Belgium Flag

Located in Western Europe, Belgium, or the Kingdom of Belgium has approximately forty miles of North Sea coastline. Their total land area is just under twelve thousand square miles and population just over ten million people. The capital and largest city in Belgium is Antwerp and their official languages are Dutch, French, and German.

According to the history of Belgium flag information available, Belgium adopted their first civil and state Belgium flag on January 23, 1831 and their first coat of arms on May 17, 1837. This flag of Belgium was tricolor with equal vertical stripes of black, yellow, red, and used as both the state and civil flags of Belgium. According to historical records, Mrs. Marie Abts sewed the first flag of Belgium on August 26, 1830.

From images of the Belgium flag and the Belgium flag information available today, the tricolor Belgium flags stripes went from horizontal to vertical over time. During the Brabantine Revolution in 1789, the Belgium flag had three horizontal stripes with images of Belgium flag showing red, yellow, and black horizontal stripes. Today’s Belgium flag is a tricolor flag with three vertical bands of color in equal size. The first band is black and closest to the flagpole or hoist side. The middle band on the Belgium flag is yellow while the last band is red. Many believe that they based the vertical design on the flag of Belgium after the vertical, tricolor design on the national flag of France and the Belgium flags colors after the duchy of Brabant. Belgium established a civil guard during the Belgian revolution against Dutch supremacy and during the riots, wore Brabant colors.

In 1830, Belgium gained their freedom from the Netherlands and on January 23, 1831 adopted their new Belgium flag. During the revolt, the flag of Belgium played a significant role, as the colors on this flag reminded people of the Austrian Netherlands 1789 revolt and the horizontal bands on the older flag. They changed the horizontal bars to vertical bars on the new Belgium flag to look more like Netherlands flag.

Other Belgium flags include the government flag, with black, yellow, and red vertical bars and a coat of arms crowned lion centered on the yellow stripe. The military flag of the Belgian arms has a white field with army’s crowned badge while the Belgian Navy ensign is a striped X of black, yellow and red and the naval badge.