Flag of the Czech Republic

How to read it

The Act on the State Symbols (3/1993), passed by the Czech National Council on 17 December 1992, describes the flag as an upper white stripe and a lower red stripe with a blue wedge at the pole between them, reaching to half the length of the flag, in a ratio of width to length of 2 to 3. It names the state colours as white, red and blue, in that order. The design is the flag of Czechoslovakia, adopted on 30 March 1920 and carried on by the Czech Republic when the federation was dissolved in 1992. Neither the act nor any regulation fixes the shades: the Interior Ministry says this is deliberate, as colour systems such as CMYK and Pantone are not legally binding, and that the colours should be saturated.

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Telling it from the Philippine and Polish flags

The Philippine flag is the closest: blue and red with a triangle, but the triangle is white with a gold sun of eight rays and three stars, and the flag is twice as long as it is high, under the Philippines’ Flag and Heraldic Code. The Code also flies it blue side up in peace and red side up in time of war. On the Czech flag the wedge is blue and the white is at the top.

Poland’s flag is white over red with no wedge. That is why the wedge is there: from 1918 to 1920 the new state flew Bohemia’s white over red, identical to the flag Poland adopted on 1 August 1919 apart from its proportions, so the flag had to change in 1920, Store norske leksikon says. The Prague 1 district adds that the plain white and red was also too like Austria’s.

What the blue wedge stands for

No law says, and accounts differ. The foreign ministry says the state colours have no symbolism of their own in heraldic terms. Store norske leksikon says white and red were the colours of Bohemia and blue stood for Moravia and Slovakia. CNN Prima News wrote in January 2026 that on the Czechoslovak flag the wedge stood for Slovakia, that no current law gives an official reading of the Czech flag’s colours or shapes, and that some teachers tell pupils it is Moravia; the vexillologist Karel Müller objects that Silesia would then need black or gold on the flag too. Aleš Brožek, a vexillologist and director of the North Bohemian Research Library, told the Prague 1 district that the wedge was a figure used in Czech heraldry from about the fifteenth century, added because the flag needed something to recall the Slovaks.

How the flag came about

A committee on state symbols set up on the last day of 1918 agreed that the flag would carry the Slavic colours, white, red and blue, and the Interior Ministry archivist Jaroslav Kursa was asked to work out a design; after criticism from the public and some deputies the wedge was lengthened to half the flag in January 1920, the Prague 1 district says. The National Assembly passed the law on 30 March 1920. A constitutional law of November 1992 on the end of Czechoslovakia said that neither the Czech Republic nor Slovakia could use the federation’s state symbols afterwards; the Czech Republic kept the flag under its state symbols act of 1993, CNN Prima News reports, and Slovakia took its own tricolour.