Flag of Serbia

How to read it

Article 7 of the Constitution of 2006 says the flag exists and is used in two forms, the national flag and the state flag. The Law on the Appearance and Use of the Coat of Arms, Flag and Anthem (2009, amended 2023) gives both a ratio of 3 to 2, length to height, and three stripes of equal height, red, blue and white from the top. The state flag (državna zastava) carries the Small Coat of Arms, its centre moved towards the pole by a seventh of the flag’s length; the national flag (narodna zastava) is the plain tricolour. The arms are those fixed by the Kingdom of Serbia’s law of 16 June 1882. The National Assembly first adopted the arms, the flag and the anthem by a recommendation of 17 August 2004, 183 of the 186 deputies present voting for it and three abstaining, the government reported; the tricolour became the national flag of Serbia alone when the union with Montenegro ended in 2006.

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The state flag and the national flag

The law gives each form its own buildings. The state flag, with the arms, flies at the main entrance of state bodies’ buildings and in their offices; the National Assembly is the exception. The plain national flag flies at the main entrance of the National Assembly and of provincial and local government buildings and public services.

The eagle and the four firesteels

The Small Coat of Arms is a red shield with a silver double-headed eagle, its beak, tongues and legs gold, standing between two gold fleurs-de-lis. On its breast is a red shield with a silver cross between four firesteels, their edges turned towards the cross, and over the shield is a gold crown, which the government calls the crown of the Nemanjić dynasty.

The firesteels go back to a Byzantine cross with four such marks of the 1100s, Store norske leksikon says. The Serbs inherited it and read the firesteels as four Cyrillic letters S, written like C, for the motto Samo sloga Srbina spasava, “only unity saves the Serbs”. The double-headed eagle, an old Byzantine symbol, was borne by the Nemanjić dynasty in the Middle Ages.

Telling it from Russia’s flag

Russia’s flag has the same three colours in the opposite order: white, blue and red from the top. Serbia’s starts with red. Croatia’s flag is red, white and blue, with the chequy shield in the centre where Serbia’s has the eagle towards the pole.