Regional indicator symbol
The regional indicator symbols are a set of 26 alphabetic Unicode characters intended to be used to encode ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two-letter country codes in a way that allows optional special treatment.
These were defined by as part of the Unicode 6.0 support for emoji, as an alternative to encoding separate characters for each country flag. Although they can be displayed as Roman letters, it is intended that implementations may choose to display them in other ways, such as by using national flags. The Unicode FAQ indicates that this mechanism should be used and that symbols for national flags will not be directly encoded. This allows the Unicode consortium to avoid any issues surrounding which countries to include, instead leaving it entirely to the system implementation as to which flags to include.
They are encoded in the range to within the Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement block in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane.
Emoji flag sequences
A pair of regional indicator symbols is referred to as an emoji flag sequence.Out of the 676 possible pairs of regional indicator symbols, only 270 are considered valid Unicode region codes.
These are a subset of the region sequences in the Common Locale Data Repository :
- All 256 regular region sequences in the CLDR
- * 249 officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes
- * 6 exceptional reservations
- * 1 user-assigned temporary country code
- Two of the 35 macroregion sequences in the CLDR
- All 12 deprecated region sequences in the CLDR
| flag | code | region | possible rendering |
| AC | Ascension Island | ||
| AD | Andorra | ||
| AE | United Arab Emirates | ||
| AF | Afghanistan | ||
| AG | Antigua & Barbuda | ||
| AI | Anguilla | ||
| AL | Albania | ||
| AM | Armenia | ||
| AO | Angola | ||
| AQ | Antarctica | ||
| AR | Argentina | ||
| AS | American Samoa | ||
| AT | Austria | ||
| AU | Australia | ||
| AW | Aruba | ||
| AX | Åland Islands | ||
| AZ | Azerbaijan | ||
| BA | Bosnia & Herzegovina | ||
| BB | Barbados | ||
| BD | Bangladesh | ||
| BE | Belgium | ||
| BF | Burkina Faso | ||
| BG | Bulgaria | ||
| BH | Bahrain | ||
| BI | Burundi | ||
| BJ | Benin | ||
| BL | St. Barthélemy | ||
| BM | Bermuda | ||
| BN | Brunei | ||
| BO | Bolivia | ||
| BQ | Caribbean Netherlands | ||
| BR | Brazil | ||
| BS | Bahamas | ||
| BT | Bhutan | ||
| BV | Bouvet Island | ||
| BW | Botswana | ||
| BY | Belarus | ||
| BZ | Belize | ||
| CA | Canada | ||
| CC | Cocos Islands | ||
| CD | Congo-Kinshasa | ||
| CF | Central African Republic | ||
| CG | Congo-Brazzaville | ||
| CH | Switzerland | ||
| CI | Côte d'Ivoire | ||
| CK | Cook Islands | ||
| CL | Chile | ||
| CM | Cameroon | ||
| CN | China | ||
| CO | Colombia | ||
| CP | Clipperton Island | ||
| CQ | Sark | ||
| CR | Costa Rica | ||
| CU | Cuba | ||
| CV | Cape Verde | ||
| CW | Curaçao | ||
| CX | Christmas Island | ||
| CY | Cyprus | ||
| CZ | Czechia | ||
| DE | Germany | ||
| DG | Diego Garcia | ||
| DJ | Djibouti | ||
| DK | Denmark | ||
| DM | Dominica | ||
| DO | Dominican Republic | ||
| DZ | Algeria | ||
| EA | Ceuta & Melilla | ||
| EC | Ecuador | ||
| EE | Estonia | ||
| EG | Egypt | ||
| EH | Western Sahara | ||
| ER | Eritrea | ||
| ES | Spain | ||
| ET | Ethiopia | ||
| EU | European Union | ||
| FI | Finland | ||
| FJ | Fiji | ||
| FK | Falkland Islands | ||
| FM | Micronesia | ||
| FO | Faroe Islands | ||
| FR | France | ||
| GA | Gabon | ||
| GB | United Kingdom | ||
| GD | Grenada | ||
| GE | Georgia | ||
| GF | French Guiana | ||
| GG | Guernsey | ||
| GH | Ghana | ||
| GI | Gibraltar | ||
| GL | Greenland | ||
| GM | Gambia | ||
| GN | Guinea | ||
| GP | Guadeloupe | ||
| GQ | Equatorial Guinea | ||
| GR | Greece | ||
| GS | South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands | ||
| GT | Guatemala | ||
| GU | Guam | ||
| GW | Guinea-Bissau | ||
| GY | Guyana | ||
| HK | Hong Kong SAR China | ||
| HM | Heard & McDonald Islands | ||
| HN | Honduras | ||
| HR | Croatia | ||
| HT | Haiti | ||
| HU | Hungary | ||
| IC | Canary Islands | ||
| ID | Indonesia | ||
| IE | Ireland | ||
| IL | Israel | ||
