Flag of Colombia

What the flag of Colombia looks like

The flag of Colombia has three horizontal bands in yellow, blue and red, from top to bottom. The yellow band is twice as tall as each of the others, so it covers half of the flag, while the blue and red bands each cover a quarter. The proportions of the flag are 2:3. There is no emblem on the version used by citizens and businesses, known as the civil flag.

Variants with the national coat of arms are used for some official and military purposes. Because the yellow, blue and red scheme is shared with its neighbors, the flag is often confused with those of Ecuador and Venezuela. You can see the plain version in the Colombia flag emoji. Note that the spelling "Columbia" is a common mistake: it refers to the District of Columbia, British Columbia and Columbia University, not to this country.

Colombia flag meaning and symbolism

The colors are explained in several ways. The best-known version says that yellow stands for the wealth of the land, including gold, and for sovereignty and justice, blue stands for the sea and the sky, as well as for loyalty, and red stands for the blood spilled by soldiers for independence, and for courage. Another widely repeated explanation says that blue represents the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, that meet the country's coasts, with Colombia being the only South American country with coasts on both.

An older reading, linked to Miranda, describes yellow as America, red as Spain and blue as the sea that separates them. These are traditional interpretations, and none of them is part of the legal definition of the flag.

The yellow band is often said to be larger because the wealth of the land is meant to dominate. The 2:1:1 split is shared with Ecuador, while Venezuela uses three equal bands.

History of the Colombian flag

The three colors come from the tricolor of the Venezuelan-born revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, who raised a flag in yellow, blue and red during his 1806 expedition to Venezuela. Where he got the idea is uncertain, and several stories are told about it.

After independence from Spain, Simon Bolivar and others created Gran Colombia in 1819, a state that included present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama. It used a version of Miranda's tricolor. When Gran Colombia broke up in 1830-31, each of the new states kept the colors in its own arrangement. The Republic of New Granada, the forerunner of modern Colombia, used the same three colors in a different arrangement, and in the 1860s the country was renamed the United States of Colombia.

The present form of the flag, with the 2:1:1 division, is traced to a decree of 26 November 1861 issued by the government of Tomas Cipriano de Mosquera. The design has stayed the same since then, and the country has changed only its name. The flag is flown widely on national holidays such as 20 July, Independence Day, and 7 August, the anniversary of the Battle of Boyaca in 1819.

Colombia flag vs Venezuela and Ecuador

Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador are the three countries that came from Gran Colombia, which is why their flags look so alike. The Colombian flag has no stars and its yellow band is twice the size of the others. The flag of Venezuela has three equal bands and an arc of eight white stars on the blue stripe. Ecuador's flag has the same 2:1:1 layout as Colombia's, but its state version carries a coat of arms with a condor and Mount Chimborazo, while the civil flag is plain. Beyond Latin America, Romania, Chad and Andorra have blue, yellow and red flags, but their bands are vertical. See more flags of South America.