Bonaire flag (Caribbean Netherlands)

Which flag represents the Caribbean Netherlands?

The Caribbean Netherlands is the name for three islands in the Caribbean that became special municipalities of the Netherlands on 10 October 2010: Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. They are part of the country of the Netherlands itself, not a separate country, and the official national flag there is the Dutch red, white and blue tricolor (see the flag of the Netherlands).

The group as a whole has no flag. Each island has its own, and the one shown on this page is the flag of Bonaire, the largest and most populated of the three. Sint Eustatius and Saba fly their own island flags. The Bonaire flag is an island flag with local official use, not a national flag.

What the flag of Bonaire looks like

A white diagonal strip runs across the flag and separates two triangles: a smaller yellow one in the upper left and a larger dark blue one in the lower right. On the white strip sit a black compass and a red six-pointed star. The flag has a ratio of 3:2.

The mix of blue, yellow, white and black makes the flag easy to tell from the Dutch tricolor, and from the flags of Aruba and Curaçao, which also have blue fields but a different layout. For the flag as a digital symbol, see the Caribbean Netherlands flag emoji, which on most devices shows the Dutch tricolor rather than the Bonaire flag.

Bonaire flag meaning and symbolism

The elements of the flag are commonly explained as follows:

• Yellow: the sun.
• Dark blue: the sea.
• White: the sky.
• Black compass: the island's people as a seafaring population.
• Red six-pointed star: the island's six original villages: Antriol, Nikiboko, Nort Saliña, Playa, Rincon and Tera Korá.

The yellow band was originally red, a reference to the Dutch flag, and was later changed, reportedly to avoid two separate red areas next to the star.

History of the Bonaire flag

Spain colonized Bonaire from 1499, and the Dutch conquered it in 1636. From 1954 until 2010 it belonged to the Netherlands Antilles, whose flag carried a ring of white stars, one for each island.

Bonaire adopted its own flag on 11 December 1981, while still part of the Antilles. When the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in October 2010, Bonaire became a special municipality of the Netherlands and kept its flag for local use. Sint Eustatius and Saba took the same path with their own flags.