Flag of Guatemala

Guatemala’s flag has three equal vertical bands of blue, white, and blue, with the national coat of arms centered on the white band. The arms combine a quetzal, parchment, crossed rifles and swords, and laurel branches. The statutory proportion is 8:5 when expressed as width to height.

Each vertical band occupies one-third of the flag’s width. The blue bands stand at the attachment and free edges, with white between them. The coat of arms belongs in the center of the white band. Preserve its complete arrangement rather than substituting a shield, bird silhouette, or text-only badge.

Article 2 identifies blue as ISCC-NBS 177 and white as ISCC-NBS 263. The supplied digital reference uses blue #4997D0, RGB 73, 151, 208, and white #FFFFFF, RGB 255, 255, 255. These HEX and RGB values describe the artwork; they are not numerical color codes written into the law.

Article 3 associates blue with strength, justice, truth, and loyalty, and white with purity, peace, integrity, firmness, and light. Official educational accounts also connect the blue bands with Guatemala’s Pacific and Atlantic-Caribbean setting. Keep that geographical interpretation distinct from the values expressly listed in the flag law.

The quetzal represents liberty; the parchment preserves the national birth date; the swords symbolize justice and sovereignty; and the laurel signifies victory. Article 3 gives those meanings. The arms also contain crossed rifles with fixed bayonets, whose historical type and arrangement are described separately in Article 4.

The parchment reads LIBERTAD, 15 DE, SEPTIEMBRE, DE 1821 across four lines in the 1997 law and the supplied artwork. It records September 15, 1821, the independence date. The inscription is therefore older than the present flag’s adoption in 1871 and should not be mistaken for that adoption date.

A quetzal appears above the parchment in Guatemala’s coat of arms. Article 6 places it facing heraldic dexter, which is the viewer’s left in a front-facing illustration, and describes its long tail extending below the laurel. Article 3 identifies the bird as the supreme symbol of liberty.

Guatemala’s national flag has an 8:5 width:height proportion. Article 1 expresses the same relationship as 5:8 height:length. A flag 100 centimeters high is therefore 160 centimeters wide. The ratio is exactly 1.6; it should not be confused with the mathematical golden ratio, which is approximately 1.618.

The reference uses a 960-by-600 coordinate rectangle divided into three 320-unit bands. Its complete arms are centered on white and retained without independent resizing of their parts. The delivered SVG enlarges this reference uniformly to 2880 by 1800. It is an educational drawing, not a ministry-certified manufacturing model.

Finished sizes such as 80 by 50, 160 by 100, or 240 by 150 centimeters all preserve Guatemala’s 8:5 width:height ratio. These are calculated examples, not an official stock-size schedule. Use uniform scaling for the entire design, and plan sleeves, hems, reinforcement, and shrinkage separately from the visible rectangle.

Guatemala’s historical flags included horizontal arrangements and designs containing red and yellow before the present vertical blue-white-blue flag originated in 1871. This page illustrates a state reconstruction from 1851–1858 and a plain pattern from 1858–1871. Their periods and different emblem status are labeled so they are not mistaken for current alternatives.

The present blue-white-blue flag dates to August 17, 1871, under Miguel García Granados. The coat of arms followed through Decree 33 on November 18, 1871. Those dates should be distinguished from the detailed 1968 regulation and the later flag-and-arms law, Decree 104-97, published in 1997.

Decree 104-97 is Guatemala’s law regulating the national flag and coat of arms. Congress issued it on October 28, 1997, and the official gazette published it on November 26. Article 19 provides for entry into force thirty days after publication. It regulates design, symbolism, display, manufacture, and Flag Day.

Guatemala’s Culture Ministry credits the Swiss designer Juan Bautista Frener with the coat of arms adopted in November 1871. That attribution concerns the emblem. It should not be expanded into an unsupported claim that he personally designed every element of the national flag or authored the later legal standards.

Yes. Article 16 assigns the Ministry of Culture and Sports responsibility for authorizing people and entities that manufacture, distribute, or sell national flags. It also requires a single official model supplied with the authorization. Downloading educational artwork does not provide that authorization or establish that a commercial product meets the ministry’s model.

Article 8 requires daily display at buildings occupied by state offices, autonomous and decentralized institutions, and the national education system. Other individuals and legal entities may display it voluntarily in the same manner. Article 11 separately addresses consulates, embassies, and official events abroad, requiring the coat of arms in those settings.

