At One Place

The flag of Sweden

The flag of Sweden
A blue field with a yellow Nordic cross offset toward the hoist.
Ratio 5:8 · current design adopted 1906
Sweden

The colours are lifted directly from the national arms, a blue shield with three gold crowns that has been in use since the fourteenth century. The current specification dates from 1906, when Sweden removed the union mark after the dissolution of the union with Norway. Legend attributes the design to King Eric IX seeing a gold cross in a blue sky before a crusade, which is a story shaped to match the Danish one and has no contemporary support. Swedish law specifies the shades as NCS colours rather than Pantone, which is why online reproductions vary more than most.

Flags it gets confused with

Sweden
Finland

Drawn at each flag’s own official ratio, which is itself the difference in some of these pairs.

Flag How to tell them apart
Finland Finland is a white field with a blue cross — the same palette, inverted and cooler.

What the colours mean

  • Blue #005293 From the Swedish coat of arms — three gold crowns on blue
  • Yellow #FECB00 The gold of those crowns

Flag laws usually specify a Pantone chip, a CMYK mix or just a colour name. Converting any of those to sRGB is lossy, which is why published hex values disagree.

Ratio
5:8
Current design adopted
1906
Colours
blue, yellow

Common questions

What does the flag of Sweden look like?
A blue field with a yellow Nordic cross offset toward the hoist.
What do the colours of the Sweden flag mean?
Blue: from the Swedish coat of arms — three gold crowns on blue. Yellow: the gold of those crowns.
How do you tell the Sweden flag from the Finland one?
Finland is a white field with a blue cross — the same palette, inverted and cooler.
When was the Sweden flag adopted?
The current design dates from 1906, and its official ratio is 5:8.

Related pages

Sources

  1. Official vendor product documentation — At One Place

How these figures are compiled and checked