Esperanto flag and symbols: green star, anthem

The Esperanto flag is green with a white square in the upper corner, holding a green five-pointed star. It was adopted at the first World Esperanto Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in August 1905. The green stands for hope, the white for peace and neutrality, and the five points of the star for the five continents.

Esperanto speakers use three main symbols: the green star (la verda stelo), the flag (la Esperanto-flago, historically la Standardo Esperantista) and the jubilee symbol (la jubilea simbolo) created for the language's centenary in 1987. The song La Espero serves as an unofficial anthem.

#What do the colours and the star mean?

These meanings are traditional rather than defined in an official text, but they are the ones repeated across Esperanto reference works.

#Why is Esperanto green?

Green came first, almost by accident. In a 1911 letter published in The British Esperantist, Zamenhof recalled that the Irish Esperantist Richard H. Geoghegan noticed one of his pamphlets had a green cover. Geoghegan remarked that green was the colour of his homeland, Ireland, and Zamenhof decided green could symbolise hope. After that he printed his works with green covers.

The five-pointed star, Zamenhof wrote in the same letter, first appeared on a grammar published by the French Esperantist Louis de Beaufront. Zamenhof liked it, adopted it, and the star soon turned green too. The idea of a common sign of recognition between Esperantists was raised in the magazine La Esperantisto in 1892, and the green star was recommended for it in 1893.

That is why a keen Esperantist is sometimes called a verdulo – a "green one".

#When was the Esperanto flag adopted?

The flag began as the banner of the local Esperanto club in Boulogne-sur-Mer, the French port where the first World Esperanto Congress met in August 1905. The congress adopted it as the flag of the whole movement.

The 1905 version differed from today's in one detail: a letter E was placed in the middle of the green star. The E later disappeared, giving the modern design.

#What are the official proportions?

The flag is 3:2 (length to height). The recommended proportions of flag length, flag height and the side of the white square are 3 : 2 : 1 – so the white canton is half the height of the flag and covers one-sixth of its area.

For example, a flag 90 cm long and 60 cm high has a 30 cm canton and a star inside a circle of 10.5 cm radius. English Wikipedia gives the 3 : 2 : 1 and 10 : 3.5 figures as a recommendation of the Universal Esperanto Association's board, and Flags of the World describes the same star as a radius of 0.35 in a square canton.

#What shade of green is the Esperanto flag?

No official shade of green is documented for the Esperanto flag. Vikipedio notes that it is unclear whether an "official" colour ever existed, and organisations, flag makers and websites use different greens. These are the values people actually meet:

Only the first value can be checked in the file itself: the SVG code uses the short colour #090, which is #009900, together with white #FFF. The other values come from Vikipedio's article on the flag, which reads them from the organisations' logos and pages. We could not find the codes stated on the TEJO and UEA pages it cites, so treat them as approximate. If you need one default for print or screen, #009900 is the green of the Commons file.

#What is the jubilee symbol?

The jubilee symbol (jubilea simbolo) is a green oval made of two letters E facing each other: a Latin E and a Cyrillic Э (the first letter of Эсперанто, Russian for Esperanto). It was meant to show East and West united at a time when the Cold War divided them.

It came from a design competition organised by the Universal Esperanto Association. The Brazilian Esperantist Hilmar Ilton S. Ferreira won in 1983 with a drawing by Janette Lindo Ferreira, and the symbol was used for the centenary year 1987. Because of its shape and colour, some speakers jokingly call it la melono – "the melon".

#Why do some Esperantists avoid the flag?

Some speakers feel that a flag makes a language community look like a nation or a sect. They prefer the jubilee symbol, which the Universal Esperanto Association, the Flemish Esperanto League and many youth groups have used in their branding. Others keep the green star as a sign of international solidarity. At most congresses you will see all three side by side.

#What is the Esperanto anthem?

The unofficial anthem is La Espero – "The Hope", a 24-line poem by Zamenhof. It first appeared, without a title, in a textbook for Russian speakers in 1890. It opens with the lines:

En la mondon venis nova sento, / tra la mondo iras forta voko.

– "Into the world has come a new feeling, / through the world goes a mighty call."

The poem calls for peace between peoples "on a neutral language foundation" (sur neŭtrala lingva fundamento). Several tunes exist:

No melody was ever made official; the Menu de Ménil march is simply the one that won out in practice.

