Flags of South America

South America has only twelve sovereign states, and yet its flags are dominated by one man's design choices more thoroughly than almost any other continent's: Francisco de Miranda, the Venezuelan revolutionary who in 1806 raised a yellow-blue-red horizontal tricolor as the flag of an independence movement that didn't yet have a country to represent. That flag became the base design for Gran Colombia, the short-lived republic (1819-1831) that briefly united what are today Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama, and its colors are still recognizable in the flags of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador today — three modern countries wearing variations of one revolutionary's 1806 palette.

The differences between those three flags are where the real story is, because a merged retelling would flatten them into interchangeable. Venezuela's keeps the plain horizontal yellow-blue-red bands, plus an arc of stars that has been recounted several times as new states joined or territorial claims changed — most recently in 2006, when an eighth star was added for a province that had been left out of the original count in 1817. Colombia's widens the yellow band to fill half the flag's height rather than a third, a change traced to Francisco de Paula Santander's 1834 decree and meant to represent the country's greater land area relative to sea. Ecuador's is the most different of the three in practice: it carries a full, elaborate coat of arms — a condor above Mount Chimborazo, with a riverboat below — that neither Venezuela's nor Colombia's flag carries at all.

A second, separate lineage runs through the Río de la Plata region. Argentina and Uruguay share a pale blue-and-white palette tracing to the united insignia of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata during the early 19th-century wars of independence, and both carry the Sol de Mayo, the 'Sun of May,' a golden sun-face commemorating the May 1810 revolution that began Argentina's break from Spanish rule. Uruguay's flag adds horizontal stripes recalling the United States' flag, a format its independence-era leaders explicitly admired, while Argentina's keeps the plain three-band field the sun sits on.

Brazil is the continent's clearest outlier from both of those lineages. Its green-and-yellow palette comes not from any revolutionary tricolor tradition but from the royal House of Braganza (green) and House of Habsburg (yellow), the families of Brazil's first emperor and empress at the country's 1822 declaration of independence from Portugal — making Brazil's colors dynastic in origin even though the country itself has been a republic since 1889. Its blue celestial globe, added when the monarchy fell, depicts the actual night sky over Rio de Janeiro at the exact moment the republic was proclaimed, and its motto 'Ordem e Progresso' ('Order and Progress') is a direct quotation of the 19th-century French philosopher Auguste Comte's positivist slogan, making it one of the only national flags in the world to quote a specific philosophical movement by name.

Bolivia and Paraguay sit slightly apart from both main lineages while still nodding to them: Bolivia's red-yellow-green resembles no single ancestor flag but is often read as a later echo of the broader independence-era palette common across the former Spanish colonies, while Paraguay holds a genuinely unique distinction — it is the only country in the world whose national flag has a different design printed on each side, the obverse carrying the state coat of arms and the reverse carrying the treasury seal.

One more thread runs beneath all of the official flags above without being an official state flag itself: the Wiphala, a square checkerboard flag of many colors associated with Andean indigenous peoples, is flown alongside the national flag in Bolivia (where it has held co-official status since 2009), and informally in parts of Peru and Ecuador, as a marker of indigenous identity that predates and sits outside the Spanish-colonial-derived tricolor tradition entirely.

The Gran Colombia tricolor: Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador

All three trace to Francisco de Miranda's 1806 yellow-blue-red flag and the short-lived Republic of Gran Colombia (1819-1831) that briefly united them. But each has diverged in a genuinely different direction since: Venezuela kept plain bands and periodically recounts its arc of stars (most recently adding an eighth in 2006); Colombia widened its yellow band to half the flag's height by an 1834 decree; Ecuador added a full coat of arms — condor, Chimborazo, riverboat — that neither of the other two carries at all.

The Río de la Plata sun: Argentina and Uruguay

Both carry the Sol de Mayo, the golden sun-face commemorating Argentina's May 1810 revolution, on a shared pale-blue-and-white palette dating to the wars of independence from Spain. Uruguay adds horizontal stripes recalling the United States flag, a format its independence leaders admired directly; Argentina keeps the plain three-band field.

Brazil's dynastic, not revolutionary, colors

The flag's 27 stars are not fixed decoration — each one is tied to a specific state or the Federal District and the arrangement has been redrawn as the federation grew, most recently in 1992 when Tocantins' star was added after that state split from Goiás four years earlier. Unlike the Gran Colombia trio's shared ancestry, Brazil's design has no sibling anywhere else on the continent: no other South American flag carries a celestial map, and none quotes a European philosopher's slogan the way 'Ordem e Progresso' does.

