Flag: Senegal Emoji

The flag of Senegal. A vertical tricolor of green, yellow, and red with a green five-pointed star centered on the yellow band. Ratio 2:3. Adopted August 20, 1960, shortly after Senegal withdrew from the short-lived Mali Federation.

The palette is the pan-African tricolor (green-yellow-red) first raised by Marcus Garvey's UNIA and later adopted across post-independence Africa. Green stands for hope and the Prophet in Islam (Senegal is ~95% Muslim, mostly in Sufi brotherhoods like the Mouride and Tijaniyyah). Yellow stands for wealth and the fruits of labor. Red stands for the blood shed in the struggle for independence. The green star is distinctly Senegalese; it may reference the human-figure emblem on the brief 1959 to 1960 Mali Federation flag, or the Serer cosmological symbol *Yooniir* denoting good fortune and destiny.

Senegal sits at the westernmost tip of continental Africa, a nation of 18.2 million people that anchors Francophone West Africa culturally. Dakar has been an intellectual capital since the 1960 presidency of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the poet-philosopher who co-founded the Négritude movement and became the country's first president. Social feeds lean on football (two AFCON titles in 2021 and 2025), music (Youssou N'Dour and the mbalax genre), and the teranga (hospitality) brand that the tourism ministry has built around.

Emoji 2.0 (2015), regional indicator pair U+1F1F8U+1F1F8 + U+1F1F3U+1F1F3 (S + N). Platforms without flag support fall back to SNSN.

Football is the biggest single driver. Senegal's national team, the Lions of Teranga (Les Lions de la Teranga), won the 2021 AFCON (held February 2022) on penalties against Egypt, then retained the title in AFCON 2025 against Morocco. Sadio Mané is the face of that golden generation; 🇸🇳 spikes every time he scores for Al-Nassr, Bayern Munich (historical), or Senegal.

Mbalax and diaspora music. Youssou N'Dour's 1994 album Joko and long partnership with Peter Gabriel put Senegalese mbalax on global radio; it still drives 🇸🇳 posting during his tours. Akon, though American-born, was raised partly in Senegal and regularly posts the flag; his 2020 "Akon City" futuristic development announcement in Senegal went viral.

Teranga tourism. The concept of *teranga* (Wolof hospitality) underwrites the "Visit Senegal" brand. Travel TikToks tagged with Lac Rose (the Pink Lake), Gorée Island, and the Saly Petit Côte beach resorts generate sustained 🇸🇳 engagement.

Diaspora. ~600,000 Senegalese live abroad, mostly in France (Paris, Marseille), Italy (Brescia, Milan), the US (New York's Little Senegal in Harlem), and Spain (mostly Mouride community in Catalonia). Diaspora flag-posting peaks on April 4 (Independence Day), during the Grand Magal of Touba Mouride pilgrimage, and at international football tournaments.

Political news cycles. The March 2024 presidential election of Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was freed from prison 10 days before the vote and won on the first round at 44 years old, became one of the biggest African democratic moments of the decade. 🇸🇳 trended alongside it.

• 🏙️
  Capital: Dakar (14.69°N, 17.45°W); the westernmost major city in mainland Africa
• 👥
  Population: ~18.2 million (2025)
• 🗺️
  Area: 196,722 km²
• 💵
  Currency: West African CFA franc (XOF, CFA); pegged 655.957 to 1 EUR
• 🗣️
  Languages: French (official); Wolof is the everyday lingua franca; also Pulaar, Serer, Mandinka
• 🛐
  Religions: ~95% Muslim (Sufi brotherhoods: Mouride, Tijaniyyah, Qadiriyya), ~4% Christian
• 📞
  Calling code: +221
• ⏰
  Time zone: GMT (UTC+0), no DST
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .sn

Foods that show up next to 🇸🇳

Landmarks and cultural sites

French West Africa to independence. Senegal was the administrative seat of French West Africa from 1904 until independence movements swept the region in the 1950s. In 1959, Senegal and French Sudan (modern Mali) federated as the Mali Federation, a short-lived political union that gained independence from France on June 20, 1960. The federation's flag was a vertical green-yellow-red tricolor with a black human-figure stick emblem on the yellow stripe.

