Every four years the Olympic Games put a couple of hundred national flags in the same stadium, and for two weeks those pieces of cloth do a lot of work. They mark who is competing for whom, they turn medal ceremonies into national moments, and often enough they cause diplomatic headaches that have nothing to do with sport.
What the flags actually do at the Games
Flags at the Olympics are more than markers of nationality. For athletes, competing under a national flag is a genuine honor, and the raising of that flag during a medal ceremony is usually the emotional peak of years of work. The ceremony makes the win national rather than personal.
The parade of nations at the opening ceremony is the other set-piece. Each country's flag bearer leads their delegation into the stadium, and the procession is the one moment where every participating nation is visible at once. Whatever the political differences between the countries in that stadium, the parade is the closest thing the Games have to a statement of shared purpose.
How the role of flags has changed
At the early modern Olympics, starting with the 1896 Athens Games, displaying national flags was a fairly simple business. As the number of participating countries grew and geopolitical tensions rose, flags took on more complicated roles.
During the Cold War the Olympics became a stage for the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States. The flags of the two superpowers and their allies stood in for competing political systems, and boycotts often turned on the question of whose flag would appear at all.
The Games now include over 200 nations and territories, which means a far wider range of flags than the early Olympics ever saw. Some of the additions reflect political change directly: the Unified Team competed in 1992 after the Soviet Union broke up, and the Refugee Olympic Team represents people with no nation to march for.
When flags cause trouble
Flags can be flashpoints. Disputes over territorial claims or recognition turn into disputes over which flag gets flown. Taiwan competes as "Chinese Taipei" under a special flag, the result of pressure from China rather than any decision made in Taipei.
Athletes have also used the flag ceremony itself as a platform. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a Black Power salute during the national anthem, a protest against racial injustice in the United States that caused an immediate uproar.
Then there is protocol. Flag handling at the Games is governed by strict rules, and mistakes get treated as insults. An incorrect display or an accidentally lowered flag can require a formal apology.
The Olympic flag itself
The Olympic flag was introduced in 1920: five interlocking rings on a white background, representing the unity of the five inhabited continents and the meeting of athletes from around the world. It flies at all Olympic venues and at every major ceremony.
Its raising marks the official start of the Games and its lowering marks the end. Those two moments bracket the whole event and are among the few rituals that have stayed constant across a century of Olympic history.
The flag is also tied to the idea of the Olympic Truce, the ancient Greek practice of pausing hostilities so that competitors could travel and compete safely. The modern version is more aspiration than agreement, but it explains why the Games are so often framed as an opportunity for diplomacy.
Three cases worth knowing
The flags of North and South Korea have long stood for the peninsula's division. At the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, athletes from both countries marched together under a unified Korean flag. The underlying political tensions did not go anywhere, but for one evening the two delegations were one.
Russia went the other way. Sanctions following state-sponsored doping scandals led to its flag being banned from the Games, and Russian athletes have competed under neutral flags instead. Removing a flag turned out to be one of the sharper penalties available.
The Refugee Olympic Team, introduced in 2016, competes under the Olympic flag itself. The team exists because its members have no national flag to compete under, which makes the Olympic rings the only banner available to them.