Flag of the Netherlands

What the flag of the Netherlands looks like

The flag of the Netherlands has three horizontal stripes of equal height: red at the top, white in the middle and blue at the bottom. The proportions are 2:3. The red is officially described as a bright vermilion and the blue as cobalt blue, a definition that dates from 1949.

There is no emblem, and the design is the same on land and at sea, which makes it a plain tricolor. The simplicity is the reason it is often confused with other red, white and blue flags. In English it is called both the Dutch flag and the Netherlands flag, and "Holland flag" is a common informal name for the same flag.

See the standard version as the Netherlands flag emoji, or get a copy from the download page.

Dutch flag colors and meaning

The colors have no single official meaning. They originated as the livery of William of Orange (Willem van Oranje), the leader of the Dutch Revolt against Spain in the 16th century, whose colors were orange, white and blue. Under heraldic tradition, red symbolizes bravery and strength, white peace and honesty, and blue vigilance, truth and loyalty, but these explanations were added later.

Orange is still important in Dutch national symbolism. The royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau, takes its name from the principality of Orange, and the color appears on the national football team's shirts and at festivals such as King's Day (27 April). On those days and at royal occasions, people often fly an orange pennant above the flag.

History of the Dutch flag

The ancestor of the Dutch flag is the Prince's Flag (Prinsenvlag), an orange-white-blue horizontal tricolor of the late 16th century used by the rebels fighting Spanish rule under William of Orange. It was based on his livery, and the colors are first recorded in 1574 at the siege of Leiden. The first explicit reference to a naval flag in these colors dates from 1587.

In the course of the 17th century, the orange stripe was gradually replaced by red, mostly between 1630 and 1660. Red replacing orange is understood as a sign of political change and of the Republic's growing distance from the House of Orange. (A popular story says orange dye faded at sea, but this is not what the sources give as the reason.) In 1664 the States-General introduced the name Statenvlag (States flag) for the red, white and blue tricolor, and the Dutch navy used it from 1663 onward.

The red, white and blue tricolor was the only flag allowed under the Batavian Republic (1795-1806), and a navy version of 1796 added a Netherlands maiden. Under Napoleon's brother Louis, the Kingdom of Holland removed the maiden and restored the plain tricolor. When the Netherlands regained independence in 1813, the tricolor came back, and it has been used since then.

The flag was formally confirmed on 19 February 1937 by a royal decree of Queen Wilhelmina, which said that the colors of the flag are red, white and blue. It was meant to end the debate on whether the orange Prince's Flag was the true flag. The exact shades were defined in 1949.

Flags that look like the Dutch flag

The Dutch flag is often confused with several others:

• Luxembourg has the same stripe order, but a lighter sky blue and a longer ratio of 3:5.
• France uses the same three colors in vertical stripes, in the order blue, white and red. The Dutch tricolor is older, and the French one came with the Revolution in 1789.
• Russia has white, blue and red horizontal stripes. The Russian flag is said to have been inspired by the Dutch one during the time of Peter the Great.
• Paraguay has red, white and blue stripes with an emblem in the center.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands also includes Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, which each have their own flags. The Dutch tricolor is the flag of the European Netherlands and also flies over the Caribbean municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, which have their own local flags too.