Antarctica is a de facto continental condominium, governed by the 29 parties to the Antarctic Treaty that have consulting status.
Seven sovereign states – Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom – have made eight territorial claims in Antarctica.
With no single governing body, it does not have an official flag of its own. However, several designs have been created since the 1970s for the purpose of representing the continent.
| Design | Name | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
|
RRS Discovery crew | 1929 | Plain white flag, used to improvise a courtesy ensign (a flag used as a token of respect by vessels while in foreign waters) for a continent without a flag of its own. |
|
Whitney Smith's proposal | 1978 | An orange field bearing an emblem consisting of a pair of hands holding a segment of a disk representing Earth with the letter "A" representing Antarctica. |
|
Joanne Cooper and Stefan Tucker's proposal | 1995 | An orange field bearing an outline of Antarctica, a compass pointing south at the bottom left, and the outline of a penguin to the right. |
|
Graham Bartram's proposal | 1996 | A white outline of Antarctica on a UN-blue background. |
|
Dave Hamilton's proposal. | 1999 | The pale blue strip represents pack ice, the dark blue stripe represents the night sky and the yellow stripe is a representation of the aurora australis. The famous stellar constellation the Southern Cross is shown in the dark blue stripe at the right. |
|
Olivier Leroi's proposal. | 2007/2008 | The flag is vertically divided in four stripes — black, off-white, orange, and gray — reproducing the proportions of the colors on the "livery" (feathers) of an emperor penguin, selected as Antarctica's emblematic animal. |
|
True South flag (Evan Townsend's proposal) | 2018 | Horizontal stripes of navy and white represent the long days and nights at Antarctica's extreme latitude. In the center, a white peak the bergs, mountains, and pressure ridges that define the Antarctic horizon. The long navy blue shadow forms the unmistakable shape of a compass arrow pointed south. Together, the two center shapes create a diamond, symbolizing the hope that Antarctica will continue to be a center of peace, discovery, and cooperation. |