The current national flag was officially introduced by Parliament on 14 January 2004. President Saakashvili formally endorsed it via Presidential Decree No. 31 signed on 25 January, following his election as President.
The National Flag Day has been celebrated annually on January 14 since 2012.
By the late 1990s, the design had become widely known as ‘the Georgian historical national flag’ as vexillologists had pointed out the red-on-white Jerusalem cross shown as the flag of Tbilisi in a 14th-century map by Domenico and Francesco Pizzigano, the 14th century Venetian cartographers. A majority of Georgians, including the Georgian church, supported the restoration of the flag that took place in 2004.
Sources: agenda.ge, georgiatoday.ge, Britannica, Wikipedia