National Anthem Trivia
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84 free National Anthem trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
National anthems are full of strange stories: a Dutch song older than the United States, a Japanese poem set to music by a British bandmaster, a Mexican poet locked in a bedroom by his fiancée until he produced lyrics, and a Spanish march that still has no official words. This national anthem trivia quiz covers the anthems of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, India, China, Russia, South Africa and more, plus the Olympic Hymn and the Anthem of Europe. Expect questions on who wrote them, when they became official, which ones share a melody, and the famous performances, protests and controversies attached to them. Easy questions ask which fort inspired The Star-Spangled Banner; hard ones ask which town the composers of the Welsh anthem lived in or which people's traditional tune became Kenya's anthem. It suits pub quiz rounds, geography and music classes, Olympic-watching parties, and anyone who has stood for an anthem and wondered where it came from. We deliberately ask about the songs rather than quoting their lyrics. Every answer was checked against the encyclopedia entry for the anthem in question, and each question links to its source.
30 of 84 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Turkey adopted its anthem in 1921 in the middle of which conflict?
Its War of Independence
Its War of Independence was still being fought when the Grand National Assembly adopted Mehmet Akif Ersoy's poem on 12 March 1921, so Turkey had an anthem more than two years before it had a republic.
Q 02Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner after watching the British bombard which fort?
McHenry
Fort McHenry withstood a 25-hour British bombardment in September 1814; Key watched from a truce ship, where he had gone to win a captured doctor's release, and titled his poem Defence of Fort M'Henry.
Q 03John Stafford Smith wrote The Star-Spangled Banner's tune for a gentlemen's club in which city?
London
London's Anacreontic Society, a club of amateur musicians, sang Smith's tune as its club song; Key's brother-in-law noticed that the new poem fitted the melody, which Americans already knew.
Q 04Which US president signed the 1931 law making The Star-Spangled Banner the official national anthem?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover signed the act on March 3, 1931; the Navy had used the song at flag raisings since 1889 and Woodrow Wilson ordered it played at military occasions in 1916, but Congress had never made it official.
Q 05The Star-Spangled Banner's familiar first verse ends as what?
A question
A question closes the first of Key's four verses, asking whether the flag still waves; the answer comes only in the later verses, which are almost never sung.
Q 06Which Washington institution now displays the huge flag that inspired The Star-Spangled Banner?
The Smithsonian
The Smithsonian has cared for the 15-star, 15-stripe flag for more than a century; it is several feet shorter than when it was sewn, because the family that owned it snipped off pieces as souvenirs and gifts.
Q 07In his instrumental Star-Spangled Banner, Jimi Hendrix used distortion and the vibrato arm to imitate what?
Rockets and bombs
Rockets and bombs are what his feedback and whammy-bar dives mimic, most famously at Woodstock in 1969; asked on television about the uproar, the former Army paratrooper said he thought it was beautiful.
Q 08Which sitcom star's screeching 1990 anthem before a San Diego Padres game drew a stadium full of boos?
Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Barr screeched the anthem at Jack Murphy Stadium on July 25, 1990, then appeared to grab her crotch and spit; she later said the screech was unintended.
Q 09When in Game One of the 1918 World Series did a band famously play The Star-Spangled Banner?
The seventh-inning stretch
The seventh-inning stretch of Game One, on September 5, 1918, brought a Navy band's rendition; Red Sox infielder Fred Thomas, on furlough from the Navy, saluted the flag and the wartime crowd joined in singing.
Q 10The British national anthem's melody is also the anthem of which small European country?
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein's Oben am jungen Rhein is sung to the British tune, as Switzerland's anthem was until 1961; its words once hailed a German fatherland, and those lines were rewritten in 1963.
Q 11Beethoven wrote a set of seven piano variations on which national anthem?
God Save the King
God Save the King gave Beethoven the theme for seven piano variations; Americans know the same tune as the patriotic song My Country, 'Tis of Thee.
Q 12Which song is used as an English anthem at cricket matches?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem began as a little-noticed poem by Blake; a First World War anthology revived it more than a century later, Hubert Parry set it to music in 1916, and England's cricket board made it its official hymn.
Q 13Despite its name, La Marseillaise was written in 1792 in which city of Alsace?
Strasbourg
Strasbourg's mayor asked army engineer Rouget de Lisle for a marching song in April 1792, and he wrote it overnight; it took its name from the Marseille volunteers who sang it as they entered Paris.
Q 21A bandmaster from which country wrote the first, unpopular tune for Japan's anthem in 1869?
