4chan/Flags

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Every country flag on 4chan. Note that this image includes England, Scotland, and Wales. It also includes the Unknown flag.

Five boards on 4chan currently have flags. Four of them have country flags, which display the country you're posting from (or the location of your VPN or proxy if you are using one.) Flags are used on 4chan as a method of pseudo-identification. They were introduced on /sp/, /int/, and /pol/ on 3 July 2012.

Country Flags

Infographic about country flags. Was very useful while writing this article.
File:4chan flag iceberg.jpg
This chart is pretty outdated by now tbdesu

Country flags, or geoflags, display the country of the IP address that was used to submit a post. This flag is displayed to the right of a poster's name, or to the right of their ID, depending on the board. There are around 254 countries that can appear. During certain sporting events, /sp/ gains specific flags for England, Scotland, and Wales. These flags can very rarely be found on /pol/ and /bant/ if a thread is moved from /sp/. Outside of these events, posting from one of those countries would normally display a Union Jack labelled United Kingdom.

Unknown Flag

Xx.gif "Unknown" is a relatively common flag on 4chan. It appears when a thread is moved from a board without flags to a board with them, as on flag-boards ever post must have one. It also appears when posting from an IP range that 4chan doesn't have a location for. Its ID is XX.

Rare Flags

Anons reacting to a rare flag sighting
Ditto

Certain flags are more common to find than others. Countries with very low populations, or limited access to the Internet can be very rare to come across while browsing 4chan. These are often referred to as rare flags, and are pointed out by many when they are sighted.

Retired Flags

There are various flags that have been retired, and now will no longer appear on posts from their previous IP ranges. Not much is known about them; we can only infer from the archives that they have been retired due to an extremely long time since the last post from that country.


Flag Country ID Last Seen Total Posts Notes
Ad.gif Unknown (Anonymous Proxy) A1 9 July 2013[1] 11[2][3][4]
Ad.gif Unknown (Satellite Provider) A2 26 August 2016[5] 910[6][7]
An.gif Netherlands Antilles AN 13 June 2017[8] 24[9] One of the rarest flags, with only 24 archived posts. The first 12 were posted on /sp/ from July to September of 2012. The rest were posted on 13 June 2017 on /pol/, during a timespan of only ten minutes. Notably, this was the same day that memeflags returned. This flag is still on 4chan's servers despite the country dissolving in 2010.
Ad.gif Unknown (Asia/Pacific Region) AP 9 July 2019[10] 7,518[11][12][13] Would say "Unknown" when hovered over but redirect to ap.gif when clicked on.
Cs.gif Serbia and Montenegro CS n/a 0 This flag is still on 4chan's servers despite the country dissolving in 2006.
Eu.png Europe EU 8 July 2019[14] Not to be confused with the memeflag. The pre /pol/ Harbor Europoor memeflag is included in the search results due to how the flag worked at the time
? Other O1 n/a 0 On the drop-down on 4plebs. Not sure if this was ever even on 4chan. Could have been one of the anomalous flags.

Note: Andorra is used as a placeholder for regions that don't have flags. This list may be inaccurate due to incomplete archives.

Updated Flags

Over the years some flags have been updated.

Old Flag New Flag Country ID Notes
Old-an.gif Aq.gif Antarctica AQ
Old-bn.gif Bn.gif Brunei BN This flag was posted on /pol/ with the filename "Brunei__Saturated_Glitch_.gif" which implies the saturation was applied by accident
Libya.gif Ly.gif Libya (prev. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) LY
Old-Me.gif Me.gif Montenegro MM
Old-Uz.gif Uz.gif Uzbekistan UZ
Va.gif New-Va.gif Holy See VA
Ad.gif Xk.gif Kosovo XK Andorra was used as a placeholder until Kosovo's flag was added. This flag was drawn by an Anon

Anomalous Flags

These flags are incredibly rare and were probably only ever used by 4chan staff.

Country ID Flag Notes
Bhutan Vaporwave ? Bhutan Vaporwave Limited Edition.gif "posted on /int/ in 2011"[15]
Easter Egg/Senpai ? ? Possibly fam.gif?
Portoia ? Portoia.gif "posted once on early /sp/ with zalgo text before being deleted"[15]

Board Flags

Board flags, previously troll flags, are colloquially referred to as memeflags by most posters. These flags are not determined by poster location, and instead can be chosen from a drop-down menu underneath the posting field.

