Panama Flag: Meaning, History, Colors & Pictures

Panama’s flag has four equal quarters: white with a blue star at the upper hoist, red at the upper fly, blue at the lower hoist, and white with a red star at the lower fly. Its height:length ratio is 2:3. The design originated in 1903 and received definitive adoption in 1925.

Panama’s national flag is a rectangle divided into four equal quarters. With the hoist on the left, the upper-left quarter is white with a blue five-pointed star, the upper-right is red, the lower-left is blue, and the lower-right is white with a red five-pointed star. Both stars point upward.

The flag uses blue, red, and white. Panama’s official 2017 manual gives blue as RGB 7, 35, 87, or #072357; red as RGB 218, 18, 26, or #DA121A; and white as RGB 255, 255, 255, or #FFFFFF. These published digital values are used consistently in the supplied artwork.

The official manual lists blue as Pantone 295 C on coated stock and 296 U on uncoated stock. It lists red as Pantone 187 C and 186 U respectively. White is pure white. These references accompany the manual’s separate RGB, hexadecimal, and CMYK entries; they are not interchangeable conversion formulas.

The flag brings together political reconciliation and civic ideals. Blue recalls the Conservative Party and red the Liberal Party, while white represents peace for the new nation. The blue star represents purity and honesty in civic life; the red star represents the authority and law that uphold those virtues.

Red and blue recall the Liberal and Conservative parties respectively. Their presence in one national design expresses a shared political setting rather than the exclusive identity of either party. White supplies the message of peace, while the two stars add the distinct ideals of honesty, purity, authority, and law.

White represents the peace in which the new nation was to live. It appears in two diagonally opposed quarters, each containing a colored star. Before the stars are added, the white quarter backgrounds occupy half the flag’s area; the visible white area is slightly smaller once both stars are included.

The blue star represents purity and honesty that should guide civic life. The red star represents the authority and law that uphold those virtues. Each star has five points and sits in a white quarter. The two stars are not an official count of provinces, oceans, continents, or political districts.

The standard horizontal reference has a height:length ratio of 2:3, equivalent to one unit high by one and a half units long. A flag 160 units high is therefore 240 units long. The supplied SVG uses a 2,400 × 1,600 coordinate system, preserving this proportion exactly.

A vertical division at half the length and a horizontal division at half the height produce four equal quarters. Each quarter is L/2 wide and H/2 high, where L and H describe the whole flag. On the 2,400 × 1,600 master, every quarter measures 1,200 × 800 units.

The blue star is centered in the upper hoist white quarter, and the red star is centered in the lower fly white quarter. On the master, their radial centers are (600, 400) and (1,800, 1,200). These equal (L/4, H/4) and (3L/4, 3H/4) measured from the upper-left corner.

Each star has a visible top-to-bottom height of one-quarter of the complete flag’s height, equivalent to one-sixth of its length. The official manual illustrates this dimension beside the red star. On a 2,400 × 1,600 master, each upright star is therefore 400 units high, measured between its extreme points.

The supplied artwork uses regular pentagram geometry: five equally spaced outer points alternate with five inner corners. One outer point faces upward. The inner radius is approximately 0.381966 times the outer radius. This precise geometric method is a documented reconstruction convention; the legal text itself does not prescribe that trigonometric formula.

Begin with a 2:3 rectangle and divide it into four equal quarters. Keep the upper hoist and lower fly quarters white; fill the upper fly red and lower hoist blue. Add a centered blue star in the upper white quarter and a centered red star in the lower white quarter, each upright and H/4 high.

Any uniformly scaled 3:2 width:height canvas preserves the standard design. Examples include 600 × 400, 1,200 × 800, and 2,400 × 1,600. The corresponding star heights are 100, 200, and 400 units. The supplied plain PNG is 4,800 × 3,200 pixels, with stars 800 pixels high before raster edge smoothing.

