Vanuatu Flag: Meaning, History, Colors & Pictures

Vanuatu’s national flag has red above green, divided by a black-edged yellow Y. A yellow curled boar’s tusk surrounds two crossed namele leaves in the black hoist triangle. The design was adopted in February 1980. This page supplies a documented 3:5 reference drawing while explaining differences among published proportions.

It is usually called the national flag of Vanuatu; the country’s legislative register uses the term State Flag. It represents the Republic of Vanuatu. The design is identified by its yellow Y, black hoist triangle, red and green fields, and distinctive yellow boar’s tusk surrounding two crossed namele leaves.

The flag uses red, green, yellow and black. This package consistently uses #D21034, #009543, #FDCE12 and #000000. These are declared digital reproduction values, not a verified statutory HEX table. The colors appear in the fields, the black-edged yellow Y, and the yellow tusk-and-namele emblem at the hoist.

Vanuatu Tourism explanations associate red with blood, green with the islands’ richness, black with Melanesian identity, and yellow with light and Christianity or with peace and prosperity. The Y recalls the island chain. The curled tusk signifies prosperity, while the crossed namele leaves are described as symbols of peace.

The sideways yellow Y recalls the arrangement of Vanuatu’s island chain. Two diagonal branches extend toward the hoist, meet near the middle, and continue as a horizontal stem toward the fly. Black surrounds the yellow band and forms the triangle containing the emblem. The design is an abstraction, not a literal map.

It is a boar’s tusk, curled around two crossed namele leaves. Tourism accounts connect the tusk with prosperity. Museum research also explains the importance of curled pig tusks as valued ornaments and ceremonial possessions in parts of the Pacific. It is not a moon, a horn, or a plain decorative circle.

They are namele leaves, conventionally shown as a crossed pair. The Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust identifies namele in Vanuatu as the cycad Cycas seemannii. Although flag descriptions sometimes call them fern or palm leaves, cycad is the more precise botanical description. Their many narrow leaflets should not be mistaken for many separate fronds.

A widely repeated explanation connects thirty-nine divisions of the namele leaves with an earlier legislative assembly. Published drawings and descriptions are inconsistent about counting individual leaflets or pairs. This page does not treat that explanation as a verified legal construction requirement. Vanuatu’s Parliament describes its present institution as having fifty-two members.

Published references use more than one proportion, including 2:3, 3:5 and 19:36. This package uses a clearly labeled 3:5 height-to-length reference. The inspected material did not establish one binding numerical manufacturing ratio. A flag illustration in an official publication and a later measured construction sheet are different kinds of evidence.

The supplied drawing uses a 1,000-by-600 coordinate canvas. At the fly, the vertical sequence is 246 units red, 38 black, 32 yellow, 38 black and 246 green. Diagonal yellow branches join the horizontal stem around the black hoist triangle. These measurements document this reconstruction; they are not quoted statutory dimensions.

The yellow emblem belongs inside the black triangle at the hoist. The tusk surrounds the crossed namele leaves, and clear black space separates it from the Y. It is not centered on the whole rectangular flag. The supplied enlargement shows the same original emblem contours used in the clean master.

The UN Office at Vienna’s flag reference gives February 18, 1980 as the adoption date. That precedes Vanuatu’s independence on July 30, 1980. A later source trail reports a public declaration dated March 19, 1980, but the original declaration was not retrievable during this research, so that date is explicitly attributed.

Vanuatu’s Ministry of Justice and Community Services credits Kalontas Malon as the flag’s designer in a May 2025 memorial report. This page follows the Ministry’s spelling. The government attribution concerns the national design; it does not identify the author of every later vector file, commercial flag, or educational reconstruction.

The modern flag belongs to Vanuatu’s transition from the New Hebrides to an independent republic in 1980. The islands had been jointly administered by Britain and France under the condominium established in 1906. The national design brought indigenous cultural symbols and the island-chain Y into the representation of the new state.

No. The flag adoption reference gives February 18, 1980, while Vanuatu became independent on July 30, 1980. July 30 is the independence anniversary associated with major national ceremonies. The Ministry of Internal Affairs’ 2025 programme specifically includes the national flag, its raising, and the national anthem within the celebrations.