Britain
Britain's John William Fenton, a military bandmaster in Yokohama, told his Japanese pupils that a modern state needed an anthem and offered to compose one; his tune was judged to lack solemnity and replaced in 1880.
Q 22In the Dutch anthem, the Wilhelmus, the singer swears he has always honoured which ruler?
The King of Spain
The King of Spain is honoured in the first verse, even though the song speaks as William of Orange, who led the revolt against that very king; it became the official anthem only in 1932.
Q 23The first letters of the fifteen stanzas of the Wilhelmus form an acrostic spelling what?
Q 14What was La Marseillaise originally titled?
War Song for the Army of the Rhine
War Song for the Army of the Rhine was Rouget de Lisle's own title in April 1792; the revolutionary song then fell from favour under two emperors and the restored kings, and returned for good only under the Third Republic.
Q 15Quebec's lieutenant governor commissioned O Canada for the 1880 celebration of which holiday?
Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day
Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day fell on 24 June, when the song was first sung at a Quebec City banquet with French words only; the English lyrics sung today came decades later and are not a translation.
Q 16O Canada's 2018 lyric change made the anthem what?
Gender-neutral
Gender-neutral wording arrived when 'in all thy sons command' became 'in all of us command'; the song had been the official anthem only since 1980, a full century after its first performance.
Q 17Finland's anthem, Maamme, shares its melody with the anthem of which nearby country?
Estonia
Estonia sings Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm to the melody Fredrik Pacius wrote for Finland in 1848; when Soviet rule banned the anthem, Estonians near the coast kept hearing the tune on Finnish broadcasts.
Q 18Advance Australia Fair became the national anthem in 1984 under which prime minister?
Bob Hawke
Bob Hawke's government had Advance Australia Fair proclaimed the national anthem on 19 April 1984, after an earlier plebiscite had favoured it over Waltzing Matilda.
Q 19Which country's anthem sets a court poem more than a thousand years old, the oldest lyrics of any anthem?
Japan
Japan's Kimigayo takes its words from a waka in the tenth-century Kokin Wakashū anthology, yet its melody is modern: it was written in 1880, after an earlier tune by a foreign bandmaster fell flat.
Q 20Japan's anthem, Kimigayo, hopes a reign will last until pebbles become what?
Moss-covered boulders
Moss-covered boulders, grown from tiny pebbles, are the lyric's measure of a reign lasting thousands of years; the song was sung by custom for over a century and became the legal anthem only in 1999.
Willem van Nassov
Willem van Nassov is spelled by the stanzas' first letters, a signature for William of Orange; in modern Dutch spelling two stanzas now open with Z, so today's acrostic reads Nazzov.
Q 24Which song from the novel Anandamath ranks as India's national song, beside the anthem Jana Gana Mana?
Vande Mataram
Vande Mataram, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's hymn to the motherland, rallied the independence movement, but it was passed over as the anthem because its picture of the nation as a goddess troubled many Muslims.
Q 25Rabindranath Tagore wrote the national anthems of India and which other country?
Bangladesh
Bangladesh's provisional government adopted Tagore's Amar Shonar Bangla, My Golden Bengal, in 1971; he is said to have written it decades earlier, amid the unrest over the partition of Bengal.
Q 26Which organisation first heard Jana Gana Mana sung, in 1911?
Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress delegates heard it at their Calcutta session in December 1911, led by Tagore's niece; Tagore later made the English translation himself.
Q 27Which composer wrote the melody of Germany's anthem in 1797 as a birthday hymn for Emperor Francis II?
Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn wrote the tune as Austria's imperial hymn, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, and reused it in his Emperor Quartet; a German poet fitted new words to it in 1841, so Austria's old anthem became Germany's.
Q 28Since German reunification, which stanza of the Deutschlandlied is the national anthem?
The third
The third stanza, a call for unity, justice and freedom, was confirmed as the sole anthem in 1991; the first, 'Deutschland über alles', is left out because the Nazi regime had turned it into a slogan.
Q 29Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the German anthem's words in 1841 on which North Sea island?
Heligoland
Heligoland was a British possession when the verses were written there in 1841; it became German only in 1890, under the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty, so Germany's anthem was written on foreign soil.
Q 30Italy's anthem, made official only in 2017, is popularly known by what name?
Fratelli d'Italia
Fratelli d'Italia, Brothers of Italy, opens Mameli's 1847 text; chosen as a stopgap in October 1946, the anthem stayed provisional for 71 years until a 2017 law made it official.