Three vertical stripes in black, yellow and red: the colours of the coat of arms of Brabant with the shape of the French flag.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Civil, state and militaryFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field, almost square (13:15 ratio), with three equal vertical stripes.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
The three colours had already been seen in 1789
In 1830, Belgium was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
the last official horizontal ones are seen in 1838
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Belgium has three vertical stripes: black, yellow and red. It was born in a revolution, took the shape of the French flag and the colours of a medieval coat of arms. And it has a secret: the official version is almost square.
The three colours had already been seen in 1789. At that time the territory of present-day Belgium belonged to the Habsburgs of Austria, and its inhabitants rebelled against them. That rebellion, called the Brabant Revolution, failed, but the colours stayed in the collective memory.
In 1830, Belgium was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In late August a revolt broke out in Brussels that would end in independence. The rebels hung in the town hall a flag hastily made from cloth bought in a nearby shop. Its stripes were horizontal: red, yellow and black.
It changed twice in its first year. Since then the design has not changed.
1830
The stripes are horizontal, with the red on top.
January 1831
The provisional government decides to place the stripes vertically, as in the French flag.
Autumn 1831
The current order is fixed, with the black next to the mast. For some years horizontal and vertical flags coexist; the last official horizontal ones are seen in 1838.
The colours come from the coat of arms of the old duchy of Brabant, the region of Brussels:
Black
the ground of the shield.
Yellow
the golden lion occupying the centre.
Red
the tongue and the claws of the lion.
Vertical stripes
they imitate the French flag, the great revolutionary symbol of the time.
The official flag measures 13 high by 15 long. It comes from a nineteenth-century rule that fixed its size at 2.60 by 3 metres. On the street, almost everyone uses the longer version, 2 by 3.
The flags of the royal palaces in Brussels and Laeken are taller than wide: the Brussels one measures 4 metres high by 3 wide. As they are seen from far below, that is how they look well proportioned.
Those flags fly while the king is in Belgium. They are lowered when he leaves the country on an official trip or on holiday.
The Constitution names the colours as “red, yellow and black”, exactly the reverse of the order you see on the flag.
Where it is and what borders it.
Test what you have read about the flag of Belgium.
Text based on the article “Bandera de Bélgica” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Dbenbenn, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
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