Flag: Belarus Emoji

The flag of Belarus. A red band roughly twice the height of a green band, with a white-on-red vertical rushnyk (embroidered-textile) ornament running down the hoist side. 1:2 ratio. Adopted 7 June 1995 after a referendum under President Alexander Lukashenko, and modified slightly in 2012. The current design is directly adapted from the 1951 flag of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, with the hammer and sickle removed and the rushnyk pattern inverted from red-on-white to white-on-red.

🇧🇾 is one of only a handful of country flag emojis where state and opposition use different banners. The red-green flag in the emoji is used by the Belarusian government, state television, and athletes at events supported by the Belarusian NOC. The opposition, much of the diaspora, and the Belarusian Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities in exile use the white-red-white 'Pahonia' flag, which was the state flag from 1918 (Belarusian People's Republic) and again from 1991 to 1995. There is no Unicode emoji for the white-red-white flag; diaspora accounts often use 🤍❤️🤍 or a custom image instead.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER BU+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER B + U+1F1FE REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER YU+1F1FE REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER Y. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Falls back to the letters BY on platforms without flag emoji support.

The red-green palette is not historically Belarusian. It was introduced in 1951 when Belarus was a Soviet republic, and the 1995 referendum restored it with minor changes rather than revive the pre-Soviet banner. That choice is the central fact on which Belarusian flag politics turn.

🇧🇾 splits into three overlapping but distinct social worlds: the state, the opposition and diaspora, and the quiet apolitical majority.

State and government accounts. Belarusian ministries, state broadcasters, Belavia, Belarusian Railways, Belaruskali, and the Belarusian National Olympic Committee all post 🇧🇾 around civic holidays (Independence Day on July 3, Victory Day on May 9), sport, and diplomatic events. The red-green emoji is the version that shows up on almost every phone, so in practical rendering it is the dominant symbol online.

Opposition and diaspora. The 300,000 to 500,000 Belarusians who left the country between 2020 and 2024 mostly use the white-red-white flag. Since that design has no emoji, diaspora bios read a range of workarounds: a 🤍❤️🤍 heart chain, an uploaded image of the Pahonia, or 🇧🇾 alongside opposition-coded emojis (a fist, a candle, a dove). Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's exile office in Vilnius, the Coordination Council, BYSOL, and most post-2020 émigré accounts use the Pahonia, not 🇧🇾. Cities like Vilnius and Warsaw are now known as Belarusian 'capitals in exile', with Lithuania alone hosting around 62,000 Belarusian nationals as of 2024.

Apolitical posting. A large mass of Belarusian users, both at home and abroad, post 🇧🇾 around non-political content: family travel, Belarusian food, ice hockey, the Volat Belaz haul-trucks, Victoria Azarenka tennis posts, and Svetlana Alexievich (2015 Nobel laureate in Literature). These accounts don't telegraph a stance; they just use the default phone emoji.

Sport. Belarus is unusually strong for its size in ice hockey, biathlon, rhythmic gymnastics, and tennis. Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka posts are a steady 🇧🇾 source, though both players often compete under neutral banners at Western tour events. Ice hockey is Lukashenko's personal sport; domestic rinks are active but sporting events with 🇧🇾 branding have been limited since 2022.

News cycles. 🇧🇾 spikes on Ryanair 4978 anniversaries (May 23), Lukashenko's elections and inaugurations, the 2020 August 9 election anniversary, and around Belarusian involvement in the broader Russia-Ukraine war. These spikes bring both the red-green and the white-red-white flag into the same feeds.

• 🏛️
  Capital: Minsk (53.90°N, 27.56°E)
• 👥
  Population: ~9.16 million (2025)
• 🗺️
  Area: 207,600 km²
• 💶
  Currency: Belarusian ruble (BYN, Br)
• 🗣️
  Language: Belarusian and Russian (both co-official)
• 📞
  Calling code: +375
• ⏰
  Time zone: MSK (UTC+3), no DST
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .by

Foods that show up next to 🇧🇾

Landmarks that anchor travel content

Belarus's flag story is tied directly to the country's political identity question: Soviet and Russian-aligned, or pre-Soviet and Lithuanian-Grand-Duchy-aligned.

