Combine text and image in a geom_label_repel in ggplot

Question

I'm trying to do a line graph and have the last point of each series be labelled by a combination of text and image. I usually use ggrepel package for this and have no problem doing this with text only. My problem is I can't figure out how to add an image in the label.

I thought that a label like Country <img src='https://link.com/to/flag.png' width='20'/> would work and so this is what I've tried to do:

library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggrepel)

# example df
df <- data.frame(
  Country = c(rep("France", 5), rep("United Kingdom", 5)),
  Ratio = rnorm(10),
  Days = c(seq(1, 5, 1), seq(4, 8, 1)),
  abbr = c(rep("FR", 5), rep("GB", 5))) %>% 
  group_by(Country) %>% 
  
  # add "label" only to last point of the graph
  mutate(label = if_else(Days == max(Days), 
                         # combine text and img of country's flag
                         true = paste0(Country, " <img src='https://raw.githubusercontent.com/behdad/region-flags/gh-pages/png/", abbr, ".png' width='20'/>"), 
                         false = NA_character_)
  )
  

# line graph
ggplot(data = df, aes(x = Days, y = Ratio, color = Country)) +
  geom_line(size = 1) +
  theme(legend.position = "none") +
  
  geom_label_repel(aes(label = label),
                   nudge_x = 1,
                   na.rm = T)

But this produces the raw label and not the country's name with its flag, as intended:

This is obviously not the way to go, can anyone please help me?

Answer 1

Try this approach using ggtext function geom_richtext(). You can customize other elements if you wish. Here the code:

library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggrepel)
library(ggtext)
# example df
df <- data.frame(
  Country = c(rep("France", 5), rep("United Kingdom", 5)),
  Ratio = rnorm(10),
  Days = c(seq(1, 5, 1), seq(4, 8, 1)),
  abbr = c(rep("FR", 5), rep("GB", 5))) %>% 
  group_by(Country) %>% 
  
  # add "label" only to last point of the graph
  mutate(label = if_else(Days == max(Days), 
                         # combine text and img of country's flag
                         true = paste0(Country, " <img src='https://raw.githubusercontent.com/behdad/region-flags/gh-pages/png/", abbr, ".png' width='20'/>"), 
                         false = NA_character_)
  )


# line graph
ggplot(data = df, aes(x = Days, y = Ratio, color = Country,label = label)) +
  geom_line(size = 1) +
  theme(legend.position = "none") +
  geom_richtext(na.rm = T,nudge_x = -0.1,nudge_y = -0.1)

Output: