The only country with a non-rectangular flag, and the maths that fixes its shape

Records & People Nepal flies the only national flag that is not a rectangle. Its shape is set by a construction in the constitution, and the result is an irrational… By Dawa Sherpa · Aug 21, 2026 Read the full story

Nepal flies the only national flag on Earth that is not a rectangle. It is two stacked crimson pennants with a blue border, taller than it is wide, and its exact shape is not drawn to a ratio at all: the constitution sets it out as a geometric construction… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Why the flag is two pennants

Because it began as two separate flags. The double pennon combines individual pennants once used by rival branches of Nepal's ruling dynasty, stacked into one rather than either branch giving up its symbol. Pennant-shaped banners were the norm across the hill… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

The shape is a construction, not a ratio

Nepal's constitution does not give the flag's proportions; it gives instructions for drawing it. Schedule 1 lays out a sequence of lines, arcs and measurements to be made with a compass and straightedge, and the shape appears as the result. The geometry was… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

What the sun, moon and colours mean

The moon stands for peace and the cool of the Himalaya; the sun for hard work and the heat of the southern lowlands. Crimson is the colour of bravery and of the rhododendron that blazes across the mid-hills each spring, and the blue border stands for peace… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

The flag the Olympics had to make an exception for

At Tokyo 2020 the protocol manual named Nepal as the only exception to the standard flag size. Every other flag was sized by a fixed rectangle; Nepal's was required instead to match the others' height, so it could hang level beside them. It is a neat… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

How to spot it on a trek

The national flag is crimson with a sun and moon; the strings of coloured squares over every pass are something else entirely. Those blue, white, red, green and yellow cloths are Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags — devotional, not national — and first-timers mix… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

Six more ways Nepal stands alone

The flag is only the first way Nepal breaks the mould. Eight of the ten highest mountains on Earth stand in Nepal or on its borders; only K2 and Nanga Parbat, in Pakistan, break the run — with a caveat about the count we set out in the fourteen-versus-eight… Travel Himalaya Nepal · News Read the full story

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