Flag of Venezuela

How to read it

The Law on the National Flag, National Anthem and Coat of Arms was passed by the National Assembly on 7 March 2006 and replaced the law of 1954. Article 3 says the flag is inspired by the one Congress adopted in 1811 and describes it as yellow, blue and red in joined, equal, horizontal stripes in that order from the top, with eight white five-pointed stars in the middle of the blue, set in an arc curving upward. The flag used by the Presidency and the armed forces, and the one flown on national, state and municipal public buildings, carries the coat of arms at the end of the yellow stripe next to the pole; the merchant navy’s flag has only the eight stars. Venezuelans and resident foreigners must fly the flag at their homes, offices and businesses on national holidays (article 5). The law fixes no proportions or shades.

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The eighth star and the horse

The National Assembly approved the new law on the night of Tuesday 7 March 2006 at Chávez’s request, El Universo reported the next day. The eighth star was added for the province of Guayana, to match an aspiration of Bolívar: on 20 November 1817, in Angostura, Bolívar decreed that a star be added to the seven on the flag as the emblem of the province of Guayana, which had joined the republic. The same law changed the coat of arms. Its white horse now gallops to the left instead of turning its head back to the right; Chávez had called the old one “a horse that someone stopped and set to look at the past”. Four ears of wheat were added to the 20 in the sheaf, one for each of the 24 states, and a bow and arrow, for the indigenous peoples, and a machete, for the farm worker, joined the weapons in the second quarter. The deputy Cilia Flores said the change adapted the symbols “to the new times of independence” Venezuela was living.

The opposition did not recognise the changes. On 12 March 2006, as Chávez led a civic and military parade for the new symbols, opponents protested in eastern Caracas, and one told a local television station, “My flag has seven stars, I don’t care what the president says,” El Diario recalled in 2023. Expansión notes that Chávez said he might put the change to a referendum, and that no referendum took place. In January 2021 President Nicolás Maduro proposed a ninth star, for Maracaibo; Expansión reported in January 2026 that it had not been approved.

Before 2006

Through all the changes the colours stayed the same, El Diario writes, while the stars came and went. A decree of 29 July 1863, after the Federal War, placed seven white stars in the blue, six in a circle and one in the centre; Cipriano Castro set all seven in a circle in 1905; and in 1930 Congress returned them to an arc, the arrangement kept, with small changes, until the eighth star was added.

Telling it from Colombia’s and Ecuador’s flags

Colombia’s and Ecuador’s flags have the same three colours in the same order from the top, but their yellow stripe is the widest: Colombia’s Foreign Ministry says the yellow takes up the largest part of its flag, and Ecuador’s decree of 1900 makes the yellow twice as wide as each of the other stripes. Venezuela’s three stripes are equal, and its eight white stars are the quickest sign.