Flag of Bolivia
national flag of the Plurinational State of Bolivia

The original national flag of the Plurinational State of Bolivia was created in 1851. The state and war flag is a horizontal tricolor of red, yellow and green with the Bolivian coat of arms in the center, whereas the civil flag is just the three colors without the coat of arms.
According to the revised Constitution of Bolivia of 2009, the Wiphala is considered to be a national symbol of Bolivia (along with the tricolor flag, national anthem, coat of arms, the cockade; and the kantuta and patujú flowers).
Despite its landlocked status, Bolivia has a naval ensign that is used by navy vessels on rivers and lakes. It consists of a blue field with the state flag in the canton bordered by nine small yellow five-pointed stars, with a larger yellow five-pointed star in the fly. The nine small stars represent the nine departments of Bolivia, and the larger star the nation's right to sea access (lost in 1884 during the War of the Pacific).
Design and dimensions
The national flag of Bolivia is a horizontal tricolor of three equal bands: red at the top, yellow in the middle, and green at the bottom.
The flag's proportions went undefined from its 1851 adoption until Supreme Decree No. 27630 (2004) set them at 7.5 by 11 squares, a ratio of 15:22.
Color and symbolism
An 1888 Supreme Decree, under President Gregorio Pacheco, first described the colors:
The exact colors of the Bolivian flag were established by the Supreme Decree of 2004, and they are:
Also, the Wiphala has been included into the national colors of the Bolivian Air Force such as on the executive Dassault Falcon 900EX. The Wiphala is also officially flown on governmental buildings such as the Palacio Quemado and parliament alongside the tricolor since the introduction of the revised 2009 constitution.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Flag of Bolivia” is national flag of the Plurinational State of Bolivia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Flag, Bolivia and national, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q134874. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1851, 2009, 1884 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flag of Bolivia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.