Flag of Romania

What the flag of Romania looks like

The Romanian flag has three vertical bands of equal width: blue next to the pole, yellow in the middle and red on the fly side. The proportions are 2:3. The flag has no coat of arms or other emblem in its normal form.

Until 2023 the law specified the colors as cobalt blue, chrome yellow and vermilion red pigments. The 2023 revision replaced these with exact shades in the Pantone, CMYK and RGB color models.

Since 1867 the coat of arms has appeared only on army and princely flags, while civilian flags are plain. See the Romania flag emoji to compare the small version.

Romania flag meaning and symbolism

The colors of the Romanian tricolor are usually traced to the banners and heraldry of the historic Romanian lands, Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. They were first officially combined on a flag in the nineteenth century.

The best-known reading, tied to the 1848 revolution, is blue for liberty (sky-blue), yellow for justice (field yellow) and red for fraternity (blood red). The 1848 provisional government's flag also carried the words Dreptate, Frăție ("Justice, Fraternity"). Historians see the revolutionary flag of Tudor Vladimirescu in 1821, which used the three colors, as one of the earliest deliberate uses of them for Romanian self-determination, with the same meaning. These are traditional readings of the colors.

History of the Romanian flag

Blue, yellow and red appear on flags and coats of arms in Romanian lands as far back as the 14th century. The first documented tricolor flag design was submitted in Wallachia in 1834, and in 1848 the revolutionaries adopted a blue-yellow-red tricolor. Decree no. 1 of 14/26 June 1848 said the national flag would bear three colors, blue, yellow and red, and the date 26 June is now marked as Romania's Flag Day. After the revolution was put down, the old flags were restored and the revolutionaries were punished for wearing the tricolor.

From 1859 to 1866 the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia used a red-yellow-blue tricolor with horizontal stripes. Article 124 of the 1866 Constitution named blue, yellow and red as the colors of the country, and on 26 March 1867 the Assembly of Deputies set the vertical arrangement, with blue at the hoist, yellow in the middle and red at the fly. The coat of arms was placed only on army and princely flags; civilian flags stayed plain.

When Romania was proclaimed a socialist people's republic on 30 December 1947, the flag kept its colors but gained a redesigned coat of arms with industrial and agricultural symbolism on the yellow band. The 2:3 proportion was first regulated by law in this era. In December 1989, protesters in Timișoara waved flags with the communist coat of arms cut out of the middle, and the flag with a hole became a symbol of the end of the Ceaușescu era. On 27 December 1989 the National Salvation Front replaced the communist flag with the plain 1867 tricolor, and Law no. 75/1994 now defines the flag. Romania celebrates its Flag Day on 26 June.

Romania flag vs Chad flag

Romania and Chad both use a vertical tricolor of blue, yellow and red with blue at the hoist, and both have a ratio of 2:3. The main difference is the shade: Chad's first stripe is described as indigo, while Romania's specified blue is cobalt. In practice the two flags are very hard to tell apart, and the colors on Chad's flag may vary more than Romania's.

Romania's tricolor dates from the nineteenth century, and Chad adopted its flag on 6 November 1959 for the autonomous republic and kept it on independence in 1960. Chad's flag colors are explained as blue for Lake Chad and the country's Black African heritage, yellow for the sands of the Sahara and red for the bloodshed over independence, and the design combined the French and Pan-African colors. Chad asked the United Nations to look at the similarity in 2004, and Romania's president said the flag would not change.

Other flags with the same colors include Moldova, which has the same stripes with a coat of arms showing an eagle in the center, and Andorra, which also has a coat of arms and a different blue. Colombia and Ecuador use the same colors in horizontal stripes. For more comparisons, see the flags of the world.