Flag: Bangladesh Emoji

The flag of Bangladesh. A deep bottle-green field with a red disc offset slightly toward the hoist so that it reads as centered when the flag flies, a Japanese-influenced design trick that solves the billowing problem. Ratio 3:5.

🇧🇩 is the flag of the world's eighth-most-populous nation, with 173 million people, packed into just 147,000 km², making Bangladesh one of the most densely populated countries on earth outside small city-states. The Bangladeshi diaspora numbers roughly 13 million, with the biggest concentrations in Saudi Arabia (around 3 million), the UAE (around 1 million), the UK (around 650,000 Bangladeshi-British, mostly Sylheti-origin in London's East End), Italy (around 170,000), and the US (around 280,000).

The flag was raised for the first time at Dhaka University on March 2, 1971 by student leader A. S. M. Abdur Rab, 24 days before the declaration of independence from Pakistan. That original version had a yellow silhouette map of East Pakistan inside the red disc. After independence on December 16, 1971, artist Quamrul Hassan redesigned the flag by removing the map, which was notoriously hard to draw correctly on both sides of the fabric. The final design was formally adopted on January 17, 1972.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER BU+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER B + U+1F1E9 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER DU+1F1E9 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER D. Part of Emoji 1.0 (2015). Fallback BDBD on unsupported platforms.

The green represents the lush Bengali landscape (paddy fields, jute, the Sundarbans mangroves); the red disc represents the rising sun over the country and the blood shed by Bengali freedom fighters during the 1971 Liberation War. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's founding president, is said to have consulted a Japanese professor about the flag design; the Japanese-style off-center red disc geometry is not a coincidence.

🇧🇩 usage runs along four tracks: liberation-war memory, cricket, Bengali culture, and fast-growing diaspora identity.

The liberation-war calendar is the core. Victory Day on December 16) is the year's biggest flag day, commemorating the 1971 surrender of Pakistani forces at Dhaka's Race Course Ground. Independence Day on March 26 marks the declaration. Language Martyrs' Day on February 21 (Shaheed Divas) remembers the 1952 Bengali Language Movement martyrs who died protesting the imposition of Urdu in then-East Pakistan, and UNESCO later declared the same date International Mother Language Day in 1999. All three days generate sharp, structured 🇧🇩 spikes.

Cricket. The Bangladesh cricket team (the Tigers) has a fiercely loyal fanbase. T20 and ODI World Cup fixtures generate the day-to-day spikes. Shakib Al Hasan, Tamim Iqbal, and Mushfiqur Rahim are the trio whose performances drive most of the 🇧🇩 cricket volume. The Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) fills January each year.

Bengali cultural identity. Pohela Boishakh (Bengali New Year) on April 14 is the most culturally Bengali day of the year. Dhaka University's Mangal Shobhajatra procession is UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Durga Puja (for the ~8% Hindu minority) in October generates another cultural spike.

Political and news moments. The July-August 2024 quota-reform protests that led to the ouster of long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina produced the most sustained 🇧🇩 volume event in years, driven heavily by diaspora and domestic student accounts.

Diaspora identity. British Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets (East London's Brick Lane is the most visible Bangladeshi neighborhood outside Bangladesh), Italian Bangladeshis in Rome and Venice, and Middle East Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE use 🇧🇩 heavily around weddings, Eid, and visa updates.

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  Capital: Dhaka (23.81°N, 90.41°E)
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  Population: ~173.5 million (2025, world's 8th largest)
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  Area: 147,570 km² (high population density: ~1,200 people/km²)
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  Currency: Bangladeshi taka (BDT, ৳)
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  Language: Bengali / Bangla (official); English widely used in business and higher education
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  Calling code: +880
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  Time zone: BST (UTC+6), no DST
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  Internet TLD: .bd

Foods that show up next to 🇧🇩

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The flag's story is also the story of the Bangladesh Liberation War. In 1970, the Awami League won an outright majority in Pakistan's first free general election, but the Pakistani military under Yahya Khan refused to transfer power to the Bengali-majority East Pakistan. The March 2, 1971 moment at Dhaka University, when student leader A. S. M. Abdur Rab hoisted a new flag for the first time, marked the start of Bangladesh's independence movement.

