Country
The black, yellow and red of the Belgian flag are the colours of the arms of the old Duchy of Brabant, a golden lion on black. The flag was first raised as a horizontal tricolour in Brussels on 26 August 1830 (27 August according to English Wikipedia) and took its vertical form in 1831. The lion of Brabant became the arms of the kingdom, fixed in detail by a royal decree of 17 March 1837, while the King’s own arms changed several times.
Flag
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Coat of Arms
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| Flag | Vertical tricolour of black, yellow and red |
|---|---|
| Adopted | 30 September 1830, horizontal (French Wikipedia; English and Dutch Wikipedia call the 1830 flag unofficial); 1831, vertical; black at the hoist since 12 October 1831 |
| Proportions | 13:15 officially; 2:3 common for civil use |
| Arms | Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules: the lion of Brabant |
| Arms fixed | Royal decree of 17 March 1837 |
| Motto | L’union fait la force – Eendracht maakt macht – Einigkeit macht stark (‘Unity makes strength’; French Wikipedia gives Einheit macht stark) |
The Kingdom of Belgium has existed only since 1830. Before it, the Burgundian and then Spanish Netherlands, which covered a large part of its territory, had the cross of Burgundy as their flag, and according to French Wikipedia the Austrian Netherlands had a flag with a black double-headed eagle on a cross of Burgundy, on a ground of red over white over yellow; English Wikipedia says several flags were tried under Austrian rule before the emperor imposed the Austrian flag. The black, yellow and red came later, from the arms of the Duchy of Brabant. These are the stages of the flag, from the Brabant Revolution to 1831.
Click the thumbnails to go through the flags.
1789
A horizontal tricolour of red, black and yellow.
During the Brabant Revolution, the revolt against Austrian rule in the Southern Netherlands led mainly by the Duchy of Brabant, the United Belgian States already used a tricolour in the colours of Brabant. French Wikipedia dates the revolution to 1787, Dutch Wikipedia to 1789–1790. Dutch Wikipedia describes the flag as a horizontal tricolour of red, black and yellow. Its stripes were horizontal and the order of the colours was not that of today’s flag. Doubts remain: French Wikipedia notes that the flags used during those events bore coats of arms, religious or allegorical figures, and that not a single black, yellow and red striped flag is mentioned in the inventories of the emblems taken by the Austrians when they reconquered the United Belgian States. Wikimedia Commons describes the image as a flag shown on drawings of the 1789 uprising.
1830
A horizontal tricolour of red, yellow and black.
In August 1830 the French tricolour was flown in many places in the Belgian provinces, and one hung from the balcony of Brussels town hall on 26 August (27 August according to English Wikipedia). To replace it, the lawyer Lucien Jottrand, editor of the Courrier des Pays-Bas, and the journalist Édouard Ducpétiaux took their inspiration from the red, yellow and black cockades, the colours of the old Duchy of Brabant, which were being handed out in place of the orange cockade of the Dutch monarchy. They placed the colours horizontally, red at the top, yellow in the middle and black at the bottom. In a haberdashery at the corner of the rue de la Colline and the rue du Marché aux Herbes, Marie Abts sewed two copies, and Ducpétiaux put the first one up at the town hall in place of the French flag. Jottrand later wrote that by the evening “tout Bruxelles avait adopté les anciennes couleurs brabançonnes”. The writer Auguste De Wargny, a contemporary of the events, instead describes two young men tying a red, yellow and black flag to the lamp above the town-hall door at about three in the afternoon. The orange standard of the Dutch monarchy remained the official emblem until the provisional government was formed on 25 September 1830. According to French Wikipedia, on 30 September the provisional government officially adopted the national flag in this horizontal form; English and Dutch Wikipedia call the 1830 flag unofficial and date its official adoption to January 1831.
1831
A vertical tricolour of black, yellow and red.