Guyana and Suriname: outside the Iberian tricolor tradition entirely

Because they were colonized by Britain and the Netherlands rather than Spain or Portugal, Guyana and Suriname share none of the Miranda, Río de la Plata, or Braganza lineages that shape every other flag on the continent. Guyana's flag, the 'Golden Arrowhead,' was designed by the American vexillologist Whitney Smith and adopted on independence from Britain in 1966; its green field, red triangle and gold arrowhead read as forest, the drive for development, and mineral wealth respectively, with a black-and-white fimbriation separating the colors that Smith included specifically so the design would still register clearly if reproduced only in outline.

Suriname's flag dates to its 1975 independence from the Netherlands and came out of a national design competition rather than a single author's proposal: green-white-red-white-green horizontal bands carry a large yellow star at the center, chosen to represent unity across a population with Indigenous, African, Javanese, Hindustani, Chinese and European ancestry rather than any single ethnic or religious tradition, which makes it one of the few flags in the region built around demographic unity as an explicit design brief rather than an independence movement's revolutionary colors.

Recurring colors & symbols

Yellow-blue-red (the Miranda/Gran Colombia palette) — Traces to Francisco de Miranda's 1806 independence flag; Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador each rearranged the same three colors differently after Gran Colombia dissolved in 1831.
The Sol de Mayo (Sun of May) — Argentina's rendering carries 32 alternating rays and a human face drawn from the Inca sun god Inti; Uruguay copied the emblem wholesale onto its own flag in 1828 without altering the design.
Green and yellow (House of Braganza-Habsburg) — Unique to Brazil; dynastic in origin from its 1822 imperial founding, kept unchanged even after the monarchy fell in 1889.
Condors — Ecuador's, Chile's and Colombia's coats of arms all feature a condor, the largest flying bird in South America, as a symbol of independence and power over the Andes.
The Wiphala — A square, multi-colored checkerboard flag of Andean indigenous origin, co-official alongside the national flag in Bolivia since 2009 and flown informally in Peru and Ecuador.

South America at a glance

Countries covered: 12
Most-shared flag lineage: Francisco de Miranda's 1806 tricolor, split three ways across Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador
Only flag in the world with a different design on each side: Paraguay's — coat of arms on the front, treasury seal on the back
Most recent change to any flag in the region: Venezuela added an eighth star in 2006
Only flag quoting a named philosophical movement: Brazil's, whose motto quotes Auguste Comte's positivist slogan 'Ordem e Progresso'
Facts current as of: 2026-07-21 — see /methodology/ for sourcing

Countries (12)

Argentina — Carries the Sol de Mayo, commemorating the May 1810 revolution against Spanish rule, on the same pale blue-and-white palette shared with Uruguay.
Bolivia — Flies its red-yellow-green tricolor alongside the Wiphala, the Andean indigenous checkerboard flag, which has held co-official status since 2009.
Brazil — Has had its star field redrawn repeatedly since 1889 to keep the flag matching the country's actual states, most recently in 1992 to add Tocantins.
Chile — A single white star on blue beside red-and-white bands closely resembles the Texas state flag, a resemblance often noted but historically unconnected.
Colombia — Flies a war ensign version with the national coat of arms centered on the yellow band, a variant reserved for military and diplomatic use that the plain civil flag never carries.
Ecuador — Names Chimborazo on its coat of arms because 19th-century geographers, measuring from the Earth's equatorial bulge, briefly considered its summit the point farthest from Earth's center.
Guyana — The only South American flag with no Spanish or Portuguese colonial-tricolor heritage at all, reflecting its history as British then Dutch Guiana.
Paraguay — The only national flag in the world printed with a different design on each side — a coat of arms on the front, the treasury seal on the back.
Peru — Red-white-red bands are said, by national tradition, to have been chosen after independence leader José de San Martín saw red-and-white flamingos flying overhead.
Suriname — A large yellow star at center sits on green-white-red-white-green bands, colors chosen in 1975 to represent unity across the country's diverse ethnic population.
Uruguay — Counts nine stripes, five white and four blue, one for each of the country's original nine departments at the time the flag was fixed in 1830.
Venezuela — Recounted its arc of stars as recently as 2006, adding an eighth for a province left out of the original 1817 count.

Try it yourself

Flags of the Americas Quiz — Spans North and South America, including the three Gran Colombia successors that trip up most people on color order alone.
Flags with Suns and Stars — Line up the Sol de Mayo, Venezuela's arc, and Chile's single star against the rest of the world's star-bearing flags.
World Capitals — Brazil's Brasília and Bolivia's La Paz/Sucre split are both worth reading alongside the flag stories above.