Flag: Pakistan Emoji

The flag of Pakistan, the Parcham-e-Sitāra-o-Hilāl (Flag of the Star and Crescent). A dark green field with a tilted white crescent moon and five-pointed star centered on the green, and a white vertical stripe at the hoist that takes up one quarter of the flag's width. Ratio 2:3.

🇵🇰 carries the identity of 247 million Pakistanis plus a diaspora of over 9 million people, the sixth-largest in the world. Around 4 million Pakistanis live in the Gulf (mostly UAE and Saudi Arabia); around 1.6 million live in the UK, mostly in Bradford, Birmingham, and East London. The diaspora sends home a record $38 billion in remittances in FY25, making remittances the second-largest contributor to Pakistan's economy after exports.

Cricket is the social-media heartbeat. The Pakistan Super League (PSL) fills every spring; the India-Pakistan match is the country's single biggest annual attention event; and Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi, and Mohammad Rizwan are the trio whose centuries and wickets push 🇵🇰 to its weekly peaks. Food, truck art, Urdu poetry, and northern mountain content round out the rest.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1F5 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER PU+1F1F5 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER P + U+1F1F0 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER KU+1F1F0 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER K. Part of Emoji 1.0 (2015). Unsupported platforms fall back to the letters PKPK.

The design was approved by the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, three days before independence. The green-and-white composition descends from the 1906 Muslim League banner (plain green with the crescent and star); the white hoist stripe was added specifically to represent Christian, Hindu, Parsi, Sikh, and other religious minorities in the new state. Flag manufacture, raising, and display are regulated by the 1963 Pakistan Flag Rules.

🇵🇰 gets used along three overlapping tracks: domestic patriotism, diaspora identity, and cricket.

Domestic patriotism spikes twice a year. Pakistan Day (March 23) marks the 1940 Lahore Resolution demanding a separate Muslim state and the 1956 adoption of the first constitution. Independence Day (August 14) is the bigger of the two, with green-and-white lighting the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore and filling Constitution Avenue in Islamabad. The day before Eid (Chaand Raat, the "night of the moon") drives a smaller but reliable 🇵🇰 spike on Eid-greeting posts.

The diaspora is where 🇵🇰 reaches global volume. Pakistani communities in the UK (Bradford, Birmingham, East London), the Gulf, the US (Houston, Chicago, New York), Canada (Mississauga, Scarborough), and Malaysia use 🇵🇰 heavily around weddings, Eid, cricket matches, and visa updates. The UAE diaspora alone numbers around 1.5 million and contributes around 20% of total Pakistani remittances.

Cricket is the persistent engine. PSL runs February to March (moving to April-May from 2026); Pakistan's international fixtures and the 2025 Champions Trophy final all drove multi-day 🇵🇰 spikes. The 2024 T20 World Cup group-stage loss to India generated one of the largest volume events of the year, with 🇵🇰 appearing hundreds of thousands of times across defense-of-team and roast-mode threads. Babar Azam's Instagram alone reaches over 16 million followers.

News and politics. The 2022 ouster and subsequent arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a global superstar ex-cricketer, turned 🇵🇰 into a political-news flag for weeks at a time. The 2022 floods that displaced 33 million people generated another sustained humanitarian-posting window.

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  Capital: Islamabad (33.68°N, 73.05°E)
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  Population: ~247.5 million (2025, world's 5th largest)
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  Area: 881,913 km² (includes AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan)
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  Currency: Pakistani rupee (PKR, ₨)
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  Languages: Urdu (national) and English (official); Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki widely spoken
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  Calling code: +92
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  Time zone: PKT (UTC+5), no DST
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  Internet TLD: .pk

Foods that show up next to 🇵🇰

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The flag's visual DNA runs through the All-India Muslim League founded in Dhaka in 1906. The Muslim League adopted its first banner in 1906, a plain green field with a white crescent and star inherited from late Ottoman Islamic iconography. That flag, minus the hoist stripe, flew at every Muslim League gathering through the 1947 partition.

Designing the national flag. In July 1947, as partition approached, Syed Amir-uddin Kedwaii led the team that adapted the League flag for the new country. The key change was the white stripe at the hoist, added explicitly to represent the roughly 15% of Pakistan's 1947 population that was Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, and other non-Muslim. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, argued in his August 11, 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly that "you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques": the minorities stripe is the flag's material echo of that speech.

August 11, 1947. The Constituent Assembly approved the flag on August 11, 1947, three days before Pakistan's independence on August 14. The flag was raised for the first time in Karachi (then the capital) on the midnight of the 13th-14th. India's flag would be raised the next midnight, hours apart.

The crescent, the star, and the green. The crescent is tilted and descending, in contrast to the horizontally oriented crescents on Ottoman, Turkish, or Azerbaijani flags. The star is five-pointed and sits inside the crescent's curve. Officially, the crescent represents progress, the star represents light and knowledge. Green is the classical color of Islam.

Flag rules and etiquette. The Pakistan Flag Rules, 1963 codified exact dimensions, acceptable materials, and rules for display. The flag must never touch the ground, must be hoisted at sunrise and lowered at sunset (with exceptions for important buildings), and must never be flown at half-mast except on specific announced days. On August 14) and March 23, the flag flies full-mast on every government building; on September 6 (Defence Day), military installations hoist it with full honors.

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  March 23: Pakistan Day: 1940 Lahore Resolution and 1956 first constitution. Military parade in Islamabad with air force flyover.
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  Floating: Eid al-Fitr: Three-day public holiday. The Chaand Raat night before is a peak 🇵🇰🌙 combo window.
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  Floating: Eid al-Adha: Festival of sacrifice. Four-day public holiday, peak animal-market posts in the preceding week.
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  August 14: Independence Day: Year's biggest 🇵🇰 day. Minar-e-Pakistan and Faisal Mosque ceremonies; diaspora parades in 30+ cities worldwide.
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  September 6: Defence Day: Commemorates the armed forces' defense in the 1965 war. Military ceremonies at GHQ Rawalpindi.
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  November 9: Iqbal Day: Birthday of poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal. Cultural events, poetry recitations.
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  December 25: Quaid-e-Azam Day: Birthday of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Also celebrated as Christmas by Christian Pakistanis (~1.5%).

• •The flag was raised for the first time at the midnight of August 13-14, 1947, just hours before India's flag went up at midnight of August 14-15 across the border in New Delhi.
• •The Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore, completed in 1968, is the monument most associated with the flag. It was built at the site of the 1940 Lahore Resolution demanding a separate Muslim homeland.
• •The Karakoram Highway, connecting Pakistan to China through the Khunjerab Pass (4,693 m), is the highest paved international road in the world. Chinese and Pakistani flags fly together on its 1,300 km length.
• •Pakistan's northern areas contain five of the world's fourteen 8,000-m peaks (K2 at 8,611 m being the second-tallest mountain on Earth).
• •The Pakistan Super League is the world's sixth-richest T20 franchise league by broadcast rights. Peshawar Zalmi, Lahore Qalandars, Karachi Kings, and Islamabad United dominate the posting calendar each February-March.
• •Pakistan's diaspora remittances hit $38 billion in FY25, the second-largest source of foreign exchange after exports. Saudi Arabia alone accounted for over $8 billion of the total.
• •Urdu, Pakistan's national language, is written in the Perso-Arabic Nastaliq script right to left. Urdu shares roughly 80% of its grammar and core vocabulary with Hindi but uses a completely different writing system, which is why Pakistani and Indian social media users can understand each other in speech but not always in text.