Sources and Methodology

ddontti studio · Reviewed 2026-11-01

Flag Master exists to teach flags, so a wrong fact defeats its purpose. This page sets out what data we use, how we check it, and what we haven't been able to check. The figures are as of 1 November 2026.

What the site is built from

The site covers 250 countries and territories. Each kind of information has its own source.

The full list of licenses is in section 7 of the Terms of Use.

How we check a flag's legal basis

You might expect every country to define its flag in law, but not all do. So for each of the 244 flags we look for the legal text that sets the design, and we label the result in one of three ways. The whole set was last checked on 3 September 2026.

"No law found" means we didn't find one, not that none exists. Language barriers or inaccessible originals may have hidden some. Rather than imply a legal basis, we say plainly that we didn't find it. The five disputed entries are Afghanistan, Taiwan, Kosovo, Western Sahara and New Caledonia.

Which values have a source record

Flag law, organization memberships, World Bank population figures and sixteen separately reviewed capitals are stored with a source record. There are currently 265 of these, each with a title, a publisher, an address and the date it was checked. Flag law and memberships are left off the screen if their source record is missing.

Capitals and population work differently. Where there is no source record, the page shows the capital from the open data above and, for the remaining 28 populated entries, estimates from the UN or national statistical offices, without an individual source link. Of the 244 country pages, 15 cite a source for the capital and 215 for population. The sixteen reviewed capitals include places with several capitals or a complicated status: South Africa has three capitals, for instance, and Nauru has no official capital at all.

How the guides and articles are written

The guides and flag stories on this site are drafted with AI (Claude). They aren't published as drafted.

• For each topic we start from primary sources: statutes, government documents, museum and parliamentary records.
• Wikipedia is used only for leads. Flag enthusiast sites such as Flags of the World are cited only when we found nothing stronger, and the text then says the claim is reported, not established.
• A well-known story that the record doesn't support is labeled as legend or tradition. Where sources disagree, both sides are given.
• Claims carry numbered citations that link to the source list at the end.
• Game rules are written from the game's code, not from memory.
• The site owner must read and approve a manuscript before it goes live. The approval date appears at the top of the page.

Names and territories

The status of some places, such as Taiwan, Palestine and Kosovo, is disputed internationally. Names of countries and regions follow the sources above. Where it is disputed which flag is official, the country page says so, and disputed territories on the map are shown with hatching and a note; we don't add a separate label for the status of a country or territory. No label expresses a political position. Boundaries on the maps are simplified for learning and don't represent legal borders, sovereignty or recognition. The neighbors used in Flag Route come from those same simplified outlines, so they can differ from real borders.

What still falls short

• What flags mean. Explanations of colors and symbols are common interpretations, and often not official statements. These 244 explanations don't carry item-by-item citations.
• Not every fact is sourced. Only the items listed above are checked against sources. Descriptive text such as a country page's highlights has no individual citation.
• Translations. The site supports 14 languages, but the 13 other than Korean have had no native-speaker review. Guides and flag stories appear only in Korean and English.
• Lag. A new law or new statistics won't appear straight away. The 215 World Bank population figures are for 2025, the other 28 are 2021–2025 estimates, and flag law was last checked on the date above.
• Six entries without explanations. Antarctica, Bouvet Island, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, Heard and McDonald Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands carry no flag explanation or legal record.

If you spot a mistake

Please use the contact page, and include an official source if you can, which makes checking much faster. Changes made after publication are recorded in the changelog.

Play the flag quiz

This page was drafted with AI (Claude). Its facts were checked against the sources listed below, and the site owner read it before publication. Found a mistake? Please write to us and include a source: Contact