the white stands for purity. The red of the field is linked to the same blood.

Christianity arrived in the islands in the early 19th century, and Methodist missionaries had a strong influence on the royal court. Today most Tongans are Christian, and Sunday is observed as a day of rest by law.

History of the Tonga flag

Tonga unified under King George Tupou I (Taufaʻāhau), who ruled from 1845. He was a Wesleyan Methodist convert who united the islands and gave them a written code of laws. An earlier national flag dating from the 1860s, with a red cross on a white field, is mentioned by some sources, but the current design is the one set out in the 1875 constitution.

The flag was shaped by the king together with his adviser, the Methodist missionary Shirley Baker, who served as prime minister. It was formally adopted on 4 November 1875 with the new constitution. A clause of the constitution forbids any change to the flag, which makes it one of the few flags whose design is protected by the country's founding law.

Tonga was never fully colonized. It became a British protected state in 1900 under a treaty of friendship, which gave Britain control of foreign affairs, and became fully independent again within the Commonwealth on 4 June 1970. The flag stayed the same through that period.

Tonga flag and the Swiss flag

The Tongan flag is sometimes mistaken for a reversed Swiss flag, because both combine a red field with a cross. The Swiss flag is square, with a white cross centered on red, while Tonga's is rectangular and the red cross sits inside a white canton. For more Pacific designs see the Oceania flags page.