According to French Wikipedia, a decree of the provisional government of 23 January 1831 set the colours vertically, with red at the hoist. English and Dutch Wikipedia instead say that on that day the National Congress wrote the tricolour into the Constitution without fixing the direction or the order of the stripes, and Dutch Wikipedia adds that horizontal and vertical versions were used side by side for some years. Some say the vertical arrangement came from confusion with the flag of the Netherlands in the battles of the Belgian-Dutch war, others that it echoed the French revolutionary flag, others still that it was meant to set the flag apart from that of the German Confederation. Article 193, originally 125, of the Constitution of 7 February 1831 reads: “La Nation belge adopte les couleurs rouge, jaune et noire, et pour armes du Royaume le Lion Belgique avec la légende : L’UNION FAIT LA FORCE”. On 12 October 1831 black was placed at the hoist, at the urging of the navy, which wanted the flag to match the naval ensign, already flown with black at the hoist under a ministerial instruction of 15 September 1831; Dutch Wikipedia instead explains it by the heraldic custom of placing the darkest colour nearest the pole. As the article of the Constitution was never amended, the flag does not follow the order of the colours it gives.
The arms of Belgium bear the lion of the Duchy of Brabant. According to Dutch Wikipedia, Henry I of Brabant bore a lion in his arms in the 12th century, and the first two sources on its colours, from the middle of the 13th century, both give a golden lion on black. The arms of the kingdom have kept that shield since independence, while the King’s own arms changed several times. These are the stages.
Click the thumbnails to go through the coats of arms.
1790
The lion of Brabant with a sword and a shield bearing the word Libertas.
The United Belgian States came into being after the Southern Netherlands threw off Austrian rule, and existed as an independent polity from January to December 1790. The Duchy of Brabant had led the insurrection against Emperor Joseph II and then dominated the new federation, so the lion of Brabant, sable a lion rampant Or armed and langued gules, came to stand for the whole. Their arms showed the lion of Brabant with a sword and a shield bearing the Latin word Libertas, and they used the Latin motto In Unione Salus. The kingdom founded in 1830 based its arms and its flag on the symbols of this short-lived state.
1837
Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules.
The Constitution of 1831 set the arms of the kingdom as the “lion belgique”, without further detail. Because Brabant had been the leading duchy of the Southern Netherlands in the late Middle Ages, its lion was raised to be the arms of Belgium; the ducal crown was replaced by a royal crown, and two lions as supporters and the motto L’union fait la force were added. A royal decree of Leopold I on the seals of the State, dated 17 March 1837, formally fixed the arms: the shield is supported by two lions guardant proper, each holding a lance with the national flag; it is surrounded by the grand collar of the Order of Leopold, topped by a crowned golden helm and laid on a hand of justice and a lion-topped sceptre in saltire; the whole is set on a mantle of gules lined with ermine under the royal crown, with the banners of the nine provinces of 1837 above it. The image is a modern drawing of these greater arms.
1865
The arms of the kingdom with an escutcheon of the House of Wettin.
The first King of the Belgians, Leopold I, took over the arms of the Belgian state as a whole and added only an escutcheon that he bore as a prince of the United Kingdom: the arms of the United Kingdom in the first and fourth quarters, and in the second and third those of the House of Wettin, to which he belonged as a prince of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After his death in 1865 his son Leopold II kept his father’s arms, but made the arms of the House of Wettin the whole escutcheon, a reference to the Saxon origins of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Wikimedia Commons describes this drawing as the arms of the King of the Belgians before 1921; English Wikipedia captions it 1865 to 1902.
1921
Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules, without the escutcheon.
According to Dutch Wikipedia, the arms were kept until 1921, when King Albert I changed them after the First World War: the escutcheon was removed, as the German titles borne by the Belgian kings had disappeared with Germany’s defeat, and, Dutch Wikipedia adds, it was also better for the Belgian kings to distance themselves from their German origins after the atrocities committed by the Germans in Belgium. From then on the Kings of the Belgians bore the same arms as Belgium. English Wikipedia says the arms of Saxony were removed during the First World War. Wikimedia Commons describes these as the arms used from 1921 until 2019; English Wikipedia captions them 1902 to 2019.
