Flag of the Seychelles
Seychelles’s flag is five bands, blue, yellow, red, white and green, fanning out from the bottom corner by the pole. Its designer, Philip Uzice, told the Seychelles Nation that blue stands for the sky and the sea, yellow for the sun giving light and life, red for progress, white for peace and harmony and green for the land and natural environment.
How to read it
Article 3 of the Constitution of Seychelles (1993) leaves the national flag, like the other national symbols, to be prescribed by an Act. Norway’s Store norske leksikon dates the flag’s adoption to 8 January 1996 and mentions a law on national symbols of 18 June 1996. It describes five fields that all radiate from the bottom corner by the pole, blue, yellow, red, white and green from the left. The flag replaced one of 1977 based on the flag of the Seychelles People’s United Party, then the governing party; the first flag of independent Seychelles, of 1976, lasted only a year.
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Two readings of the colours
The designer and the encyclopedia explain the colours differently. Philip Uzice, who was 28 when he designed the flag in 1996, gave them the meanings of sky and sea, sun, progress, peace and harmony, and land. Norway’s Store norske leksikon says the colours are those of the two main political parties of recent years, United Seychelles and the Seychelles Democratic Party. Uzice points out that all political parties now use the flag in their logos.
How the design was chosen
Uzice told the Seychelles Nation in 1996, before the flag was first hoisted, that he had looked at the flags of several other countries and wanted the Seychelles flag to stand out among them. He submitted half a dozen designs.
Read next
- Next in African flagsFlag of SomaliaSomalia’s flag is light blue with a white five-pointed star in the centre. Somalia’s government says the star’s five points stand for the five regions in which Somalis live, divided under colonial rule; the Foreign Ministry reads the blue as life and the natural wealth of Somalia’s coast. Mohammed Awale Liban designed it, and it was adopted on 12 October 1954.
- The same shape in Asian flagsFlag of the PhilippinesThe Philippine flag has a blue stripe over a red one and a white equilateral triangle at the pole, holding a golden sun with eight rays and a golden five-pointed star in each corner. The flag law fixes the design without a meaning; the meaning usually given, as in the Daily Tribune and Store norske leksikon, is the sun’s eight rays for the first eight provinces to rise against Spanish rule and the three stars for Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
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The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with squares and rectangles or triangles.
Sources
- Constitution of Seychelles, 1993 (Constitute Project), Constitution of the Republic of Seychelles, 1993 (rev. 2017), art. 3 (English text), Constitute Project, art. 3
- The man behind the Seychelles flag (Seychelles Nation), “The man behind the Seychelles flag”, Seychelles Nation, 16 June 2018, Seychelles Nation (National Information Services Agency), article text
- Seychellenes flagg og våpen (Store norske leksikon), Lars Roede, “Seychellenes flagg og våpen”, Store norske leksikon, Store norske leksikon, article text
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 13, 2026. How we research
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