Six stars appear on Kosovo’s national flag. They form a white arc above a gold map of Kosovo on a blue field.
Kosovo adopted the flag on 17 February 2008, immediately after declaring independence. The design emerged from an international competition that attracted nearly 1,000 proposals. Muhamer Ibrahimi’s winning design used a map and stars rather than the strongly ethnic imagery associated with some earlier Kosovo flag proposals.
The six stars officially symbolize Kosovo’s major ethnic communities: Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Turks, Roma and Gorani. They are sometimes informally interpreted as representing six regions, but the ethnic-community explanation is the standard official symbolism.
The flag can be confused with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s flag because both use blue, white stars and a yellow or gold national shape. Kosovo’s stars are distinctive because there are exactly six, arranged in an arc above the map.