About Nationalia
A data journalism project exploring national anthems around the world
What is Nationalia?
Nationalia is an open-source cultural reference site that catalogs, translates, and analyzes the national anthems of 194 countries. We combine structured data, original journalism, and interactive visualizations to reveal the stories that nations tell about themselves through their most sacred songs.
Why national anthems?
National anthems are one of the few cultural artifacts that nearly every country in the world shares. They condense centuries of history, ideology, and collective identity into a few minutes of music and poetry. Yet most people know only their own. Nationalia exists to change that.
Our data
Every anthem in our database includes metadata on its composition, adoption history, themes, mood, original lyrics, and translations. All data is structured, machine-readable, and available under an open license.
Editorial approach
Our stories are data journalism: we analyze patterns across the full corpus of anthems rather than treating each in isolation. When we write about themes of defiance or the language of national identity, we support our arguments with data from all anthems in our database.
A note on Russia
Nationalia does not include the Russian Federation. This is an editorial decision. Russia's ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, including the systematic destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage, makes its inclusion incompatible with the values of this project. National anthems celebrate sovereignty and identity. We cannot catalog Russia's anthem while it actively seeks to destroy another nation's right to both.
Technology
Nationalia is built with Astro, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. It is a static site with no server-side rendering, no cookies, and no tracking. The source code is available on GitHub.
Contribute
Nationalia is open source. You can contribute translations, data corrections, or new features via our GitHub repository. GitHub →
License and attribution
Anthem lyrics are in the public domain or used under fair use for educational purposes. All original content, data, and code are licensed under MIT. Country data sourced from ISO 3166-1.