The 60-day Federation. The Federation lasted barely two months. Senegal and Mali disagreed on party organization and leadership, and on August 20, 1960, Senegal seceded. The same day, Senegal adopted its current flag: the same pan-African palette, but with the Mali Federation's human figure replaced by a single green five-pointed star.

Léopold Senghor's era. Senghor, the poet-philosopher who had served as France's Constituent Assembly representative, became Senegal's first president. He ruled for 20 years (1960 to 1980), wrote poetry in French, and was the first African admitted to the Académie française. His Négritude movement (co-founded with Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas in 1930s Paris) reframed African identity as a source of pride rather than colonial inheritance.

Modern democratic track. Senegal is one of the few sub-Saharan African countries never to have had a successful military coup. The political system has survived peaceful power transitions in 2000, 2012, and 2024. In March 2024, Bassirou Diomaye Faye won the presidential election at age 44 just 10 days after being released from prison, becoming the youngest president in Senegal's history.

The flag has never changed. Sixty-five years in, the flag as adopted in 1960 still flies exactly as it did the first time Léopold Senghor raised it.

• 🎉
  April 4: Independence Day: The biggest civic day. Commemorates [independence from France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senegal) on April 4, 1960. Military and cultural parade down Dakar's Avenue du Général de Gaulle.
• 🌙
  Korité (Eid al-Fitr): End of Ramadan. The universal family holiday; ram feasts, new clothes for children, and mosque gatherings.
• 🐏
  Tabaski (Eid al-Adha): Feast of the Sacrifice. Every Senegalese household that can afford one buys a ram to sacrifice on the day. The year's biggest domestic holiday.
• 🕌
  Grand Magal of Touba: 18th day of Safar in the Islamic lunar calendar. Millions of Mourides converge on Touba; one of the largest annual religious gatherings in Africa.
• 📿
  Gamou (Mawlid): The Prophet's birthday. Tivaouane and Kaolack host the Tijaniyyah gatherings; street-long processions of singers.

• •Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal's first president, was a poet-philosopher who co-founded the Négritude movement with Aimé Césaire in Paris in the 1930s. In 1983 he became the first African admitted to the Académie française.
• •Senegal's Lake Retba (Lac Rose) contains up to 40% salinity, almost as salty as the Dead Sea. The pink color comes from Dunaliella salina algae that thrive in extreme salt concentrations, intensifying from late January to early March.
• •Sadio Mané missed a first-half penalty against Egypt in the AFCON 2021 final, then stepped up to take the winning kick in the shoot-out. Senegal won 4-2, taking the country's first-ever AFCON title. They retained the title in AFCON 2025 against Morocco.
• •Senegal's national dish thieboudienne was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2021. The Jollof rice debate with Nigeria and Ghana often points back to Senegal as the actual origin country of jollof.
• •The Grand Magal of Touba, the Mouride pilgrimage, draws an estimated 4 to 5 million pilgrims each year, making Touba temporarily the second-largest city in Senegal during the event. Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba founded the Mouride brotherhood in 1883.
• •Senegal's capital Dakar is the westernmost major city in mainland Africa, at 17.45°W. It's closer to Rio de Janeiro than to Mogadishu as the crow flies.
• •The Dakar Rally ended at Lake Retba in Senegal every year from 1979 to 2008. The rally moved to South America in 2009 after a terrorism threat cancelled the 2008 edition; it has been held in Saudi Arabia since 2020. The name stayed.
• •Senegal has never had a military coup. A rare distinction in post-colonial West Africa, where neighbors Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Niger have all experienced multiple coups in the 21st century.

• •🇸🇳 is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1F8U+1F1F8 (S) + U+1F1F3U+1F1F3 (N). ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code: SNSN.
• •Unsupported platforms render it as the letters SNSN. Common in older Windows chat clients.
• •Shortcode: :flag_sn::flag_sn: or :senegal::senegal: on most messaging platforms.

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