Ukraine Flag: Meaning, History, Colors & Pictures

The State Flag of Ukraine is a plain rectangular bicolor with two equal horizontal bands: blue above yellow. Its official height:length ratio is 2:3. The current design was formally approved on January 28, 1992, drawing on a much older national color tradition. The ordinary flag has no trident or other emblem.

Its formal English name is the State Flag of Ukraine; “Ukrainian flag” and “Ukraine flag” refer to the same national design. In Ukrainian it is Державний Прапор України. The familiar blue-and-yellow description identifies its two colors, while the legal design specifies which color belongs above the other. Its flag emoji is 🇺🇦.

The colors are blue and yellow. This package uses blue #005BBB, or RGB 0, 91, 187, and yellow #FFD500, or RGB 255, 213, 0. These values follow the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory’s August 2026 recommendations. They are identified here as the chosen digital reproduction palette.

A familiar interpretation connects blue with the sky and yellow with ripe wheat fields. Ukrainian government explanations also associate the flag with peace, freedom, and national unity. This landscape reading helps explain its modern symbolism, while the blue-and-yellow color tradition has a longer history in heraldry and national movements.

Blue is the upper half of Ukraine’s flag and is commonly associated with the sky. Official public explanations connect the combined blue-and-yellow design with peace and freedom. The adopted flag uses a blue field of equal size to the yellow field, with a straight horizontal boundary between them.

Yellow forms the lower half and is commonly associated with ripe wheat fields. It also belongs to the older blue-and-gold heraldic tradition associated with Ukrainian lands. On the present state flag, yellow is a plain, continuous band, equal in height and area to the blue band above it.

The official proportion is height:length 2:3. A flag two units high is three units long, and each horizontal band is one unit high. The resolution adopted on January 28, 1992 states this ratio explicitly. The supplied master follows it at 9,000 pixels wide by 6,000 pixels high.

Blue goes on top and yellow goes below. Both horizontal bands are equal in height and extend across the full length. On a 900-by-600 construction drawing, blue occupies y = 0 to 300 and yellow occupies y = 300 to 600. Their boundary lies exactly halfway down.

Yes. Each color occupies exactly one half of the clean flag’s area. The flag has no emblem covering either band. In the 9,000-by-6,000 PNG, the total is 54 million pixels: 27 million blue and 27 million yellow. These totals describe the supplied flat image without a border or shadow.

Draw a landscape rectangle three units long and two units high. Divide it horizontally into two equal halves. Fill the upper half blue and the lower half yellow. Keep the dividing line straight and use solid colors. The standard national design requires no emblem, lettering, outline, or additional stripe.

Their history is older than the present state flag. Blue and gold appear in heraldry associated with Ukrainian lands, including the golden lion on a blue field. Blue-and-yellow flags became established symbols of the Ukrainian national movement during the revolutions of 1848, including a documented appearance at Lviv’s town hall.

Yes. Blue-and-yellow flags represented Ukrainian statehood during the revolution of 1917–1921. Early popular displays included variations in band order, but the documented government flag provisions examined by historians used blue above yellow. The story that Pavlo Skoropadskyi simply reversed an officially yellow-over-blue national flag is not supported by those records.

The national colors returned to public prominence during the movement for independence. A flag was raised at Kyiv’s city council on July 24, 1990. It entered parliament’s chamber on August 24, 1991 and flew over the parliamentary building on September 4. Formal state-flag approval followed on January 28, 1992.

The present State Flag of Ukraine was formally approved on January 28, 1992 by Verkhovna Rada resolution No. 2067-XII. It specifies blue above yellow, equal horizontal bands, and a 2:3 ratio. The national colors had already returned to public and official use before that formal design resolution.

The modern flag is rooted in an established national color tradition rather than a documented single designer’s new invention in 1992. The adoption resolution approves the national bicolor without naming an artistic author. It is more accurate to explain its historical development than to assign a designer without reliable evidence.