The Y symbolizes the broad arrangement of the archipelago, not an exact inventory or map of its islands. No individual island is labeled on the flag. A geography lesson can connect the symbol with Vanuatu’s Pacific setting, but should use a proper map for locations, coastlines, distances, provinces or disputed territorial claims.

The relevant framework is the State Flag and Armorial Bearings Act, Chapter 107. The government Trade Portal lists the Act, and the inspected Official Gazette contains its Forms and Fees Order No. 102 of 2020. The original Act and public-declaration texts linked through PacLII were unavailable, limiting what could be independently verified.

National-symbol controls must be considered before producing or selling merchandise. The Trade Portal lists goods bearing the flag, arms or presidential standard, and the 2020 Gazette provides permit forms and fees. In June 2026, VBTC reported the Ministry’s reminder about permits for items featuring these symbols and renewal of expired permits.

Use a complete, correctly oriented flag and follow the current instructions for the event. The inspected 2025 independence programme includes a blessing of the national flag, flag raising and the anthem. It does not establish a universal daily timetable, precedence diagram, or fixed half-mast measurement for every Vanuatu display.

In the conventional horizontal front view, red is above green, and the black triangle containing the yellow emblem is at the left-hand hoist. The yellow Y opens toward that hoist and runs horizontally to the fly. Turning the picture upside down reverses the color order and is different from viewing its reverse.

The ordinary view through the back of a single-layer flag is a left-right mirror of its front. The hoist appears on the right, while red remains above green. The tusk and crossed leaves mirror with the rest of the cloth. This physical viewing explanation is not a claim about a separately prescribed reverse design.

The graphic in this package demonstrates a clockwise quarter-turn of the complete front image: the hoist moves to the top, red moves right, and green moves left. It is labeled as a geometric example. The inspected sources did not establish a specific nationwide vertical-hanging rule for official Vanuatu displays.

The complete colored flag is not unchanged by a left-right reflection, a top-bottom reflection, or a half-turn. The hoist emblem, the red-over-green order and the asymmetric tusk matter. Some background outlines have geometric relationships, but those relationships should not be mistaken for symmetry of the entire national design.

No. The flag contains a yellow tusk and crossed namele leaves on black. The national coat of arms is a fuller composition that includes a warrior and the Bislama motto Long God Yumi Stanap. The shared motifs connect the symbols culturally, but the complete arms should not be inserted into the flag.

They are separate categories of symbols. Vanuatu’s regulatory material distinguishes the State Flag, presidential standard and armorial bearings. Provincial or institutional flags may use related colors or motifs, but that does not make them interchangeable with the national flag. Identify the office, territory or organization before choosing an illustration.

Both use a sideways Y, but their complete designs differ. Vanuatu has a yellow Y, a green lower field and the tusk-and-namele emblem. South Africa has a green Y, a blue lower field, white and gold edging, and no such emblem. South Africa’s Constitution specifies six colors, while Vanuatu’s design uses four.

The Vanuatu flag emoji is 🇻🇺. Unicode represents it with the regional-indicator pair U+1F1FB and U+1F1FA, corresponding to V and U. Its appearance depends on the device or platform. Some systems show a flag, while others show letters; the encoded sequence does not provide this page’s detailed vector artwork.

The clean PNG measures 10,000 by 6,000 pixels. At 300 pixels per inch, it corresponds to 33.33 by 20 inches, approximately 84.67 by 50.80 centimeters. The SVG can be scaled without a fixed pixel limit. Both files retain this edition’s declared 3:5 reference shape and complete emblem.

The gallery contains twenty-four subjects, each supplied as SVG and PNG, including the clean flag and twenty-three explanatory graphics. A separate 1,200-by-630 social card is also included in both formats. The illustrations cover color, symbolism, construction, history, orientation, comparisons and use, with captions and downloadable files for each subject.

Keep red above green, preserve the black-edged yellow Y, and place one curled tusk around two crossed namele fronds inside the hoist triangle. Avoid replacing the emblem with a moon or the full coat of arms. Preserve the chosen reference proportions, and distinguish documented design facts from unverified claims about dimensions.