Flag: Vietnam Emoji

The flag of Vietnam, cờ đỏ sao vàng ('red flag with yellow star'): a solid red field with a single large gold five-pointed star at center. Designed in 1940 by Việt Minh revolutionary Nguyễn Hữu Tiến for the failed November 1940 Cochinchina uprising. First used as a national flag on September 5, 1945, when Ho Chi Minh adopted it for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Modified on November 30, 1955 to straighten the star's points, and confirmed by the Socialist Republic on July 2, 1976, after the reunification of north and south.

Red is the blood shed in the long struggle for independence from French and Japanese occupation and through three decades of war. The gold star stands for the Vietnamese people and the five points for the workers, peasants, soldiers, intellectuals, and youth united under the Party. Nguyễn Hữu Tiến wrote, in a poem attributed to him before his 1941 execution by the French, that the yellow was chosen as 'the color of our people's skin.'

On social, 🇻🇳 is a complicated flag. Inside Vietnam it's the main state and sports flag, raised during Tết (Lunar New Year), Reunification Day (April 30), National Day (September 2), and every football match. Abroad, usage is sharply split. Tourism content (Ha Long Bay, phở bowls, scooter-filled Saigon streets) and Vietnamese pop culture uses the red flag freely. A large slice of the Vietnamese diaspora in the US, Australia, and France, roughly 4.5 million people descended from post-1975 refugees, explicitly avoids the red flag and uses the yellow three-red-stripes flag of the former Republic of Vietnam, recognized in several US states as the 'Vietnamese American Heritage and Freedom Flag'.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1FB (V) + U+1F1F3 (N). Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. On platforms without flag support, it falls back to 'VN' in a rounded rectangle.

🇻🇳 travels along three distinct social tracks, and reading which one it's on is the main skill for anyone trying to understand a Vietnam post.

First, tourism and food. Vietnam welcomed 21.2 million foreign visitors in 2025, up 20.4% year-on-year and surpassing 2019 levels by 19%. 🇻🇳 shows up on phở bowls in Hanoi, bánh mì stalls in Hoi An, Ha Long Bay cruise decks, Sapa trekking photos, and the backpacker Ha Giang Loop. Anthony Bourdain's 2016 bún chả lunch with Barack Obama in Hanoi is still the single most-posted Vietnam food moment on the internet.

Second, state and domestic social. Inside Vietnam and among the ~5.3 million diaspora who left after 1986 (economic migrants, not refugees, often working or studying abroad and maintaining ties to the SRV), 🇻🇳 flies during Tết (late January or February), Reunification Day (April 30), National Day (September 2), and Vietnamese football matches, especially the biennial ASEAN Championship and the men's team's qualification runs.

Third, a deliberate absence. Among Vietnamese Americans (~2.3 million, largely descended from post-1975 South Vietnamese refugees), plus Vietnamese Australians, French, Canadians, and Germans with similar refugee histories, 🇻🇳 is often actively avoided in favor of the yellow 'Heritage and Freedom' flag. California cities including Westminster and Garden Grove have banned the 🇻🇳 red flag from civic flagpoles, and Virginia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and other states have officially recognized the yellow flag as the Heritage Flag in state statute. Posting 🇻🇳 on a Vietnamese American community page around April 30 (locally called 'Black April') is read as a political statement.

The 2025 50th-anniversary parade in Ho Chi Minh City drew 13,000 marchers, a 10,500-drone show, and T-55 tanks. That same week, diaspora communities held 'Black April' commemorations in Garden Grove, San Jose, Houston, and Sydney, where the yellow flag was flown at half-staff. Two anniversaries, two flags, same date.

• 🏯
  Capital: Hanoi (21.03°N, 105.85°E)
• 👥
  Population: ~101.3 million (2025)
• 🗺️
  Area: 331,212 km²
• 💴
  Currency: Vietnamese đồng (VND, ₫)
• 🗣️
  Language: Vietnamese (quốc ngữ Latin script)
• 📞
  Calling code: +84
• ⏰
  Time zone: ICT (UTC+7), no DST
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .vn

Foods that travel with 🇻🇳

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The cờ đỏ sao vàng was designed in 1940 by Nguyễn Hữu Tiến, a Việt Minh organizer in southern Vietnam, for the armed Nam Kỳ (Cochinchina) Uprising planned for November 1940 against French colonial rule. The uprising was betrayed before it started, French forces crushed it within weeks, and Tiến was captured and executed on August 28, 1941. A poem attributed to him, allegedly composed in prison, set the flag's symbolism: red for the blood of a struggling people, yellow for the skin of that people, five star points for the five social classes to be united under the new Vietnam.

