The

national flag A national flag is a flag that represents and national symbol, symbolizes a given nation. It is Fly (flag), flown by the government of that nation, but can also be flown by its citizens. A national flag is typically designed with specific meanin ...

of the Republic of

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

is a

tricolour A triband is a vexillological style which consists of three stripes arranged to form a flag. These stripes may be two or three colours, and may be charged with an emblem in the middle stripe. Not all tribands are tricolour flags, which requires t ...

consisting of three equal-sized horizontal bands of (from top to bottom) white, green, and red. The flag was first adopted after the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War, when Bulgaria gained de facto independence. The

at times had as a supplement the state emblem, especially during the

communist era A communist era is a sustained period of national government by a single party following the philosophy of Marxism–Leninism. Many countries have experienced such a period of communist rule. Current communist states China The Chinese Communist ...

. The current flag was re-established with the 1991

Constitution of Bulgaria The Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria is the supreme and basic law of the Republic of Bulgaria. The current constitution was adopted on 12 July 1991 by the 7th Grand National Assembly of Bulgaria, and defines the country as a unitary par ...

and was confirmed in a 1998 law.

Historical flags

First Bulgarian Empire

In 866,

Pope Nicholas I Pope Nicholas I (; c. 800 – 13 November 867), called Nicholas the Great, was the bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 24 April 858 until his death on 13 November 867. He is the last of the three popes listed in the Annuario Pontif ...

advised Prince Boris who had recently Christianised his people to switch from the practice of using a horse tail as a banner to adopting the Holy Cross. Later illuminated versions of the chronicles of

John Skylitzes John Skylitzes, commonly Latinized as Ioannes Scylitzes (, ; , ; early 1040s – after 1101), was a Byzantine historian of the late 11th century. Life Very little is known about his life. The title of his work records him as a '' kouropalat ...

and Constantine Manasses depict the army of Khan Krum carrying flags either in monotone red, or red with a black border. The army of Simeon the Great is also depicted carrying red banners of varying shape. The

Radziwiłł Chronicle The ''Radziwiłł Chronicle'', also known as the ''Königsberg Chronicle'', is a collection of illuminated manuscripts from the 15th-century; it is believed to be a copy of a 13th-century original. Its name is derived from the Radziwiłł family ...

also depicts Tzar Simeon I's army under a red flag in the 921-922 campaign against Byzantium, but the depiction of the Hungarian invasion of 894 featured the Bulgarian fortress of

Drastar Silistra ( ; ; or ) is a town in Northeastern Bulgaria. The town lies on the southern bank of the lower Danube river, and is also the part of the Romanian border where it stops following the Danube. Silistra is the administrative center of the ...

under a white flag with a crescent and a six-pointed star. Any pictorial representations of flags in the manuscripts mentioned above, regardless of the faction or time depicted, conform strongly to the overall illustration style used in each manuscript. In addition, none of those manuscripts dates to the time of the First Bulgarian Empire. The historicity of those flags is thus impossible to verify.

Second Bulgarian Empire

Depictions of Bulgarian flags can be seen on various

portolan Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word ''portolan'' comes from the Italian ''portolano'', meaning "related to ports or harbors", and wh ...

maps from the 14th and 15th centuries. On those maps, the flags commonly have a white or golden background and depict either the insignia of the ruling

House of Shishman The House of Shishman (), also referred to as the Shishmanids or Shishmanovtsi (), was a medieval Bulgarian dynasty of Turkic peoples, Turkic Cumans, Cuman origin. The House of Shishman ruled the Second Bulgarian Empire from the proclamation of M ...

, or unknown symbols in red. Those drawings are markedly more diverse than the flags of the neighbouring countries such as the

Eastern Roman Empire The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

, the

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as ''Ulug Ulus'' ( in Turkic) was originally a Mongols, Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the division of ...

or the

Serbian Empire The Serbian Empire ( sr-Cyrl-Latn, Српско царство, Srpsko carstvo, separator=" / ", ) was a medieval Serbian state that emerged from the Kingdom of Serbia. It was established in 1346 by Dušan the Mighty, who significantly expande ...

, which in the same maps are largely consistent.

Third Bulgarian state

After the liberation of Bulgaria following the Russo-Turkish War in 1878, the flag was described in the

Tarnovo Constitution The Tarnovo Constitution () was the first constitution of Bulgaria. It was adopted on 16 April 1879 (Adoption of the Gregorian calendar#Adoption in Eastern Europe, O.S.) by the Constituent National Assembly of Bulgaria, National Assembly held in ...

of 1879 as follows: After the establishment of the

People's Republic of Bulgaria The People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB; , NRB; ) was the official name of Bulgaria when it was a socialist republic from 1946 to 1990, ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; ) together with its coalition partner, the Bulgarian Agraria ...

in 1946, the new

Dimitrov Constitution The Dimitrov Constitution was the second Constitution of Bulgaria, in effect from 1947 to 1971.Konstantinov, EmilConstitutional Foundation of Bulgaria (Historical Parallels). Rigas Network, 2002. It formed the legal basis for Communist rule in ...

of 1947 changed the flag: the colors and their order remained the same, but the new national emblem was placed on the left side of the white stripe. The new emblem contained a lion within a wreath of wheat ears below a

red star A red star, five-pointed and filled, is a symbol that has often historically been associated with communist ideology, particularly in combination with the hammer and sickle, but is also used as a purely socialist symbol in the 21st century. ...

and above a ribbon bearing the date 9.IХ.1944 (9 September 1944), the day of the coup d'état of 1944 which had ended the monarchy. In 1971, the emblem (and thus the flag) was slightly modified - the ribbon was parted in two, bearing the years 681 and 1944, the former being the year of the establishment of the

First Bulgarian Empire The First Bulgarian Empire (; was a medieval state that existed in Southeastern Europe between the 7th and 11th centuries AD. It was founded in 680–681 after part of the Bulgars, led by Asparuh of Bulgaria, Asparuh, moved south to the northe ...

. After the fall of Communism in 1990, the then-enforced Zhivkov Constitution was amended so the flag could be reverted to the pre-Communist era. The new

, adopted in 1991, describes the Bulgarian flag as follows: A popular version of the flag, which has no official status, is also commonly known. It has the full coat of arms on the left of the flag, placed across the white and green fields only.

Flag law

According to the Law for the State Seal and National Flag of the Republic of Bulgaria, promulgated on 24 April 1998:

Colours

Appendix 2 to the Law for the State Seal and National Flag of the Republic of Bulgaria specifies colours when the flag is sewn from textiles or printed on paper. The law does not specify what colour values should be used in digital renderings of the flag. The website of the Bulgarian civil service recommends approximate colours (note that the decimal RGB values are inconsistent with the hexadecimal "web-safe" values).https://identity.egov.bg/wps/portal/identity/government-symbols/flag/flag

Gallery

Flags of the
Second Bulgarian Empire The Second Bulgarian Empire (; ) was a medieval Bulgarians, Bulgarian state that existed between 1185 and 1422. A successor to the First Bulgarian Empire, it reached the peak of its power under Tsars Kaloyan of Bulgaria, Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II ...

Flags of the modern Bulgarian state

References

External links

Bulgarian Heraldry and Vexillology Society
*
Law for the State Seal and the National Flag of the Republic of BulgariaAbout Bulgarian national symbols
* {{Lists of flags

Flag A flag is a piece of textile, fabric (most often rectangular) with distinctive colours and design. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design employed, and fla ...