Current board flags on /pol/

The current board flag spritesheet on /pol/.
Icon Display Name Drop-down Name ID Date Added
Ac.png Anarcho-Capitalist - AC 13 June 2017
An.png Anarchist - AN 13 June 2017
Bl.png Black Lives Matter Black Nationalist BL 13 June 2017
Cf.png Confederate - CF 13 June 2017
Cm.png Commie Communist CM 13 June 2017
Ct.png Catalonia - CT 27 October 2017[16]
Dm.png Democrat - DM 13 June 2017
Eu.png European - EU 13 June 2017
Fc.png Fascist - FC 13 June 2017
Gn.png Gadsden - GN 13 June 2017
Gy.png LGBT Gay GY 13 June 2017
Jh.png Jihadi - JH 13 June 2017
Kn.png Kekistani - KN 13 June 2017
Mf.png Muslim - MF 13 June 2017
Nb.png National Bolshevik - NB 13 June 2017
Nt.png NATO - NT 19 May 2022
Nz.png Nazi - NZ 13 June 2017
Pc.png Hippie - PC 13 June 2017
Pr.png Pirate - PR 13 June 2017
Re.png Republican - RE 13 June 2017
Mz.png Task Force Z - MZ 19 May 2022
Tm.png DEUS VULT Templar TM 13 June 2017
Tr.png Tree Hugger - TR 13 June 2017
Un.png United Nations - UN 13 June 2017
Wp.png White Supremacist - WP 13 June 2017

Pre /pol/ Harbor

Screenshot of the Hipster flag

Prior to the event known as /pol/ Harbor, there were no country flags on /pol/, only board flags. Most returned in 2017 but some did not. Flags were added to /pol/ on 3 July 2012. Sadly there are no archives of /pol/ from that time, and archives of other boards are missing images (otherwise I'd have more than one screenshot). These flags could not be chosen and were instead randomly assigned per post.[17] From reading people talking about it on other boards in the archives, a few of these first-generation flags can be gleaned:

>Dong flag[18]

>Hipster flag, which is an Apple icon[19]

>Retard flag, which is a reddit icon[20]

>The infamous Brotherhood of NOD flag[21]

In the first half of 2013, these flags were randomly assigned:

Icon Name ID
Il.gif JIDF IL
Jw.gif Le Happy Merchant Face JW

Sometime in late August or early September, these were replaced with the drop-down and many new flags. There was no option to not post with one of these, and the default choice was random. Random was replaced a few months later with the option to not use a flag.

Icon Display Name Drop-down Name ID
Us.gif Amerifat American US
Kp.gif Best Korean - KP
Bl.png Black Nationalist - BL
Cm.png Communist - CM
Old-cf.gif Confederate - CF
Re.png Insufferable Conservative RE
Eu.png Europoor European EU
Gy.png LGBT GAY GY
Pc.png Hippie - PC
Il.gif Palestine Israeli IL
Dm.png Liberal - DM
Rp.gif Gold Standard Libertarian RP
Mf.png 3. ??? 4. PROPHET! Muslim MF
Nz.png Nazi - NZ
Ob.gif NOBAMA Obama OB
Pr.png Pirate - PR
Rb.gif Rebel Alliance Rebel RB
Gn.png Tea Party Tea Partier TP
Tx.gif Texan - TX
Tr.png Tree Hugger - TR
Wp.png Tolerant White Supremacist WP


/mlp/ Character Flags

The current board flag spritesheet on /mlp/.

During a town hall sticky in Feburary 2021, an Anon suggested that flags be added to /mlp/. The mod agreed and asked the board to design some flags, and the horsefuckers quickly got to work. The designs went through several iterations and a few large threads before they settled on the final design and got to work turning every pony into a flag. In the end, the mods chose 80 to be added to the board. You can see every flag that was made here: https://www.duendeinexistente.com/flags/

/lgbt/ Pride Month Flags

The board flags spritesheet from /lgbt/ during June 2022.

For Pride Month 2022, /lgbt/ got pride flags. TODO: crop and label them

Flag Name
- -
  1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130711022519/http://ibm5100.net:80/int/tables/table_A1.html
  2. ↑ https://archive.4plebs.org/_/search/boards/pol.sp/country/A1/
  3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130711022519/http://ibm5100.net/int/tables/table_A1.html
  4. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130517124212/http://www.ibm5100.net/sp/tables/table_A1.html
  5. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/int/thread/64003230/#64030144
  6. ↑ https://archive.4plebs.org/_/search/boards/pol.sp/country/A2/
  7. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/int/search/country/A2/
  8. ↑ https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/129711398/#129719204
  9. ↑ https://archive.4plebs.org/_/search/boards/pol.sp/country/AN/
  10. ↑ https://archive.palanq.win/bant/thread/8356109/#8356426
  11. ↑ https://archive.4plebs.org/_/search/boards/pol.sp/country/AP/
  12. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/int/search/country/AP/
  13. ↑ https://archive.palanq.win/bant/search/country/AP/
  14. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/int/thread/108130907/#108140222
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/59704752/#59705281
  16. ↑ https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/chunk/146841910/500/5/#146849517
  17. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/q/thread/1457/#1515
  18. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/2968320/#2969854
  19. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/25980713/#25982130
  20. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/2968320/#2969873
  21. ↑ https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/2968320/#2969928
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