The fixed, correctly colored horizontal flag is not unchanged by a horizontal reflection, vertical reflection, or half-turn. Its quarters and stars occupy specific positions. Each individual upright regular star has a vertical line of symmetry, and the equal quarters balance the layout, but these local properties do not make the whole flag symmetrical.

Viewed through the opposite side of the same ordinary flag, the design appears horizontally mirrored and the hoist appears on the right. The blue star is then in the upper-right white quarter, while the red star is in the lower-left white quarter. Both stars remain upward-pointing in this horizontal reverse view.

The official manual’s vertical model keeps the white quarter with the blue star at the viewer’s upper left. Blue occupies the upper right, red the lower left, and white with the red star the lower right. Both stars point left in this portrait model, so simply rotating the usual front view clockwise is incorrect.

The manual includes a heraldic hatching model for monochrome reproduction. Horizontal lines identify blue, vertical lines identify red, and white remains unhatched. The same distinction applies to the stars as to the solid quarters. This is an explanatory black-and-white representation, separate from the ordinary blue, red, and white flag.

The flag originated during Panama’s separation from Colombia in November 1903. Manuel Encarnación Amador designed it, and María Ossa de Amador helped make the first flags. A revised arrangement established the familiar canton of honor. Provisional legal adoption followed in 1904, definitive adoption in 1925, and later legislation regulated the national symbols.

The government’s historical account credits Manuel Encarnación Amador, also identified in the flag law as Manuel E. Amador T. He developed the design on November 1, 1903. He should not be confused with his father, Manuel Amador Guerrero, Panama’s first president, or with María Ossa de Amador, associated with sewing the first flags.

The Ministry of Government’s biography credits María Ossa de Amador and Angélica B. de Ossa with sewing the first flags during the night of November 2, 1903. It describes their presentation on November 3 and public procession on November 4. This making of the first cloths is distinct from Manuel Encarnación Amador’s design work.

Law 64 of June 4, 1904 adopted the flag provisionally. Law 48 of March 10, 1925 provided definitive adoption, and its Gazette publication followed on March 25, 1925. The design’s November 1903 origin is earlier than both laws. These dates should be labeled by event rather than treated as interchangeable adoption dates.

Yes. The official CONASINA presentation shows an initial arrangement with blue at the upper hoist, white with a red star at the upper fly, white with a blue star at the lower hoist, and red at the lower fly. It says the designer revised the arrangement before the end of November 1903.

Law 34 of December 15, 1949 established a broader legal framework for Panama’s national symbols, including the flag, anthem, and coat of arms. Law 2 of January 23, 2012 amended that framework. The consolidated text describes the flag’s quarters, star placement, proportions, star size, and symbolism alongside provisions governing national-symbol use.

Executive Decree 337 of December 22, 2017 approved a manual on the procedure, design, and use of Panama’s national symbols. Its illustrated annex supplies color references, construction guides, a monochrome model, and orientation examples. The manual clarifies reproduction of the established flag; it does not represent adoption of a new national design.

November 4 is celebrated as the Day of the National Symbols, or Día de los Símbolos de la Nación. The observance honors the flag, anthem, and coat of arms. Older references often call it Flag Day, but the current official name makes clear that the celebration encompasses all three national symbols.

The ordinary national flag does not contain the coat of arms. Its complete design consists of four quarters and two colored stars on white. The coat of arms is a separate national symbol with its own statutory description. Adding it to the plain flag would produce a different image from the standard reference shown here.

Fit the complete 3:2 width:height rectangle inside the square, leaving space above and below. This preserves every quarter and both stars without stretching or cropping the national design. The gallery demonstrates a complete reference within a square container; the container is an interface frame, not a new square version of Panama’s flag.

Common errors include swapping the quarters, reversing the star colors, enlarging the stars, confusing star height with circumcircle diameter, and rotating the horizontal front view incorrectly for vertical display. Historical captions also need care: 1903 marks the origin, 1904 provisional adoption, and Law 48 of 1925 definitive adoption, with Gazette publication separately dated.