La Espero is traditionally sung at Esperanto congresses, including the World Esperanto Congress.

#How did Google mark Zamenhof's birthday?

On 15 December 2009, Zamenhof's 150th birthday, Google replaced its logo with a version flying the Esperanto flag on many national versions of its search page, starting in China, Japan and Korea. Libera Folio reported that it followed a campaign by Esperantists who had written to Google. Read more on the Zamenhof Day page.

#Esperanto flag emoji and Unicode

There is no Esperanto flag emoji. Unicode Emoji 18.0 (data file dated 30 April 2026) contains no Esperanto flag, and since 28 March 2022 the Unicode Consortium has stated that it no longer accepts proposals for new flag emoji of any category. Its announcement points to stickers, GIFs and image attachments as the alternatives.

Country flags are built from two-letter region codes, and Esperanto is not a region. Besides flags of countries and regions (plus the European Union and the United Nations), Unicode has only a few generic ones: chequered, triangular, crossed, black, white, rainbow, transgender and pirate flags.

The only request we found is an issue in a third-party GitHub list of Unicode ideas, opened on 14 March 2017. It suggested a sequence of a white flag, a star and a green heart joined together. The issue was closed on 29 March 2022, a day after Unicode's announcement. We found no Esperanto flag proposal in Unicode's own emoji documents.

#How to type a green star

Unicode has no dedicated character for the Esperanto green star, so speakers colour an ordinary star or use an image. The closest characters are:

In chat apps that cannot colour text, a custom emoji, sticker or image is the practical choice. The Flag of Esperanto.svg file on Wikimedia Commons is marked as public domain.

The jubilee symbol is a drawing as well and has no character of its own. A Latin E next to the Cyrillic Э (U+042D) only hints at it.

#Common questions

#What does the green star on the Esperanto flag mean?

The five points represent the five continents, and green represents hope. Together they express the idea of a hopeful, worldwide community.

#When was the Esperanto flag created?

It began as the banner of the Esperanto club in Boulogne-sur-Mer and was adopted by the first World Esperanto Congress there in August 1905.

#Is there an Esperanto flag emoji?

No. Unicode's emoji list (version 18.0, April 2026) contains no Esperanto flag, and since March 2022 Unicode accepts no new flag proposals, so speakers use images, custom emoji or a green star instead.

#Does Esperanto have an anthem?

Yes, unofficially: La Espero, a poem by Zamenhof first published in 1890, usually sung to the 1909 march by Félicien Menu de Ménil.

#Why is green the colour of Esperanto?

Zamenhof chose green as the colour of hope after the Irish Esperantist Richard Geoghegan pointed out a green-covered pamphlet; he then printed his books in green.

#What is the "melon" symbol?

The jubilee symbol of 1987: a green oval formed by a Latin E and a Cyrillic Э. Its nickname comes from its shape and colour.

#What exact green is the Esperanto flag?

No official shade is documented. The Wikimedia Commons flag file uses #009900 (RGB 0, 153, 0), while organisations use others, for example #007D13 in the TEJO logo.

#How do I type the Esperanto green star?

There is no dedicated character. Use the star ★ (U+2605) coloured green, the green heart 💚 (U+1F49A) or an image of the star.

#Sources

• Wikipedia, Esperanto symbols (including Zamenhof's 1911 letter, The British Esperantist, February 1912)
• Vikipedio, Esperanto-flago and Verda stelo
• Unicode Consortium, emoji-test.txt (full list of emoji, version 18.0, file dated 30 April 2026)
• Unicode Consortium, "The past and future of flag emoji", 28 March 2022 (updated 12 December 2024), and emoji proposal rules
• GitHub, Crissov/unicode-proposals, "Esperanto language flag", issue 297 (a third-party list, not run by Unicode)
• Wikimedia Commons, Flag of Esperanto.svg (SVG source with #090 and white, public domain)
• Vikipedio, Jubilea simbolo
• Wikipedia, La Espero; Vikipedio, La Espero; Wikipedia (de), La Espero
• Flags of the World, Esperanto flags
• Google Doodles, 150th birthday of L. L. Zamenhof, 15 December 2009
• Libera Folio, "Google festas la Zamenhof-tagon", December 2009