Flag: St. Kitts & Nevis Emoji

The flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis: a diagonal black band edged in yellow, cutting from the lower hoist to the upper fly, with two white five-pointed stars on the black. Above the band is a green triangle, below it a red triangle. Green stands for the islands' fertile volcanic land, red for the struggle against slavery and colonialism, yellow for year-round sunshine, black for the African heritage of most Kittitians and Nevisians. The two stars represent the two islands of the federation (St Kitts and Nevis) and carry the ideals of hope and liberty.

The flag was designed by Edrice Lewis, who was a student when her entry won a 1983 national competition out of 258 submissions. It was hoisted for the first time one minute after midnight on September 19, 1983, the moment St Kitts and Nevis became an independent federation and the last Caribbean country to win independence from the United Kingdom. The design is close kin to several other African-diaspora flags (Republic of the Congo's diagonal composition is the nearest twin), but the two stars make the Caribbean reading unmistakable.

St Kitts and Nevis is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere, 261 km² and about 47,000 people. That tiny footprint drives much of 🇰🇳's social behavior: very light everyday volume, concentrated spikes around Sugar Mas carnival (mid-December to early January) and Independence Day, and a steady B2B trickle from the world's oldest citizenship-by-investment program. Added to Emoji 2.0 in 2015 as the regional indicator sequence U+1F1F0 U+1F1F3U+1F1F0 U+1F1F3.

🇰🇳 is one of the quieter Caribbean flag emojis by raw volume, but it has some of the sharpest seasonality of the OECS Six. The dominant peak is Sugar Mas, the St Kitts and Nevis National Carnival, which runs from mid-December through January 2. It's the only major Caribbean carnival held during Christmas and New Year, which gives Kittitians and Nevisians a distinctive social window: while Trinidad and Grenada post carnival content in summer, 🇰🇳 trends alongside Christmas trees and fireworks.

The second peak is September 19, Independence Day, when the diaspora in New York (mostly Brooklyn), the UK, and the US Virgin Islands floods feeds with the flag. Music Festival weekend in late June is a third, smaller spike: St Kitts Music Festival has been running since 1996 and pulls in Caribbean and US headliners.

Outside those windows, 🇰🇳 is disproportionately present in B2B threads about second passports. The country's citizenship-by-investment program, launched in 1984, is the oldest in the world. Law firms, immigration consultants, and offshore advisors post 🇰🇳 on LinkedIn far more than Kittitian demographics would predict. Cricket West Indies fandom is the steady baseline: Kittitian and Nevisian players slot into the combined regional squad rather than a national side.

• 🏛️
  Capital: Basseterre, on the south coast of St Kitts
• 👥
  Population: ~46,800 (2024 est.); world's smallest sovereign federation
• 🗺️
  Area: 261 km² (St Kitts 168, Nevis 93); smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere
• 💵
  Currency: East Caribbean dollar (XCD), pegged at 2.70 to USD since 1976
• 🗣️
  Languages: English (official); Kittitian Creole (English-based) spoken daily
• 📞
  Calling code: +1-869 (North American Numbering Plan)
• ⏰
  Time zone: AST (UTC-4), no daylight saving
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .kn

Foods that show up next to 🇰🇳

Landmarks that anchor travel content

St Kitts and Nevis was the last Caribbean country to win independence from the UK, on September 19, 1983. A national competition to design the new flag ran earlier that year. The winning entry, chosen from 258 submissions, came from Edrice Lewis, a secondary-school student. Lewis also wrote the official symbolism that the government adopted.

The design leans hard on the pan-African palette (black, red, green, yellow) that ran through independence-era flags across the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa. The diagonal band in particular echoes the Republic of the Congo's flag, though the color logic is different. The two white stars are the Caribbean-specific reading: one for St Kitts, one for Nevis, holding the idea of a federation of two islands rather than a single country.

The federation itself is unusual. Nevis retained substantial constitutional autonomy, including its own premier, legislature, and the right to secede by referendum. A 1998 independence vote on Nevis narrowly failed to clear the two-thirds threshold needed. The flag, with its two clearly equal stars, was designed to acknowledge that structural balance. Red also reads very specifically as the fight against slavery: sugar plantations dominated both islands from the 17th century on, and St Kitts was the first British and French colony in the Caribbean (1623 and 1625). Emancipation came in 1834, which is still marked on August 1 as a public holiday.

• 🎉
  January 1: New Year's Day: Public holiday. Sugar Mas Parade of the Bands through Basseterre on January 1 and 2.
• 💃
  January 2: Carnival Day 2: Last Lap. The federation's biggest party.
• 🐣
  April 3 to 6, 2026: Easter window: Good Friday, Easter Monday. Inter Island boat race from Basseterre to Charlestown.
• ⚒️
  May 4, 2026: Labour Day: First Monday of May. Trade union rallies.
• ☀️
  May 25, 2026: Whit Monday: Pentecost Monday.
• 🎸
  June 25 to 27, 2026: St Kitts Music Festival: [The island's largest music event](https://www.yourstkittsandnevis.com/post/the-st-kitts-music-festival-june-25-27-2026), running since 1996. Caribbean and US R&B/dancehall headliners at Warner Park.
• ✊
  August 3, 2026: Emancipation Day: First Monday of August. Commemorates the 1834 abolition of slavery across the British Caribbean.
• 🎭
  August 4, 2026: Culturama (Nevis): Nevis's own cultural festival, rooted in the August 1 emancipation tradition. Parade, pageant, cultural shows.
• 🦸
  September 16, 2026: National Heroes Day: Honors St Kitts and Nevis's five national heroes, including Sir Robert Bradshaw and Sir Joseph France.
• 🇰🇳
  September 19, 2026: Independence Day: Commemorates independence from the UK on September 19, 1983. Flag-raising at Warner Park, parade, fireworks.
• 🎭
  December 12, 2025 to January 2, 2026: Sugar Mas 54: [The National Carnival](https://skncarnival.com/). Soca Monarch, Calypso, Junior Carnival, J'ouvert on Christmas Eve, Parade of the Bands on January 1. Peak 🇰🇳 window of the year.
• 🎄
  December 25 and 26: Christmas Day and Boxing Day (Sugar Mas J'ouvert runs December 26 pre-dawn).

• •St Kitts and Nevis is the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere, 261 km² and about 46,800 people. It's also the world's smallest sovereign federation.
• •The citizenship-by-investment program launched in 1984 was the first in the world. Every other CBI country (Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, Malta, Turkey, Vanuatu) copied the Kittitian template.
• •Brimstone Hill Fortress, known as the 'Gibraltar of the West Indies,' was built by enslaved Africans under British direction between 1690 and the late 18th century. UNESCO World Heritage since 1999.
• •Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis on January 11, 1755. His Nevis birthplace is a museum in Charlestown.
• •Feral African green vervet monkeys outnumber humans on St Kitts by about 2 to 1. They arrived on slave ships in the 17th century and thrived after sugar plantations closed.
• •The national dish changed in 2003 from 'goat water' to stewed saltfish with spicy plantains and coconut dumplings, following a national poll.

• •🇰🇳 is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1F0U+1F1F0 (K) + U+1F1F3U+1F1F3 (N). ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code: KNKN.
• •Shortcode: :flag_kn::flag_kn: or :st_kitts_nevis::st_kitts_nevis: on most platforms.

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