Flags of Georgia

Republic of Georgia (modern)

Who & why: Georgia declares restoration of independence on 9 April 1991 as the Soviet Union unravels. The 1990s bring civil conflict and the de facto loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; the bloodless 2003 Rose Revolution, led by Mikheil Saakashvili, unseats the post-Soviet government and pushes the country toward the West. A brief war with Russia over South Ossetia follows in 2008.

What it represents: the "Five Cross Flag" is formally adopted on 14 January 2004, days after Saakashvili's inauguration. It revives a medieval Georgian design — a central St. George's cross flanked by four smaller bolnur-katskhuri crosses — attested on coins, manuscripts, and church art since at least the 5th century and closely associated with the Bagrationi royal house.

Soviet Georgia

Who & why: despite a May 1920 treaty in which Soviet Russia formally recognized Georgian independence, the Red Army invades in February 1921 and the Menshevik government falls within weeks, its leaders fleeing to Paris. Georgia is folded into the Transcaucasian SFSR alongside Armenia and Azerbaijan from December 1922 until the 1936 "Stalin Constitution" splits it out as its own Georgian SSR. Stalin and his security chief Lavrentiy Beria are both Georgian-born, a fact often noted about the republic's outsized role in Soviet politics.

What it represents: the standard Soviet red banner with gold hammer and sickle, distinguished from Armenia's and Azerbaijan's versions by a horizontal blue-white-blue stripe near the bottom, a design adopted in 1951 and flown until the USSR's collapse.

Democratic Republic of Georgia

Who & why: a short-lived Transcaucasian federation collapses after barely a month, and Georgia declares independence on 26 May 1918 under Noe Zhordania's Social Democratic (Menshevik) government — the first modern Georgian state in over a century. The young republic fights border conflicts with Armenia and Azerbaijan and a war with Soviet Russia before falling to the Red Army invasion of February 1921.

What it represents: a deep wine-maroon field with a black-and-white canton, a genuinely new design for the new republic rather than a revival of Bagrationi heraldry, chosen to mark a break from both Russian imperial and old dynastic symbolism.

Russian imperial rule

Who & why: Tsar Paul I annexes the eastern kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti outright in 1801, overriding the 1783 Treaty of Georgievsk, which had only promised Russian protection. The western kingdoms and principalities — Imereti's monarchy ends in 1810, with Guria, Mingrelia, and Abkhazia absorbed piecemeal over the following decades — are folded in one by one until Russian control of the whole territory is complete. Russian rule lasts until the empire's collapse amid the 1917 revolutions.

What it represents: the black-gold-white tricolor used as an unofficial "imperial" flag across the Russian Empire's territories from the mid-19th century, including Georgia, alongside the Romanov dynasty's own arms on official occasions.

Fragmented kingdoms: Kartli, Kakheti, Imereti

Who & why: Georgia's last full reunification, under Giorgi V "the Brilliant" (r. 1299–1346), does not survive Timur's devastating invasions of the 1380s–90s; by 1490 the kingdom has split permanently into Kartli, Kakheti, and Imereti, plus smaller principalities such as Guria, Mingrelia, and Samtskhe. The 1555 Treaty of Amasya formalizes an Ottoman-Persian partition of the region, with western Georgian lands falling into the Ottoman sphere and eastern lands into the Persian one — a division renewed by later treaties for the next two and a half centuries, even as local Bagrationi-descended dynasties keep nominal rule throughout.

What it represents: no single state flag exists for this fractured era; the maroon-and-gold cross of the old unified kingdom remains in local heraldic and ecclesiastical use across the rival courts, shown here as an informed representative reconstruction rather than a single documented banner.

Mongol overlordship and the last reunification

Who & why: Georgian forces first meet Mongol raiders in 1221 and are beaten badly; by 1243 Queen Rusudan has submitted to Mongol overlordship, paying tribute and supplying troops to what becomes the Ilkhanate after 1256. Georgian kings keep local authority as tributary vassals, and Giorgi V "the Brilliant" even manages one last full reunification of the kingdom (r. 1299–1346) as Mongol power fades — the final period before Georgia splinters for good.

