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No. 165 / 195Flag of Sri Lanka
Capital
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Colombo
Continent
Asia
Flag adopted
1951
Designer
Not individually credited

Sri Lanka

What the source says

Referenced, awaiting primary-source review
The current flag design was adopted 22 May 1972. The lion [is] the Sinha ethnicity and the strength of the nation; the four bo leaves [are] the four Buddhist virtues [...]; the orange stripe [is] the Tamil ethnicity; the green stripe [is] the Moor ethnicity [Muslims]; the golden yellow border [is] other minority communities [and] unity among the people.
(r1) Flag of Sri Lanka (Wikipedia (English)), read on 2026-07-17. States which colors the flag has, what the colors mean and the symbolism and history on this page.

Referenced, not verified: a secondary work states this, and the document that constitutes the flag has not been read for this entry. What the marks mean.

Colors and meaning

  • Yellow(r1) #FFC726

    The golden border framing the flag, for the other minority communities and unity(r1)

  • Maroon(r1) #EB0E27

    The lion, the Sinhala ethnicity and the strength of the nation(r1)

  • Green(r1) #00534E

    The Moor (Muslim) community(r1)

  • Saffron(r1) #EA7723

    The Tamil ethnicity(r1)

Symbolism and history(r1)

A maroon panel bearing a sword-wielding lion, with four bo leaves for the Buddhist virtues of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, sits beside an orange (Tamil) and a green (Moor/Muslim) stripe, all within a golden border, the current form adopted in 1972.

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”.

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.

References — not verification

Further reading: Flag of Sri Lanka on Wikipedia

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