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Flags of Papua New Guinea

Highland communities in what is now Papua New Guinea were cultivating crops independently, and very early — among the first places on Earth to develop agriculture on its own, going back millennia at sites like Kuk Swamp — while organizing into thousands of distinct clans and villages rather than any single overarching polity. That fragmentation, and the extraordinary linguistic diversity it produced, is still visible today: over 800 living languages are spoken here, more than in any other country in the world.

The documented flag history proper begins in 1884, when Germany and Britain carve the territory into two separately administered colonies on the same island. Australia inherits and eventually unifies that administration across the 20th century, and Papua New Guinea becomes fully independent on 16 September 1975 — the black, red, and gold flag chosen that year, carrying the raggiana bird-of-paradise and the Southern Cross, is the one still flown today.

Scope of this page: the territory of present-day Papua New Guinea, pre-1884–present, four political entries. The 1884–1920 entry covers a genuinely divided colonial period — German rule in the northeast, British/Australian rule in the southeast — shown here as a split flag and, below, a real internal-split map. Part of a larger atlas — see the linked pages at the bottom.

German northeast, British/Australian southeast, 1884–1920

The real border of present-day Papua New Guinea (mainland plus Bougainville, New Britain, and New Ireland), split along the historical 1884 Anglo-German line: German New Guinea to the north and east, British/Australian Papua to the south. Press play, or drag the slider.

Two entirely separate colonial administrations, no shared government. German New Guinea and British/Australian Papua had different flags and different capitals until Australian forces occupied the German territory within weeks of WWI's 1914 outbreak; the border below solidifies only for 1884–1920 and dissolves the moment Australia administers both as one mandate.

pre-1884

Indigenous Papua New Guinea

Schematic internal partition on a real traced border (simplified from public coastal-vertex data, including Bougainville, New Britain, and New Ireland) — the Anglo-German dividing line is approximate, not a surveyed frontier; it dissolves outside the 1884–1920 span.

black/red diagonal split, gold bird-of-paradise, white Southern Cross

1975 – present

Independent Papua New Guinea

Independent stateMichael SomareNo official state religion

Migration & conquest:Immigration: West Papuan refugees (1960s–)

Who & why: Papua New Guinea gains full independence from Australian administration on 16 September 1975, with Michael Somare as its first prime minister, closing out a path to self-government that had been building through the 1960s–70s. It joins the United Nations and Commonwealth of Nations shortly after, retaining the British monarch as head of state under a parliamentary system.

What it represents: the flag was chosen from a 1971 national design competition won by Susan Karike, then a 15-year-old student; the raggiana bird-of-paradise, a bird found nowhere else, sits on black, while five white stars forming the Southern Cross — visible only from the southern hemisphere — sit on red, the country's own black-red-gold palette rather than any inherited colonial scheme.

Paint guide

Proportions3:4.

LayoutDiagonally split field: black upper-hoist triangle (top-left) and red lower-fly triangle (bottom-right), split by a diagonal from the lower-hoist to the upper-fly corner. Yellow bird-of-paradise silhouette on the black; five white Southern Cross stars on the red.

Black#000000

Red#CE1126

Gold#F9D616

White#FFFFFF

Australian Blue Ensign, flown by the administering power

1920 – 1975

Australian-administered Territory of Papua and New Guinea

Mandate / trust territoryEvan WisdomNo official state religion

Migration & conquest:Occupied by: Japan (1942–45, northern territory)

Who & why: after Australian forces occupy German New Guinea in the opening weeks of WWI, the League of Nations formally hands it to Australia as a Class C mandate in 1920, administered alongside the already-Australian Territory of Papua (itself transferred from Britain in 1906) but kept as two separate administrations until a 1949 act unifies them into the single Territory of Papua and New Guinea. After WWII the former mandate continues as a United Nations trust territory under Australia, with the combined territory moving through self-government in the early 1970s toward full independence in 1975.

What it represents: neither territory nor the later combined administration had its own distinct flag; the Australian Blue Ensign, the flag of the administering power itself, was what flew over government buildings throughout this period.

Paint guide

Proportions1:2.

LayoutBlue field with a simplified Union Jack canton, standing in for the Australian Blue Ensign as flown by the administering power (no distinct territorial flag existed).

Blue#00247D

White#F4EFE1

Red#A4302A

split flag: German colonial tricolor/eagle (left) and British/Australian ensign (right)

1884 – 1920

Divided colonial rule

Divided colonial ruleNo single ruler documentedNo single state religion

Migration & conquest:Conquered by: Germany & Britain (1884 partition)Immigration: Chinese & Pacific Islander plantation laborers

Who & why: in 1884, Germany annexes the northeastern mainland and nearby islands as German New Guinea (initially run by the chartered New Guinea Company, then directly by the German government from 1899), while Britain declares a protectorate over the southeastern mainland the same year, transferring its administration to Australia in 1906 as the Territory of Papua. The two territories run as entirely separate colonial administrations, with different flags, different capitals, and no shared government, until Australian forces occupy German New Guinea within weeks of the outbreak of WWI in 1914 and formally take it over as a mandate in 1920, unifying administration of the island for the first time.

What it represents: this entry is shown as a split flag rather than picking one side: the left half stands in for the German colonial flag — a white field carrying Germany's own black-white-red imperial colors and colonial eagle motif — and the right half stands in for the British/Australian Blue Ensign flown over Papua, honestly showing the dual rule rather than erasing either half of it.

Paint guide

ProportionsNo single fixed ratio; shown as two 1:1 halves side by side.

LayoutLeft half: white field, black-white-red tricolor canton, black eagle silhouette in the fly (German New Guinea). Right half: blue field with a simplified Union Jack canton (British/Australian Papua).

White#F4EFE1

Black#1A1A1A

Red#A4302A

Blue#00247D

placeholder — pre-contact era, no single flag

pre-1884

Indigenous Papua New Guinea

Indigenous nations, pre-contactNo single ruler documentedIndigenous animist traditions

Migration & conquest:Immigration: earliest human settlement (c. 50,000 years ago)Immigration: Austronesian/Lapita coastal settlement (c. 3,000 years ago)

Who & why: the highlands of what is now Papua New Guinea are among the earliest sites of independently developed agriculture anywhere in the world, with farming at places like Kuk Swamp reaching back several thousand years. The territory before 1884 is home to thousands of distinct clan and village communities, organized locally rather than under any single overarching kingdom or state, and to the most linguistically diverse population on Earth — over 800 living languages are still spoken here today.

What it represents: no single flag, in the European heraldic sense, ever governed this territory before colonial claims arrived in 1884; with no unifying polity, there is no banner to reconstruct. This entry is shown honestly blank rather than inventing one, matching the same approach taken for other pre-contact eras across this atlas.

Paint guide

ProportionsN/A — no attested flag.

Reading the tags

Indigenous nations, pre-contact — no single flag, no colonial rule

Divided colonial rule — two foreign powers, separate administrations

Mandate / trust territory — administered under League of Nations or UN oversight

Independent state — sovereign under its own government

Leader — the named ruler most associated with the era's start

State religion — the official/established faith, not the population's

Find the records

Family history research for Papua New Guinea lives in a different project, Record Atlas, which maps which archive actually holds the paper for a given place and era.

Search Record Atlas for Papua New Guinea →

More of the atlas

This page is one lineage in a larger set. See the region-wide hub and the other countries here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Pacific hubFourteen countries, Oceania