What it represents: no distinct Georgian state flag is attested for this vassal period; the field shown is a generic, informed representation of Ilkhanate-era Mongol authority, not a documented Georgian banner.

Kingdom of Georgia (Bagrationi, unified)

Who & why: Bagrat III completes the unification of Georgia's fractured principalities — Abkhazia, Kartli, Tao-Klarjeti — into a single crown, a project his Bagrationi dynasty had built toward for generations; his coronation around 1008 marks the first time a unified Georgian kingdom exists. The kingdom reaches its "Golden Age" under Queen Tamar (r. 1184–1213), whose armies push Georgian influence across much of the Caucasus and whose reign is remembered as the medieval kingdom's cultural and territorial peak. Mongol invasions beginning in the 1220s end this era of full independence.

What it represents: a maroon field with a gold cross reaching the edges, drawn from the Bagrationi dynasty's own heraldic tradition attested on coinage, seals, and church donor portraits — the same cross pattern the modern republic later revives in 2004.

Christianization and fragmented principalities

Who & why: the kingdom of Iberia (Kartli) adopts Christianity as its state religion around 326–337, traditionally credited to St. Nino, making it one of the earliest Christian states in the world. The following centuries bring Byzantine and Sasanian Persian overlordship, a Muslim Arab emirate centered on Tbilisi from the 7th century, and a patchwork of Georgian principalities — Abkhazia, Tao-Klarjeti, Kakheti, Kartli — each ruled by its own branch of local nobility, none commanding the whole territory until the Bagrationi unification of 1008.

What it represents: no securely documented flag survives from this long, fragmented, pre-heraldic period; local principalities used dynastic and ecclesiastical emblems rather than fixed territorial banners. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

Kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia

Who & why: the ancient kingdom of Colchis, on the eastern Black Sea coast, is the setting of the Greek myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece and one of the earliest recorded polities on Georgian soil, flourishing from roughly the 6th century BCE. To its east and south, the kingdom of Iberia (Kartli) emerges around the 4th–3rd century BCE, later absorbing Colchis's territory and becoming the dominant local power, contested between the Roman and Parthian, then Byzantine and Sasanian Persian, spheres of influence.

What it represents: no flag or fixed heraldic banner survives from this pre-heraldic antiquity; these kingdoms are known through Greek and Roman written sources, coinage, and archaeology rather than surviving vexillology. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

Diauehi and Early Kartvelian Tribal Kingdoms

Who & why: the earliest polity associated with Kartvelian-speaking peoples known to history is not recorded by Georgians themselves but by their neighbors: Diauehi, a highland kingdom in what is now northeastern Turkey and southwestern Georgia, appears in Assyrian sources as early as the 12th century BCE and repeatedly in the Kingdom of Urartu's own royal inscriptions through the 9th and 8th centuries BCE, which describe campaigns against it and tribute extracted from it. Many scholars regard Diauehi, and the related tribal confederation Colcha named in the same Urartian texts, as ancestral to the later, better-known kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia that follow directly in this timeline. Bronze Age archaeological cultures in the wider Caucasus — walled settlements, elaborate kurgan burials, and early metalworking — corroborate a settled, organized society here well before Greek writers ever mention Colchis by name.

What it represents: no flag or heraldic symbol of any kind survives from this pre-heraldic Bronze and early Iron Age era; Diauehi is known only through the inscriptions of its rivals and through archaeology. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

World context: this span opens around the traditional date of the Trojan War and the wider Bronze Age Collapse convulsing the eastern Mediterranean, runs through the rise of the Assyrian Empire and its highland rival Urartu (the very powers whose own inscriptions preserve Diauehi's name), and closes as Greek colonists are first establishing trading posts on the Black Sea coast that will soon give the world the myth of Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece — set, not coincidentally, in Colchis, Diauehi's own likely successor.