Flag of Latvia

How to read it

The constitution (Satversme) says Latvia’s flag is red with a white stripe. The Latvian State Flag Law (Latvijas valsts karoga likums) of 29 October 2009 makes it carmine red with a white horizontal stripe, red, white and red in the ratio 2:1:2, and its width to length 1:2. Cabinet regulations of 2010, amended in 2018, require cloth flags to match Pantone Textile 19-1629 TPX or TC; for printing, the 2010 regulations gave Pantone 201C. The design is the artist Ansis Cīrulis’s, from May 1917; the Constitutional Assembly adopted the law on the flag and the coat of arms on 15 June 1921. Under the occupation from 1940, using or keeping the flag was a criminal offence; it was restored as the state flag on 27 February 1990.

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Telling it from Austria’s flag

Austria’s flag is also red, white and red in horizontal stripes, but its three stripes are equally broad, Austria’s constitution says; Latvia’s white stripe is half as deep as each red one. The red differs too. A government document first described Latvia’s particular carmine red in 1922, so that the flag could be told more easily from Austria’s, the President’s Chancery says.

The carmine red

Latvian flags varied from dark brown to violet until the 2010 regulations defined the carmine by a Pantone textile code, Latvijas Vēstnesis reported when the government adopted them. A flag shown in mourning carries a black ribbon (Pantone Black) one twentieth of the flag’s width. The law also lets decorative flags take other proportions, as long as they keep the colours and the 2:1:2 stripes.