The reddest flags in the world

In CakeFlag every flag becomes a cake: each slice is a color, and its size is the exact share of the flag that color covers. With those same 208 cakes you can answer a question that sounds easy: which is the reddest flag in the world?

How we measured it

We took the image of every flag and measured the share of each color, coats of arms, stars and lettering included. Two similar shades of red count as the same red. Maroon, the very dark red of Latvia or Qatar, is kept separate (more on that below).

The list covers the 193 UN member states, Vatican City, Palestine and 13 territories with their own flag, such as Hong Kong and Greenland: the same set as CakeFlag.

The top 10

#	Flag	Red
1	Morocco	98.2%
2	China	97.6%
3	Isle of Man	94.4%
4	Turkey	94.0%
5	Vietnam	93.2%
6	Hong Kong	91.5%
7	Kyrgyzstan	91.1%
8	Tunisia	90.6%
9	Albania	87.1%
10	Tonga	83.1%

Morocco vs China: a photo finish

First place is decided by less than one point. Morocco’s flag is a red field with a green five-pointed star drawn only as an outline: that thin line covers just 1.8% of the flag. China’s has five solid yellow stars, which add up to 2.4%. Six tenths of a point, and Morocco takes the title.

Behind them come three flags with more than 93% red: the Isle of Man (a British Crown Dependency, with its three legs in the middle), Turkey and Vietnam.

The ones you can’t tell apart

In 6th and 8th place there are two flags that, as cakes, are almost the same: Hong Kong (91.5% red, the rest white) and Tunisia (90.6% red, the rest white). They share 99% of their cake. Turkey, with its white crescent and star, is very close to both.

That’s why none of the three is ever the flag of the day in CakeFlag: with the cake and the first clues, it would be a coin toss. You can still type them as a guess.

Countries only

Hong Kong and the Isle of Man are not independent countries. Take them out and two flags with a white cross come in: Switzerland (80.2% red) and Denmark (76.5%).

What about maroon?

If maroon counted as red, Latvia would come 12th, with 80% of its flag in that dark shade, and Qatar would be 19th, with 67.9%. We leave them out because on the cake they clearly look like a different color.

The world’s cake

Put all 208 flags together in one giant cake and red is the color that takes up the most room: 30.1%. It appears in 161 of the 208 flags. Next come all the blues together (blue, navy and light blue, 21.1%), white (18.4%, in 151 flags), the greens (14.6%), yellow and gold (9.2%) and black (5%).

The 44 flags with no red at all

At the other end are the flags with neither red nor maroon. There are 44 of them, including three in South America: Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Also Greece, Sweden, Finland, Israel, India, Ukraine and Saudi Arabia.

Try it yourself

Could you recognize Morocco or Kyrgyzstan from their cake alone? The Practice mode in CakeFlag gives you a random flag every time, and there’s a new flag in the Daily every day.