Belarusian ruble sign

On 12 May 2005, the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus adopted a graphic symbol for the Belarusian ruble, consisting of the Latin letters “Br”, following a competition that attracted around 5,000 submissions. Many proposals incorporated national elements, although most were based on the letters “B” and “R”. The symbol was intended for domestic use only. Three authors, Alexander Gudoshnikov, Sergey Reznik, and Alexander Sedortsov, were jointly awarded for submitting the design.^[4]

Approximately 20 years later, the National Bank reported that the “Br” symbol had seen limited use in practice^[5] and announced a new competition in September to create a distinctive symbol for the currency.^[6] Nearly 2,700 submissions were received,^[5] and shortlisted designs were submitted to a public vote, which required a mobile phone number for verification; each number could be used once, and data were stored in encrypted form. Voting was scheduled to run until 28 November, and results were determined by combining public voting scores, ranging from five to one points depending on rank, with those of the competition commission.^[6] The winning design by Vasily Shchebetun received the highest combined score^[5] and was approved by the Board of the National Bank on 27 January 2026.^[1][2][3] The author was awarded 3,000 Belarusian rubles.^[5]