The flag of North Macedonia is a red field with a yellow sun at its center, the eight rays widening as they reach the edges. The design is only as old as 1995, and it exists because of an argument with a neighbor over who owned a symbol.
The argument over the Vergina Sun
North Macedonia became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991 and adopted a flag bearing the Vergina Sun. Greece objected immediately, holding that the Vergina Sun was a Hellenic emblem of the ancient kingdom of Macedon and not the new republic's to use. The dispute ran on until negotiations, with outside mediation, produced a compromise: a new flag, adopted on October 5, 1995, that kept a sun but not that one.
The new sun of liberty
The replacement sun is a stylized eight-rayed figure whose rays broaden as they travel outward until they meet the edge of the flag, so the red field survives only as eight wedges between them. The design borrows from ancient artifacts and is usually described as the new sun of liberty. Red and yellow are long-standing Macedonian colors: red for revolution and struggle, yellow for hope and prosperity.
Sun symbols are common enough on flags in this part of the Balkans, but the specific proportions of the rays make this one hard to confuse with anything else.
Where it is flown
The flag is flown on government buildings, at state occasions, and by the military, all under the usual protocols for handling and lowering it. There are no separate civil or state variants. Its imagery carries over into government and military emblems, and it turns up wherever the country competes internationally, sports events above all.
References
[1] International Federation of Vexillological Associations[2] Historical Treaty records on the Prespa Agreement