Kosovo’s flag features a blue field with a gold map of the country and six white stars. It was adopted on 17 February 2008, immediately after Kosovo declared independence.
The design was selected through an international competition intended to create a symbol representing Kosovo’s multiethnic population rather than a single community. Designer Muhamer Ibrahimi’s winning concept placed the stars above the map in an arc. The six stars officially represent Kosovo’s major ethnic groups: Albanians, Serbs, Bosniaks, Turks, Romani, and Gorani.
Kosovo’s flag is unusual because it uses a map as its central image; Cyprus is the other widely recognized national flag with a map. The blue-and-gold combination can also cause confusion with Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose flag uses a blue field, a yellow triangle, and white stars. Cyprus, meanwhile, shows a gold map on a white field with olive branches, not six stars.