Costa Rica is a Central American country celebrated for its pioneering environmental policies and extraordinary biodiversity, protecting more than 25% of its territory in national parks, wildlife refuges, and biological reserves. It abolished its military in 1948 and has since channelled resources into education and healthcare. Costa Rica generates the vast majority of its electricity from renewable sources, primarily hydropower, wind, and geothermal energy from its chain of active volcanoes.
Population and area are rounded.
Blue stands for the sky, opportunity and perseverance, white for peace and wisdom, and red for the blood shed for freedom and the warmth of the people. The red stripe was added in 1848, inspired by that year's revolution in France, by Pacífica Fernández, wife of President José María Castro Madriz. The civil flag has no coat of arms.
Horizontal blue-white-red-white-blue with a red centre band twice as wide as the others (the state flag adds a coat of arms).
Costa Rica has no army — it abolished its military in 1948 and is one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth.
Costa Rica's flag is often mixed up with these. Learn to tell them apart:
Every flag that has flown over Costa Rica, from today back through time.
Costa Rica distinguished its Central American tricolor in 1848 by adding a wide red horizontal stripe at the centre — inspired, according to tradition, by First Lady Pacífica Fernández, who admired the French Tricolore's colours. The result — blue-white-red-white-blue — is immediately distinct from its neighbours. The coat of arms on the state flag was standardised in 1906 and shows three volcanoes, two oceans, and rising sun.
Costa Rica was part of the Central American federation from 1823 to its dissolution in 1839. After the federation collapsed, Costa Rica spent years as part of various smaller unions before declaring itself a fully independent republic in 1848. That same year the flag was redesigned with the distinctive red stripe, marking a deliberate break from the plain blue-white-blue shared by the other former federation members.
Empires, kingdoms and republics that once covered part of Costa Rica.
Its blue-white-blue stripes survive almost unchanged in the flags of Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. White stood for the land between the two oceans.
The first union of the Central American provinces after independence from Mexico, flying the blue-white-blue bands that preceded the Federal Republic and survive in five modern flags.
The 7 states, provinces and regions of Costa Rica with their own flags.
Alajuela
Cartago
Guanacaste
Heredia
Limón
Puntarenas
San JoséCosta Rica shares a land border with 2 countries: Nicaragua and Panama.
30 other national flags use the same main colours as Costa Rica's.
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