The original 1971 flag. The design was a deep green field with a red disc at the center, inside which was a yellow silhouette map of East Pakistan. This was the flag flown throughout the nine-month war, including by the provisional Mujibnagar government-in-exile in India. Bangladeshi mukti bahini (freedom fighters) carried it into battle; diaspora Bengalis in Calcutta, London, and New York organized around it.

The 1972 redesign. After Bangladesh's victory on December 16, 1971, the revolutionary government decided the flag needed refining for permanent national use. Renowned painter Quamrul Hassan was asked to redesign it. He removed the map for two reasons: one, it was extraordinarily difficult to draw accurately on both sides of the fabric (the map would appear mirrored from the reverse side); and two, the redesigned clean two-color flag would be more iconic and easier to recognize from a distance. The new design was formally adopted on January 17, 1972.

The Japanese connection. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is said to have consulted a Japanese professor about the flag design during its redevelopment. The off-center red disc geometry (the disc is positioned closer to the hoist, not at the geometric center, so it appears visually centered when the flag flies) is an explicit borrowing from Japan's Hinomaru. The green color was picked over Japan's white to reflect Bengal's agricultural landscape and to distance the new nation's visual identity from the Muslim League's green-and-white Pakistani heritage.

Construction specifications. The flag's proportions are 3:5 (height to length). The red circle has a radius of one-fifth of the flag's length and is positioned so that its center is nine-twentieths of the way from the hoist. The green is bottle green (Pantone 356C); the red is rose madder (Pantone 032C).

Shaheed Minar and language. The flag sits alongside the Shaheed Minar (Martyr's Monument) in Bangladeshi national iconography. Both emerged from the same struggle for Bengali linguistic and political self-determination. February 21 pilgrimages to the Minar in Dhaka are one of the largest civic rituals in South Asia.

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  February 21: Language Martyrs' Day: Honors the 1952 Bengali Language Movement martyrs. UNESCO International Mother Language Day. Pre-dawn barefoot procession to the Shaheed Minar.
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  March 26: Independence Day: Marks the 1971 declaration. Military parade, flag-raising at the National Martyrs' Memorial.
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  April 14: Pohela Boishakh: Bengali New Year. Dhaka University's UNESCO Mangal Shobhajatra procession. The most culturally Bengali day.
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  Floating: Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha: Three-day public holidays around each. The country effectively stops for the week-long travel migrations home.
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  December 16: Victory Day: Year's biggest 🇧🇩 day. Marks the 1971 surrender of Pakistani forces and the end of the Liberation War. Fireworks and concerts across all eight divisions.

• •The flag's design was influenced by Japan's Hinomaru. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman consulted a Japanese professor during its 1972 redesign; the off-center red disc geometry is the most visible borrowing.
• •The 1971 original version had a yellow map of East Pakistan inside the red disc. Artist Quamrul Hassan removed the map in 1972, partly because it was notoriously difficult to render identically on both sides of the fabric.
• •Bangladesh is the 8th most populous country in the world at 173 million, but one of the smallest geographically at just 147,570 km². Population density is around 1,200 people per km², among the highest of any non-city-state.
• •The Sundarbans, the world's largest contiguous mangrove forest, straddles the Bangladesh-India border. It's home to the Royal Bengal tiger, saltwater crocodiles, and over 260 bird species. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• •Bangladesh is the world's second-largest exporter of garments after China, supplying roughly a sixth of the world's ready-made clothing. H&M, Zara, Uniqlo, and Marks & Spencer all source heavily from Bangladeshi factories.
• •The Ekushey Book Fair (Amar Ekushey Grantha Mela) runs through February every year in Dhaka, organized around February 21 Language Martyrs' Day. It's the largest Bengali-language book fair in the world.
• •Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali polymath and 1913 Nobel laureate in Literature, composed the national anthems of both Bangladesh ('Amar Sonar Bangla,' 1905) and India ('Jana Gana Mana,' 1911). He's the only person to have composed the national anthems of two countries.