Flag: Georgia Emoji

The flag of Georgia, known domestically as the Five Cross Flag) (ხუთჯვრიანი დროშა). A white field carrying a large red St. George's Cross that reaches all four edges, with a smaller red bolnur-katskhuri cross in each of the four quarters. 2:3 ratio. The design is a Jerusalem Cross), read by the Georgian Orthodox Church as either the Five Holy Wounds of Christ or Christ plus the Four Evangelists.

🇬🇪 is a small flag by posting volume, but it carries unusual weight. On TikTok and Instagram, it sits at the intersection of three very different communities: travelers pulled in by one of the planet's most photogenic Caucasus backdrops, a 1.5 million-strong global diaspora with major hubs in Russia, Greece, the US, and Israel, and a large domestic audience that has spent the past few years on Rustaveli Avenue waving 🇬🇪 and 🇪🇺 together. Locals don't call their country Georgia. They call it Sakartvelo, and themselves Kartveli.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1EC REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER GU+1F1EC REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER G + U+1F1EA REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER EU+1F1EA REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER E. Added in Emoji 1.0 (2015). On platforms without flag support, it falls back to the letters GEGE, which gets Georgia regularly confused with the US state of Georgia on global hashtag feeds, a running joke in Tbilisi and Atlanta alike.

The current design was officially adopted by the Georgian Parliament on January 14, 2004) and formalized by President Mikheil Saakashvili's Decree No. 31 on January 25, 2004. It had served as the rallying flag of the Rose Revolution the year before, which is why many Georgians still associate it with 2003-2004 street politics as much as with medieval heraldry.

🇬🇪 usage splits cleanly into three overlapping streams.

Travel content drives the biggest ongoing baseline. Georgia welcomed 5.09 million international visitors in 2024, up 9 percent from 2023, and a growing slice of them post. Kazbegi and Gergeti Trinity Church shots, khachapuri cross-sections, wine-tasting videos from Kakheti, and Tbilisi old-town carousels all move with 🇬🇪 in the caption. Peak travel season runs May through October; the winter sees a Gudauri ski bump.

Diaspora identity. Over 1.5 million Georgians live abroad, roughly a third of the country's domestic population. The biggest clusters are in Russia (around 700,000), Greece (200,000), the US (120,000), and Italy and Germany (50,000 each). Diaspora usage peaks around May 26 Independence Day, April 9 National Unity Day, and November 23 St. George's Day, plus the Sakartvelo soccer team's qualifiers.

Political signaling. Since 2023, 🇬🇪 🇪🇺 together has become shorthand for the pro-European civil society movement. The pairing appeared on tens of thousands of posts during the 2024 'foreign agents' law protests and again in November 2024 when the ruling Georgian Dream party suspended EU accession talks, hospitalizing over 40 protesters on Rustaveli Avenue over three consecutive nights. Polling in 2024 showed 71 percent Georgian public support for EU integration.

Rugby adds a smaller but reliable weekly spike. Georgia's national rugby team, the Lelos, have qualified for every Rugby World Cup since 2003, and their November 2022 win over Wales in Cardiff generated a 🇬🇪 spike big enough that the Georgia Rugby Union of the US state started receiving congratulatory messages by mistake.

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  Capital: Tbilisi (41.72°N, 44.83°E)
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  Population: ~3.7 million (2024)
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  Area: 69,700 km²
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  Currency: Georgian lari (GEL, ₾)
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  Languages: Georgian (ka), Abkhaz regional (ab)
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  Calling code: +995
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  Time zone: GET (UTC+4), no DST
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  Internet TLD: .ge

Foods that show up next to 🇬🇪

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The Five Cross Flag's paper trail runs through three acts: medieval, dormant, revolutionary.

Medieval roots. A 12th-century silver coin of King David IV the Builder) carries the central-cross-plus-four-corner-crosses layout that the modern flag inherits. In 1367, the Pisa-made Pizzigano nautical chart) depicts Tbilisi's flag as a white field with red crosses, matching the Jerusalem-cross pattern. The design disappeared from state use after Georgia lost its kingdom and drifted through Mongol, Persian, and Russian overlords from the 14th century onward.

The dormant centuries. Under Russian imperial and then Soviet rule (1801 to 1991), Georgia had no meaningful national flag of its own. The Democratic Republic of Georgia (1918 to 1921) flew a cherry-red flag with black and white canton stripes) designed by painter Iakob Nikoladze. That flag was adopted again at independence in 1990 and remained official until 2004, but it had never caught on popularly.

The Rose Revolution. In the late 1990s, Georgian vexillologists, most prominently Giorgi Gabeskiria), rediscovered the medieval five-cross design. In 1999, the opposition United National Movement (UNM), led by Mikheil Saakashvili, adopted it as their party symbol. By 2003, the flag was at every rally against President Eduard Shevardnadze. When the Rose Revolution toppled Shevardnadze in November 2003, the five-cross flag was already the flag of the street. Parliament formalized it on January 14, 2004, the day the nation's Flag Day was established.

Why it caught on fast. Unlike the 1918 cherry flag, which had to explain itself to a public that had never seen it much, the five-cross design slotted into pre-existing Georgian Orthodox visual culture. St. George is Georgia's patron saint, Tbilisi's cathedral is named for him, and November 23 is a national day. The bolnur-katskhuri cross in each quadrant is the same cross carved into the 5th-century Bolnisi Sioni basilica's tympanum, one of the oldest surviving Christian monuments in the country.

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  January 14: Flag Day: Anniversary of the 2004 Five Cross Flag adoption. Government raises it at dawn, Rustaveli Avenue fills with banners.
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  April 9: National Unity Day: Somber. Commemorates the 1989 Tbilisi massacre on Rustaveli Avenue and the 1991 declaration restoring independence. Half-mast until noon.
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  May 26: Independence Day: The big one. Marks the 1918 founding of the First Republic. Military parade at Freedom Square, airshow over Tbilisi, landmarks lit in red and white.
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  August 28: Mariamoba: Saint Mary's Day. Pilgrimages to Mary-dedicated churches, especially in Mtskheta.
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  October 14: Svetitskhovloba: Feast of the 11th-century UNESCO cathedral in Mtskheta, one of the Georgian Orthodox Church's most important feasts.
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  November 23: St. George's Day (Giorgoba): Georgia's patron saint, the namesake of the red cross on the flag. Pilgrimage to Alaverdi in Kakheti.

• •The Bolnisi Sioni basilica, from which the smaller cross on the flag takes its name, is a 5th-century Orthodox church still in daily use. The cross motif is carved into its tympanum.
• •Georgia is the world's oldest known winemaking region). Archaeologists have dated qvevri wine residue to 6000 BCE, older than any other culture's wine traces.
• •The Georgian language is a Kartvelian language with no known relationship to any other language family on earth) except its three cousins (Megrelian, Svan, and Laz). Its 33-letter Mkhedruli script is UNESCO-listed.
• •The 1367 Pizzigano nautical chart) is the oldest known map depiction of a flag resembling today's Georgian flag. Vexillologists rediscovered the connection in the late 1990s, shaping the 2004 adoption.
• •Georgia has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites from 1994 and 1996: the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta (Georgia's ancient capital and the birthplace of Georgian Christianity in 337 AD) and Upper Svaneti (medieval tower-house villages in the high Caucasus).
• •Around 1.5 million Georgians live abroad, roughly 40 percent of the domestic population, making the diaspora one of the largest per-capita in the world after Armenia.
• •The Georgian rugby team has qualified for every Rugby World Cup since 2003. The team nickname, the Lelos, comes from lelo burti, an indigenous Georgian ball game with strong similarities to rugby.