The flag resurfaced five years later. On September 2, 1945, three weeks after Japan's surrender, Ho Chi Minh stood at Ba Đình Square in Hanoi and declared the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Three days later, on September 5, he signed the decree formally adopting Tiến's flag as the national banner. France would not accept that declaration. The First Indochina War followed, running until the 1954 Geneva Accords partitioned the country along the 17th parallel. The red flag stayed in the north.

In the south, the State of Vietnam (later the Republic of Vietnam) adopted the yellow flag with three red stripes, a design rooted in the 1948 Imperial Vietnamese banner under Bảo Đại and anchored in traditional royal colors. That flag flew over Saigon until April 30, 1975, when North Vietnamese T-55 tanks crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace and the red-and-yellow-star flag was raised in its place.

Formal reunification came July 2, 1976, with the founding of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The star had been slightly redesigned in 1955 (the points straightened and proportioned more geometrically), and this version has flown unchanged for the fifty years since. The yellow flag with three stripes was retired from official use in Vietnam. Abroad, it found a second life as the Vietnamese American Heritage and Freedom Flag, recognized by resolution or statute in a growing list of US states and municipalities since 2002.

The emoji 🇻🇳 was added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015 via regional indicator sequences. It represents the current flag, cờ đỏ sao vàng, which for many Vietnamese outside Vietnam is not their preferred flag at all.

1. 1940Nguyễn Hữu Tiến designs the cờ đỏ sao vàng for the Cochinchina Uprising
2. 1941Tiến executed by French colonial authorities on August 28
3. 1945Ho Chi Minh declares independence at Ba Đình Square; flag adopted September 5↗
4. 1948South adopts yellow flag with three red stripes (Bảo Đại era, continued by RVN)
5. 1954Geneva Accords partition Vietnam at the 17th parallel; red flag stays in north, yellow flag in south
6. 1955North modifies star: points straightened, November 30
7. 1975Fall of Saigon on April 30: red flag raised at Independence Palace↗
8. 1976Socialist Republic of Vietnam founded July 2; cờ đỏ sao vàng confirmed as national flag
9. 2002Virginia adopts the yellow flag as the Vietnamese American Heritage and Freedom Flag; other states follow↗
10. 2015🇻🇳 added to Emoji 1.0 via regional indicator sequences
11. 202550th anniversary of Reunification: 13,000-person parade in Ho Chi Minh City with 10,500-drone show↗

Inside Vietnam: 🇻🇳 is neutral patriotic currency. It flies on every house during Tết, in every classroom, on every football jersey. The yellow Heritage flag cannot be publicly displayed inside Vietnam; doing so is a political offense. Vietnamese nationals posting on domestic social rarely think twice about 🇻🇳, which is just 'the flag'.

Among post-1986 economic diaspora (OECD-country students, workers, spouses, the ~5.3 million who left after Đổi Mới market reforms opened the country): 🇻🇳 is used fairly freely, especially on Tết, at Vietnamese cultural events in Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, and Sydney, and in food or tourism content.

Among pre-1986 refugee diaspora (the ~2.3 million Vietnamese Americans, plus equivalents in Australia, France, Canada, Germany): 🇻🇳 is politically charged. Many families lost members in re-education camps, on boats, or during the war itself. April 30 is not 'Reunification Day' but 'Black April,' a day of mourning. Westminster and Garden Grove (the heart of Orange County's 242,000-strong Vietnamese community and Little Saigon) have formally banned 🇻🇳 from civic flagpoles. The Vietnamese Heritage Flag (yellow with three red stripes) is flown instead. Virginia, Louisiana, Florida, Oklahoma, Minnesota, and several other US states have passed statutes recognizing the yellow flag as the Vietnamese American Heritage and Freedom Flag.

