Flags

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.

This chart is pretty outdated by now tbdesu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

"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. 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
	Unknown (Anonymous Proxy)	A1	2 July 2012	3
	Unknown (Satellite Provider)	A2	26 August 2016	910
	Netherlands Antilles	AN	13 June 2017	24	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.
	Unknown (Asia/Pacific Region)	AP	9 July 2019	7,518	Would say "Unknown" when hovered over but redirect to ap.gif when clicked on.
	Serbia and Montenegro	CS	n/a	0	This flag is still on 4chan's servers despite the country dissolving in 2006.
	Europe	EU	8 July 2019		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
		Antarctica	AQ
		Brunei	BN	This flag was posted on /pol/ with the filename "Brunei__Saturated_Glitch_.gif" which implies the saturation was applied by accident
		Libya (prev. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya)	LY
		Montenegro	MM
		Uzbekistan	UZ
		Holy See	VA
		Kosovo	XK	Andorra was used as a placeholder until Kosovo's flag was added

Anomalous Flags

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

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

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
	Anarcho-Capitalist	-	AC	13 June 2017
	Anarchist	-	AN	13 June 2017
	Black Lives Matter	Black Nationalist	BL	13 June 2017
	Confederate	-	CF	13 June 2017
	Commie	Communist	CM	13 June 2017
	Catalonia	-	CT	27 October 2017
	Democrat	-	DM	13 June 2017
	European	-	EU	13 June 2017
	Fascist	-	FC	13 June 2017
	Gadsden	-	GN	13 June 2017
	LGBT	Gay	GY	13 June 2017
	Jihadi	-	JH	13 June 2017
	Kekistani	-	KN	13 June 2017
	Muslim	-	MF	13 June 2017
	National Bolshevik	-	NB	13 June 2017
	NATO	-	NT	19 May 2022
	Nazi	-	NZ	13 June 2017
	Hippie	-	PC	13 June 2017
	Pirate	-	PR	13 June 2017
	Republican	-	RE	13 June 2017
	Task Force Z	-	MZ	19 May 2022
	DEUS VULT	Templar	TM	13 June 2017
	Tree Hugger	-	TR	13 June 2017
	United Nations	-	UN	13 June 2017
	White Supremacist	-	WP	13 June 2017

Pre /pol/ Harbor

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 from that time, and I haven't located any screencaps. These flags could not be chosen and were instead randomly assigned per post. From reading people talking about it on other boards in the archives, a few of these first-generation flags can be gleaned:

>Dong flag

>Hipster flag, which is an Apple icon

>Retard flag, which is a reddit icon

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

Icon	Name	ID
	JIDF	IL
	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
	Amerifat	American	US
	Best Korean	-	KP
	Black Nationalist	-	BL
	Communist	-	CM
	Confederate	-	CF
	Insufferable	Conservative	RE
	Europoor	European	EU
	LGBT	GAY	GY
	Hippie	-	PC
	Palestine	Israeli	IL
	Liberal	-	DM
	Gold Standard	Libertarian	RP
	3. ??? 4. PROPHET!	Muslim	MF
	Nazi	-	NZ
	NOBAMA	Obama	OB
	Pirate	-	PR
	Rebel Alliance	Rebel	RB
	Tea Party	Tea Partier	TP
	Texan	-	TX
	Tree Hugger	-	TR
	Tolerant	White Supremacist	WP

/mlp/ Character Flags

The current board flag spritesheet on /mlp/.

-board town hall feb 2021

-anon proposes flags, twimod agrees

-board designs flags for a couple weeks

-eventually 80 get added, 319 were made in total: https://www.duendeinexistente.com/flags/

/lgbt/ Pride Month Flags

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

-/lgbt/ got flags for pride month (June) 2022

-todo: crop and label them