Ukraine celebrates the Day of the State Flag on August 23 each year. Presidential Decree No. 987/2004 established the national observance in 2004. It falls one day before Independence Day. The holiday celebrates the national symbol and its history; it is not the date of the 1992 flag-adoption resolution.

Flag Day is August 23; Independence Day is August 24. Independence Day commemorates the 1991 declaration of independence, while Flag Day honors the national flag through an observance established in 2004. The present design was formally approved on January 28, 1992. These three dates describe three different events.

The January 28, 1992 parliamentary resolution specifies the design and ratio. Article 20 of the Constitution identifies the State Flag among Ukraine’s national symbols, and Article 65 makes respect for state symbols a citizen’s duty. Criminal Code Article 338 addresses public desecration. Technical production requirements belong to a separate standard.

Yes. DSTU 4512:2006, State Flag of Ukraine — General Technical Specifications, addresses flags made from fabric and color reproduction in specified production processes. The 2026 Ukrainian Institute of National Memory guidance cites it for Pantone references. This digital package follows the legal geometry and the guidance’s RGB values, without claiming textile certification.

The standard State Flag of Ukraine has no trident or other emblem. The golden trident, called the Tryzub, belongs to the small State Coat of Arms and appears in other official designs. A blue-and-yellow banner carrying a trident is therefore an embellished version, not the plain national flag defined in the resolution.

In the documented vertical convention illustrated here, blue is on the viewer’s left and yellow on the right. This matches Ukrainian educational guidance and the International Judo Federation’s flag manual. Geometrically, it is the ordinary front-view flag rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise, with its proportions preserved and its entire surface visible.

For the plain national design, the reverse looks the same as the front: blue remains above yellow. Viewing the cloth from its opposite side reverses left and right, but full-width horizontal bands are unchanged by that reflection. This differs from flags that contain directional animals, lettering, or an asymmetric emblem.

The plain flag is symmetric about a vertical line through its center. Reflecting left and right leaves both bands unchanged. It is not symmetric about a horizontal centerline, because that exchanges blue and yellow. A half-turn also puts yellow above blue, so the design does not have 180-degree rotational symmetry.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory recommends a place of honor for the State Flag when displayed in Ukraine. Its guidance identifies the heraldic right, which appears on the viewer’s left, for a frontal arrangement. Official international events also require their applicable diplomatic or organizational protocol rather than an improvised hierarchy.

Keep the flag clean, recognizable, and in good condition, and prevent it from touching the ground or floor. Ukrainian institutional guidance calls for respectful treatment during ceremonies and discourages uses that demean the symbol. Keep decorations and unauthorized additions off the ceremonial flag, while placing explanatory captions outside the flag image.

The 2026 Ukrainian Institute of National Memory recommendations describe lowering or inclining the State Flag during mourning and using a black mourning ribbon. The blue-over-yellow order stays unchanged. The occasion, duration, and exact ceremonial arrangement should follow the responsible authority’s announcement; the illustration is a schematic explanation of the change in position.

A downloadable flag image does not grant official endorsement or resolve every legal use question. Ukrainian law protects state symbols against public desecration, and trademark rules separately restrict protection of designs depicting or imitating state flags. Educational reproduction, branding, ceremonial use, and conduct alleged to insult the symbol require different assessments.

The flag represents Ukraine and its people, and it is also used to express solidarity with their sovereignty and freedom. Its visibility increased during Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. The design itself was not created for that war: it carries an older national tradition and was formally approved decades earlier.

Sweden and Palau are two examples, but their arrangements are different. Sweden has a yellow Nordic cross on blue; Palau has a yellow disc on a pale blue field. Ukraine has two equal horizontal bands. Shared colors alone do not establish a shared design, historical origin, or symbolic meaning.

The clean flag is supplied as SVG and as an opaque 9,000-by-6,000-pixel PNG. At 300 pixels per inch, the PNG supports a 30-by-20-inch reference print without enlargement. Twenty-four gallery subjects have SVG and PNG versions, and a separate social-sharing card preserves the complete national flag beside its title.