Flag of France

What the flag of France looks like

The national flag of France is a vertical tricolor with three bands: blue next to the flagpole, white in the middle and red at the fly. The proportions are 2:3. In the version flown on ships, the bands are slightly different in width, about 30:33:37, so that the flag looks equal when it flutters, as the red at the fly appears narrower in the wind.

The flag has no emblem. The coat of arms is not part of the national flag. The Constitution of 1958 states in Article 2 that the national emblem is the blue, white and red tricolor flag.

The shade of blue has not always been the same. No law has specified the shades. A lighter blue (and red) version was introduced in 1974 under President Giscard d'Estaing, and both versions have been in use since. In July 2020 the presidential Élysée Palace went back to the darker navy blue, as a symbol of the Revolution.

French flag meaning and symbolism

The colors are rooted in Paris. Blue and red were the traditional colors of Paris, used on the city's coat of arms and worn in the cockades of the Paris militia in 1789. White, which Lafayette called the "ancient French colour", was added to them to make the national cockade, and the French government's own website describes white as the color of the king. Some later accounts link the white stripe to the nation instead.

Other explanations exist. Blue and red are also associated with the Virgin Mary and the oriflamme, and the colors are occasionally taken to stand for the revolutionary motto, with blue for liberty, white for equality and red for fraternity. These are interpretations rather than a fixed official meaning.

History of the French flag

Before the Revolution, French ships and armies used white flags and other royal banners, and the white flag with fleurs-de-lis was the main symbol of the kingdom. In July 1789 the Paris militia wore a cockade in the blue and red of the city, and white was added to it to form the tricolor cockade; the addition is attributed to Lafayette, who commanded the National Guard, among others. This is the usual starting point of the tricolor. A flag with vertical red, white and blue stripes was approved on 24 October 1790, and the order was reversed to the current blue-white-red by a resolution of 15 February 1794.

The tricolor was carried through Napoleon's wars and spread across Europe. When the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1815, the tricolor was replaced by a white flag. The revolution of July 1830 restored the tricolor, and Louis-Philippe, the new "citizen-king", made it the flag of the July Monarchy. It has been used ever since, apart from an interruption of a few days in 1848.

Since then the flag has changed only in shade and proportion, and the constitutions of 1946 and 1958 confirmed it as the national emblem. The French tricolor inspired flags elsewhere, including that of Italy.

Flags that look like the French flag

The French flag is often mixed up with the Dutch flag, which has the same colors in a different order and in horizontal bands: red, white and blue. Luxembourg's flag also has horizontal red, white and a lighter blue. Russia's flag is horizontal white, blue and red. Paraguay uses red, white and blue horizontally too, with an emblem on each side.

French Guiana, a region of France in South America, uses the French flag as its official flag. You can see how the flag appears as an emoji on the France flag emoji page, or browse the flags of Europe.