| IM | Isle of Man | ||
| IN | India | ||
| IO | British Indian Ocean Territory | ||
| IQ | Iraq | ||
| IR | Iran | ||
| IS | Iceland | ||
| IT | Italy | ||
| JE | Jersey | ||
| JM | Jamaica | ||
| JO | Jordan | ||
| JP | Japan | ||
| KE | Kenya | ||
| KG | Kyrgyzstan | ||
| KH | Cambodia | ||
| KI | Kiribati | ||
| KM | Comoros | ||
| KN | St. Kitts & Nevis | ||
| KP | North Korea | ||
| KR | South Korea | ||
| KW | Kuwait | ||
| KY | Cayman Islands | ||
| KZ | Kazakhstan | ||
| LA | Laos | ||
| LB | Lebanon | ||
| LC | St. Lucia | ||
| LI | Liechtenstein | ||
| LK | Sri Lanka | ||
| LR | Liberia | ||
| LS | Lesotho | ||
| LT | Lithuania | ||
| LU | Luxembourg | ||
| LV | Latvia | ||
| LY | Libya | ||
| MA | Morocco | ||
| MC | Monaco | ||
| MD | Moldova | ||
| ME | Montenegro | ||
| MF | St. Martin | ||
| MG | Madagascar | ||
| MH | Marshall Islands | ||
| MK | North Macedonia | ||
| ML | Mali | ||
| MM | Myanmar | ||
| MN | Mongolia | ||
| MO | Macao SAR China | ||
| MP | Northern Mariana Islands | ||
| MQ | Martinique | ||
| MR | Mauritania | ||
| MS | Montserrat | ||
| MT | Malta | ||
| MU | Mauritius | ||
| MV | Maldives | ||
| MW | Malawi | ||
| MX | Mexico | ||
| MY | Malaysia | ||
| MZ | Mozambique | ||
| NA | Namibia | ||
| NC | New Caledonia | ||
| NE | Niger | ||
| NF | Norfolk Island | ||
| NG | Nigeria | ||
| NI | Nicaragua | ||
| NL | Netherlands | ||
| NO | Norway | ||
| NP | Nepal | ||
| NR | Nauru | ||
| NU | Niue | ||
| NZ | New Zealand | ||
| OM | Oman | ||
| PA | Panama | ||
| PE | Peru | ||
| PF | French Polynesia | ||
| PG | Papua New Guinea | ||
| PH | Philippines | ||
| PK | Pakistan | ||
| PL | Poland | ||
| PM | St. Pierre & Miquelon | ||
| PN | Pitcairn Islands | ||
| PR | Puerto Rico | ||
| PS | Palestinian Territories | ||
| PT | Portugal | ||
| PW | Palau | ||
| PY | Paraguay | ||
| QA | Qatar | ||
| RE | Réunion | ||
| RO | Romania | ||
| RS | Serbia | ||
| RU | Russia | ||
| RW | Rwanda | ||
| SA | Saudi Arabia | ||
| SB | Solomon Islands | ||
| SC | Seychelles | ||
| SD | Sudan | ||
| SE | Sweden | ||
| SG | Singapore | ||
| SH | St. Helena | ||
| SI | Slovenia | ||
| SJ | Svalbard & Jan Mayen | ||
| SK | Slovakia | ||
| SL | Sierra Leone | ||
| SM | San Marino | ||
| SN | Senegal | ||
| SO | Somalia | ||
| SR | Suriname | ||
| SS | South Sudan | ||
| ST | São Tomé & Príncipe | ||
| SV | El Salvador | ||
| SX | Sint Maarten | ||
| SY | Syria | ||
| SZ | Eswatini | ||
| TA | Tristan da Cunha | ||
| TC | Turks & Caicos Islands | ||
| TD | Chad | ||
| TF | French Southern Territories | ||
| TG | Togo | ||
| TH | Thailand | ||
| TJ | Tajikistan | ||
| TK | Tokelau | ||
| TL | Timor-Leste | ||
| TM | Turkmenistan | ||
| TN | Tunisia | ||
| TO | Tonga | ||
| TR | Türkiye | ||
| TT | Trinidad & Tobago | ||
| TV | Tuvalu | ||
| TW | Taiwan | ||
| TZ | Tanzania | ||
| UA | Ukraine | ||
| UG | Uganda | ||
| UM | U.S. Outlying Islands | ||
| UN | United Nations | ||
| US | United States | ||
| UY | Uruguay | ||
| UZ | Uzbekistan | ||
| VA | Vatican City | ||
| VC | St. Vincent & Grenadines | ||
| VE | Venezuela | ||
| VG | British Virgin Islands | ||
| VI | U.S. Virgin Islands | ||
| VN | Vietnam | ||
| VU | Vanuatu | ||
| WF | Wallis & Futuna | ||
| WS | Samoa | ||
| XK | Kosovo | ||
| YE | Yemen | ||
| YT | Mayotte | ||
| ZA | South Africa | ||
| ZM | Zambia | ||
| ZW | Zimbabwe |
Some providers may internally have assigned specific codes to deprecated sequences or to unofficial ones, just like WhatsApp did by putting the Texas flag as XT.
A separate mechanism is used for regional flags, such as England, Scotland, Wales, Texas or California. It uses and formatting tag characters instead of regional indicator symbols. It is based on ISO 3166-2 regions with hyphen removed and lowercase, e.g. GB-ENG → gbeng, terminating with. Flag of England is therefore represented by a sequence U+1F3F4, SMALL LETTER G">U+E0067, U+E0062, U+E0065, U+E006E, U+E0067, U+E007F. In the tenth revision the Unicode consortium was considering instead, but from eleventh onwards it is black. Some vendors choose to include custom zero-width joiner sequences that only show up on their platform, such as WhatsApp and their Refugee Nation Flag ?️?⬛️?.