The practical result: if you're posting about Vietnamese food, travel, or cultural content and you want to reach the full Vietnamese-speaking internet, 🇻🇳 is usually fine. If you're addressing or including US, Australian, or French Vietnamese community spaces, you may see the yellow Heritage flag instead and should read the room before adding 🇻🇳 to a community-specific post. Posting 🇻🇳 during Black April week without context can read as insensitive at best and provocative at worst.

• 🎆
  February 17, 2026: Tết Nguyên Đán: Vietnamese Lunar New Year. The biggest annual 🇻🇳 spike globally.
• 👑
  April 26, 2026: Hùng Kings Festival: 10th day of the 3rd lunar month. Pilgrimage to the Hùng Temples, the legendary founders of Vietnam.
• 🎖️
  April 30: Reunification Day: 1975 fall of Saigon. Major parades, a peak domestic 🇻🇳 window. Also Black April for the diaspora.
• 👷
  May 1: Labor Day: Standard May Day, rolled into the Reunification Day long weekend.
• 🇻🇳
  September 2: National Day: Ho Chi Minh's 1945 independence declaration at Ba Đình Square. Flag-raising nationwide.
• 🏮
  September 25, 2026: Mid-Autumn Festival: Tết Trung Thu. Children's lanterns, mooncakes, lion dance.

• •The Vietnam flag was designed by a man who was executed before it ever flew as a national banner. Nguyễn Hữu Tiến drew the cờ đỏ sao vàng in 1940 for a failed uprising and was shot by the French in August 1941. It took four more years before Ho Chi Minh raised it over Hanoi.
• •The star's points were straightened in 1955. The original 1940 design had slightly curved, softer points; the current angular geometric version dates from November 30, 1955.
• •Vietnam produces half of Samsung's global smartphone output. Samsung's $23.2 billion plant footprint in Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen provinces shipped $54.4 billion in 2024, making Samsung alone responsible for roughly 11% of all Vietnamese exports.
• •Little Saigon in Orange County, California is home to roughly 200,000 Vietnamese Americans, the largest Vietnamese diaspora community anywhere in the world.
• •Vietnam has over 3,260 km of coastline from the Chinese border down to the Gulf of Thailand, on a single national time zone (UTC+7).
• •Bún chả Hương Liên, the Hanoi restaurant Obama and Bourdain ate at in 2016, kept the $6 table setting in a glass display case. It's still the best-trafficked food-tour stop in Hanoi.
• •The original 1945 independence declaration at Ba Đình Square quoted the US Declaration of Independence almost verbatim: 'All men are created equal...'
• •Vietnam and China both have red flags with yellow stars, but the flag emojis render completely differently: 🇻🇳 has one large centered star, 🇨🇳 has one large star plus four smaller ones in the upper hoist.

• •Parts Unknown: Vietnam (CNN, 2016): Anthony Bourdain's bún chả lunch with Barack Obama at Hanoi's Bún Chả Hương Liên became the single most-viewed food-travel moment of the 2010s. The stools and bowls are preserved in a glass case.
• •Good Morning, Vietnam (1987): Robin Williams as DJ Adrian Cronauer. Set during the American war, filmed in Thailand. Defined a generation of Western pop-cultural Vietnam for better and worse.
• •The Quiet American (2002): Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser in Graham Greene's 1955 novel, the adaptation shot extensively in Hoi An and Hanoi. Won Caine an Academy Award nomination.
• •Kong: Skull Island (2017): Shot in Ha Long Bay, Trang An (Ninh Bình), and Phong Nha caves. Vietnam's tourism authority used the afterglow to relaunch its international campaign.
• •Sơn Tùng M-TP: Vietnam's biggest contemporary pop star, whose music videos and fashion choices routinely trend across Vietnamese TikTok and draw cross-border Thai and Chinese fan attention.

• •🇻🇳 is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1FB (V) + U+1F1F3 (N). Platforms without flag support show 'VN' in a rounded rectangle.
• •Vietnam's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code is VN. The flag emoji maps to the current SRV flag; there is no official Unicode emoji for the former South Vietnam yellow flag. Some pages include it as an SVG asset.
• •Vietnamese uses the Latin-based quốc ngữ script with extensive diacritics. When storing Vietnamese text near 🇻🇳, ensure your database is UTF-8 and your font supports all combining marks (breve, horn, circumflex, acute, grave, hook, tilde, dot-below).

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.