Article 12 requires the national flag to be raised and lowered slowly and ceremoniously, with those present saluting during the action. It also prohibits hoisting flags whose original colors have faded or whose condition is evidently poor. The reviewed law does not prescribe a universal clock time for every raising or lowering.

In the usual front-facing image, the quetzal faces the viewer’s left, the heraldic dexter direction named in Article 6. Seen through a single layer of cloth from behind, the whole design reverses, including the lettering. That physical reverse view does not establish a separate official standard for double-sided manufacture.

Article 14 places the Guatemalan flag first in the raising order on separate staffs and at the top when flags share a pole. It also specifies greater dimensions, a right-hand position with one other flag, and the center with several. The text does not define the observer’s viewpoint for right.

Article 13 provides that, in a parade with two flags, the national flag goes at the head on the right. With several flags, it leads and the others follow in a line. Apply that procession rule to an actual parade; it is not a substitute for the separate display rules in Article 14.

Guatemala celebrates Flag Day on August 17, commemorating the flag’s creation in 1871. Article 17 establishes the annual observance and directs public and private educational institutions to celebrate it, or the nearest appropriate day. Flag Day is distinct from September 15, the independence date recorded on the coat of arms.

Guatemala uses half-mast display during government-declared mourning periods. A documented example is Agreement 75-2025, following Pope Francis’s death, which ordered flags lowered at the National Palace and government buildings for three days from April 21, 2025. This is a historical example, not a continuing instruction or an annual observance.

The reviewed 2025 government news report gives the mourning period and affected buildings but does not specify a measured fraction of the mast. The accompanying illustration therefore shows a conceptual lowered position. A particular institution’s instructions should govern the actual installation; the diagram does not invent a national numerical standard.

Article 12 forbids hoisting national flags with faded original colors or evidently poor condition. It directs that flags withdrawn from circulation be incinerated with the corresponding honors, leaving disposal of the ashes to the relevant institution. For historically valuable flags, also consider the separate preservation exceptions expressly recognized in Article 9.

No. Copyright status concerns permission to reuse the particular artwork. Guatemala’s national-symbol rules remain a separate issue, including Article 16’s authorization system for making, distributing, and selling national flags. The supplied files identify their reuse status, but they are not a commercial license, a ministry approval, or a government endorsement.

Article 7 of the 1997 law states that the coat of arms, when separate from the flag, always has a white background. An older 1968 regulation described a light-blue field. The dated difference matters: the older wording should not be copied into an explanation of the later statutory requirement.

The 1968 regulation described a plain merchant flag without arms. This article includes that pattern as historical context. The later law describes the arms on the national flag and expressly requires them in consular, embassy, and official overseas settings. Do not present the historical plain download as a certified current official replacement.

Guatemala’s blue-white-blue bands run vertically, and its central emblem prominently includes a quetzal and parchment. Honduras, El Salvador, and Argentina use horizontal bands. Honduras has five stars, El Salvador has a different coat of arms, and Argentina has a sun. Check orientation and emblem before relying on blue color alone.

Guatemala’s flag emoji is 🇬🇹, corresponding to the country code GT. The sequence combines regional indicator G, U+1F1EC, with regional indicator T, U+1F1F9. Its appearance varies by device and application. Use the supplied SVG or PNG when you need consistent proportions, a complete emblem, and reproducible digital artwork.

The photograph shows national flags at the Los Angeles Declaration Anniversary Ministerial in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2023. Guatemala’s blue-white-blue flag with its arms appears in the lineup. The State Department credits James Pan. The photograph documents a diplomatic setting; draped cloth and lighting make it unsuitable as a construction standard.

Bernard Gagnon photographed the resplendent quetzal in Los Quetzales National Park, Costa Rica, on February 5, 2023. The image provides wildlife context for the bird in Guatemala’s national arms. Its location is stated accurately: the fact that a bird symbolizes Guatemala does not make every photograph of that species a Guatemalan scene.

Keep the bands vertical and equal, use the 8:5 rectangle, and retain the full coat of arms on white. Do not remove the weapons, shorten the quetzal’s tail, reverse only the bird, replace the parchment lettering, or stretch the emblem. Distinguish the 1821 inscription from the flag’s 1871 origin.

The package includes the national SVG and large PNG, complete arms detail, construction and size guides, a front-and-reverse illustration, historical reconstructions, a date comparison, a mourning diagram, and a comparison with related flags. Two photographs provide diplomatic and wildlife context. Every gallery download is served from the local Guatemala article directory.