2019
Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules, charged on the shoulder with an escutcheon of the House of Wettin.
A royal decree of King Philippe, signed on 12 July 2019 and published in the Moniteur belge on 19 July 2019 (English Wikipedia gives 19 July for both), reinstated the Saxon escutcheon in all the royal versions of the family’s arms, shortly after the King and Queen Mathilde visited the ancestral Friedenstein Castle. The motto now appears in the three national languages, Dutch on the left, French in the centre and German on the right; English Wikipedia reports the King’s wish “to be the King of the whole Kingdom and of all Belgians”. The decree also sets differences for a King or Queen who has abdicated and for the princes and princesses of the royal house according to their rank.
Lesser arms of the Kingdom of Belgium, the state arms.
De sable au lion rampant d’or armé et lampassé de gueules.
Sable, a lion rampant Or, armed and langued Gules. The arms are used at several levels:
The Constitution gives the motto as L’union fait la force. Since the royal decree of 1837 never received an official translation, English Wikipedia says the use of the Dutch version is customary rather than official, although it also says that it was decided in 1958 that the official Dutch translation should read Eendracht maakt macht. Since 2019 the King’s arms carry the motto in Dutch, French and German.
The communities and regions have their own emblems. The Flemish Community received its arms, the lion of Flanders, on 13 April 1988. The Walloon Region and the French Community share a red coq hardi on yellow, adopted by the French Community on 20 July 1975 and by the Walloon Region on 23 July 1998. The German-speaking Community made its new emblem official on 1 October 1990, and the iris has been the emblem of the Brussels-Capital Region since 1991.
Each province of Belgium, and the Brussels-Capital Region, has its own page in the atlas.
They are the colours of the arms of the old Duchy of Brabant: a golden lion on black, armed and langued red. The story that black stands for coal, yellow for wheat and red for the blood of the revolutionaries is, according to French Wikipedia, an urban legend.
On 12 October 1831 black was placed at the hoist at the urging of the navy, to match the naval ensign, according to French Wikipedia; Dutch Wikipedia explains it by the heraldic custom of placing the darkest colour nearest the pole. The article of the Constitution, which names the colours as red, yellow and black, was never amended.
Officially it measures 2.60 m high by 3 m wide, a proportion of 13:15; for civil use a proportion of 2:3 is more common. French Wikipedia says the original dimensions follow the proportion of the old armorial banners, while Dutch Wikipedia calls their origin unknown.
Lucien Jottrand and Édouard Ducpétiaux devised it in Brussels on 26 August 1830 (27 August according to English Wikipedia), and Marie Abts sewed it in her husband’s haberdashery. It was a horizontal tricolour of red, yellow and black.
It is the lion of the Duchy of Brabant, known as the Leo Belgicus: a golden lion on black, armed and langued red. The Constitution calls it the “Lion Belgique”.
According to English Wikipedia it goes back to the Dutch Revolt, whose seal of 1578 bore Concordia res parvae crescunt; the United Belgian States used In Unione Salus, and the Kingdom of Belgium took it over in French in 1831. Dutch Wikipedia instead says the motto came from the Brabant Revolution. The official Dutch version, Eendracht maakt macht, was decided only in 1958.
Illustrations: Wikimedia Commons. Greater arms (Sodacan, with some elements by Katepanomegas), arms of the King before 1921 and from 1921 to 2019, and lesser arms by Sodacan (CC BY-SA 3.0); arms of the King since 2019 by Sodacan (CC BY-SA 4.0); arms of the United Belgian States by Samhanin (CC0); flags in the public domain.
Last reviewed by the Emblema Mundi editorial team on 22 October 2026.