The original national flag of Belarus was the white-red-white, adopted by the Belarusian People's Republic in March 1918, paired with the Pahonia coat of arms (a mounted knight in white, sword raised, on a red shield, inherited from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). The BNR lasted less than a year before Soviet forces took control, and the flag was banned inside Soviet Belarus for most of the 20th century.

The Byelorussian SSR adopted a red banner with Soviet emblems in 1951. The 1951 design added an ornamental white-on-red rushnyk pattern down the hoist based on a 1917 embroidered kilim. That ornament is the direct ancestor of the pattern on today's flag.

When Belarus declared independence from the USSR in August 1991, the Supreme Council restored the white-red-white flag and the Pahonia. Both flew over government buildings in Minsk for the next four years.

The 14 May 1995 referendum, called by newly-elected President Alexander Lukashenko, asked voters four questions, including whether to replace the 1991 symbols with a modified Soviet-era design. According to official results, the new symbols were approved by about 75% of voters on a 64.8% turnout. The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly stated the referendum violated international standards, and opposition parties contested the count. The red-green flag entered force on 7 June 1995.

A refined version of the flag, with slightly different proportions and a revised rushnyk ornament, was issued by the State Committee for Standardisation in 2012. That is the version rendered as 🇧🇾 today.

Since the August 2020 election and the mass protests that followed, the white-red-white flag has returned to public view, most prominently in the diaspora. Belarusian authorities declared it an extremist symbol in 2021; displaying it inside Belarus can result in arrest. Outside Belarus, it is widely used as the flag of the democratic opposition. The dual-flag reality is the defining feature of modern Belarusian vexillology.

• 🎉
  January 1: New Year: Civil New Year.
• 🎄
  January 7: Orthodox Christmas: Public holiday; Belarus observes this rather than December 25.
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  March 8: Women's Day: Major social holiday.
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  March 15: Constitution Day: Anniversary of the 1994 post-Soviet constitution.
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  March 25: Freedom Day (unofficial): Marks the 1918 BNR declaration of independence. Not a state holiday; celebrated by opposition and diaspora with the Pahonia.
• ⚒️
  May 1: Labour Day: Public holiday.
• 🎖️
  May 9: Victory Day: One of Belarus's biggest state events, marking the Soviet victory in WWII.
• 🎊
  July 3: Independence Day: Commemorates the 1944 liberation of Minsk from Nazi occupation. The biggest state 🇧🇾 spike of the year.
• ⭐
  November 7: October Revolution Day: Public holiday commemorating the 1917 Russian Revolution. Belarus is one of few European countries that still marks this date.

• •The current Belarus flag is directly adapted from the 1951 Byelorussian SSR flag, with the hammer and sickle removed and the ornament inverted from red-on-white to white-on-red.
• •Belarus is one of the few countries where the state flag and the diaspora flag are different. The state uses 🇧🇾 red-green; the opposition and most émigrés use the white-red-white Pahonia, which has no emoji.
• •Around 40% of Belarus is forested. The Białowieża Forest on the Polish border is Europe's last old-growth lowland forest and home to the largest remaining population of European bison.
• •Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first for any Belarusian writer. She writes oral histories of Soviet afterlife: Chernobyl, Afghanistan, women soldiers of WWII.
• •Belarus's Independence Day falls on July 3, marking the 1944 Soviet liberation of Minsk from Nazi occupation), not the 1991 declaration of independence from the USSR. The date was changed by referendum in 1996 under Lukashenko.
• •Mir Castle and Nesvizh Castle, both former Radziwiłł residences, are Belarus's two UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Mir Castle appears on the 50,000 ruble banknote.
• •Between 2020 and 2024, an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Belarusians left the country, one of the largest per-capita emigration waves in post-Soviet Europe.