Flag of Slovenia

How to read it

Article 6 of the Constitution describes the flag as the white-blue-red Slovene national flag with the coat of arms of Slovenia: twice as long as it is wide, each colour a horizontal third, white at the top, and the arms in the upper part by the pole, half in the white and half in the blue. The Law on the Coat of Arms, Flag and Anthem and on the Slovene National Flag (Uradni list 67/1994) makes the geometric and colour rules part of the law. The government’s communication office adds that the arms’ centre is a quarter of the flag’s length from the pole, on the line between white and blue, and that the arms are a third of the flag’s width tall, as deep as one stripe. The flag was adopted on 25 June 1991 by Amendment C to the constitution, and first raised at the celebration of independence in Ljubljana’s Republic Square on 26 June 1991.

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The national flag and the state flag

Slovenia has two flags in law. The Slovene national flag (slovenska narodna zastava) is the plain white, blue and red tricolour, in the same 1 to 2 proportions, and the law says it marks belonging to the Slovene nation. The flag of the Republic adds the coat of arms. Slovene students in Vienna first unfurled the national flag in March 1848, and in Ljubljana it first flew on 7 April 1848 from the Zlata zvezda inn in Wolfova ulica, the government’s booklet on the symbols says. It took the colours of the arms of Carniola, as flags of the time took the colours of their land’s arms.

The coat of arms

The sculptor Marko Pogačnik won the public competition for the arms in 1991, against 86 other entries. His design puts Triglav under the three stars of the Counts of Celje, with two wavy lines for the waters at the foot of the shield. Triglav, 2,864 m (9,396 ft) high, is the country’s highest mountain, and its name means “three heads”, Store norske leksikon says. The architect Jože Plečnik first drew a mountain of three peaks as the sign of the nation in 1934.

Official colours

The government gives the flag’s colours in CMYK: blue C100 M60 Y0 K10, red C0 M100 Y100 K0 and golden yellow C0 M10 Y100 K0.

Telling it from Slovakia’s and Russia’s flags

Slovakia’s flag has the same white, blue and red stripes in the same order, with arms by the pole as well. The Slovak arms are a red shield with a silver double cross on three blue hills; Slovenia’s are a blue shield with Triglav, set across the line between white and blue. Russia’s flag is the same tricolour with no arms, and is 2 by 3 where Slovenia’s is 1 by 2.