- Capital
- Vienna
- Continent
- Europe
- Flag adopted
- 1191
- Designer
- Not individually credited
Austria
What the source says
Checked against the constituting documentDie Farben der Republik Österreich sind rot-weiß-rot. Die Flagge besteht aus drei gleichbreiten waagrechten Streifen, von denen der mittlere weiß, der obere und der untere rot sind.
Checked means compared against the quoted text, not read by a person. What the marks mean.
Colors and meaning
Red[1] #ED2939
Said in legend to come from the blood-soaked, sword-cut tabard of Duke Leopold V after the Siege of Acre in 1191
White[1] #FFFFFF
The one unstained band of that same tabard
What the law specifies[1]
The federal constitution states that the colours of the Republic of Austria are red-white-red, and that the flag consists of three horizontal stripes of equal width, the middle one white and the upper and lower ones red. It gives no ratio for the flag as a whole and assigns the colours no meaning.
Symbolism and history
A plain red-white-red horizontal tricolor, among the oldest state flags in continuous use in the world, with a design tradition traced back to the 13th century.
Most similar flags
The 6 closest of the 194 other national flags, ranked by a similarity index computed from the flag images themselves. The number is that index, 0–100 — not a claim that the two flags are “X% identical”.
- Lebanon87
the same horizontal band layout; near-identical colour proportions.
- Indonesia83
the same horizontal band layout; near-identical colour proportions.
- Monaco83
the same horizontal band layout; near-identical colour proportions.
- Poland83
the same horizontal band layout; near-identical colour proportions.
- Chile82
the same horizontal band layout; near-identical colour proportions.
- Singapore80
the same horizontal band layout; the same colours in similar amounts.
From this entry, not from the index: Shares the same red-white-red horizontal band sequence as Latvia's flag, though Latvia's red is a distinctly darker maroon.
Computed at build time: each flag is rasterised to 64x48, and the score is 0.55 × colour overlap + 0.45 × structure. A different weighting would rank these differently. How the index works.
Sources
[1] Verified against Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz, Artikel 8a Abs. 1 (Rechtsinformationssystem des Bundes (RIS), Republik Österreich) on 2026-07-17. Backs which colors the flag has and the description of the design on this page. The passage it was checked against is quoted at the top of this entry.
Further reading: Flag of Austria on Wikipedia