Flag of Cambodia
Cambodia’s flag has a red band between two blue bands, the red twice as deep, with a white picture of the temple of Angkor Wat in the centre. The Cambodian government says the flag stands for the national motto, “Nation, Religion, King”: the blue bands for royalty, the red band for the nation and the white temple for the nation’s religion.
Easily confused with
How to read it
Cambodia’s constitution of 1993 makes “Nation, Religion, King” the kingdom’s motto (Article 4) and says the national flag is defined in its first annex (Article 6). The flag has three horizontal bands of blue, red and blue in the proportions 1:2:1, the red band bearing a white silhouette of a temple with three towers, as Store norske leksikon (SNL) describes it. It is the flag first adopted in 1948 and used until 1970, which the Kingdom of Cambodia brought back in 1993 after the United Nations’ transitional administration.
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Angkor Wat on the flag
The temple is Angkor Wat. In a report to the World Heritage Committee in January 2010, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, president of the APSARA National Authority, which manages Angkor, wrote that Angkor is “the beacon of the pride of the nation” and that this is why the silhouette of Angkor Wat is on the flag. Cambodia is the only country whose flag bears a monument on the World Heritage List, he added.
Cambodian flags have shown the temple for a long time, SNL notes, but the shape of the flag and of the silhouette changed with the country’s governments.
The flags of 1970 to 1993
From 1970 the Khmer Republic flew a blue flag with a white Angkor Wat on a red canton, SNL records. The Khmer Rouge regime that took power in 1975 used a red flag with a yellow temple silhouette in the centre, and a slightly changed version flew from 1979 to 1989. In 1989 the State of Cambodia divided the flag red over blue, still with a yellow temple. The 1948 flag returned in 1993.
Telling it from the flags of Laos and Thailand
Laos’s flag turns the pattern round: red bands at the top and bottom, a blue band twice as deep between them, and a plain white disc in place of the temple, as Laos’s constitution describes it. Thailand’s flag has five stripes, red, white, blue, white and red, with no emblem.
Read next
- Next in Asian flagsFlag of IndonesiaIndonesia’s flag is two equal horizontal stripes, red above white, called Sang Merah Putih (“the Red and White”). The flag law gives the colours no meaning; the reading taught in Indonesia, as detikEdu and CNN Indonesia give it, is red for courage and white for purity.
- The same shape in European flagsFlag of PolandPoland’s flag is two equal stripes, white above red, in the colours of Poland’s coat of arms: a white eagle on a red shield. The white stripe is the eagle and the red stripe the shield, as Professor Beata Możejko of the University of Gdańsk explains; the flag law itself describes the colours without giving them a meaning.
More asian flags
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with lines or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia, 1993 (rev. 2008) (Constitute Project), Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia, Articles 4 and 6 (English translation), Constitute Project, Articles 4 and 6
- Information for Visitors (Francophonie Summit 2026, Kingdom of Cambodia), Royal Government of Cambodia, Francophonie Summit Phnom Penh 2026 site, “Information for Visitors”, Flag, Royal Government of Cambodia, Flag
- Kingdom of Cambodia: Report on Angkor (2010), Kingdom of Cambodia, Report on Angkor to the World Heritage Committee (decision 32 COM 7B.65), January 2010, introduction by Sok An, APSARA National Authority, Introduction (p. 4)
- Kambodsjas flagg og våpen (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon, “Kambodsjas flagg og våpen”, Store norske leksikon, Flagget
- Constitution of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, 2015, Constitution of Laos, Article 112 (English translation), Constitute Project, Article 112
- Thailands flagg og våpen (Store norske leksikon), Lars Roede, “Thailands flagg og våpen”, Store norske leksikon, Store norske leksikon, Introduction
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 13, 2026. How we research
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