There’s a New French Flag – Here’s What You Need to Know

Last Updated on April 7, 2024 by Adam Watts

France’s blue-white-red tricolour flag is iconic. Ask any adult or particularly-gifted toddler and they’ll be able to identify the French flag. Like the McDonald’s arches or long queues at post offices, it’s a universally-accepted thing that would be sacrilege to change in any way. So, mon dieu, why have they changed it?! Let’s examine the new French flag and the reasoning behind it.

Firstly, let’s take a look at the new flag so you know what we’re dealing with.

As you can see, the new flag is an absolute monstrosity, an abomination, a heinous act of vexillological brutality.

…Wait, that’s the current flag. I must’ve inserted the wrong one. Bear with me while I add it again. Sorry folks, this is very unprofessional.

Okay, it’s uploaded. I repeat: abomination! Disgusting! Merde!

…No, again it’s the old one.

Okay, so, I should’ve looked into this more before getting on my high horse and screaming about changing such iconic symbols.

France HAS changed its flag. This is true. But it’s not like they’ve swapped their tricolour for an ugly, chaotic mess created by an art student whose parents provided misplaced encouragement. Looking at you, British Columbia.

Sometime in 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron snuck out at night and sneakily hoisted up some new flags to the presidential palace. Except the only difference was a darker shade of blue.

My theory is he did it purely for hijinks, to let off steam after a particularly aggravating day of politics, and he wanted to change the flag to see if anyone would notice.

No one did.

Another theory is that since the lighter shade of blue was adopted in the 1970s to match the European Union colour that this switch back to a darker shade suggests a rift between France and the EU, so-called “Frexit”. I’m sure that’s nonsense and I don’t want to give any credence to conspiracy theories, so let’s move swiftly on.

The new blue is the same as the old blue from pre-1976, adopted after the French Revolution, which is a darker blue than the newest old blue which is lighter to match the blue of the European Union flag. Got it?

As a reminder, so you can see the difference in shades, here’s the French flag you know and love:

Like the change in colour itself, the change to the new French flag isn’t going to cause great upheavals everywhere. The only place as far as I can tell that’s officially changed the flag is the presidential palace, which is the reason why most people haven’t noticed (or if they have, they don’t care).

But if you do see a French flag somewhere and it looks unusual because of a darker shade of blue, now you know why. If you can even notice the difference.

For more flag talk (what those in the biz call vexilollogy), check out the ugliest flags in the world or the most beautiful flags.