Hungary’s national flag is a horizontal tricolour of red, white, and green. Emerging from the 1848 revolution and rooted in medieval heraldic colours, it was reaffirmed in 1946 and remains unchanged in core design. Red signifies strength and sacrifice, white faithfulness and freedom, and green hope. Proportions are 1:2, with legal standards for colours, respectful use, vertical display, and variants bearing the historical coat of arms for state and military contexts.
Hungary’s red‑white‑green tricolour crystallised during the age of revolutions while drawing on a much older heraldic palette. Its endurance across monarchy, dual monarchy, regency, war, dictatorship, and democratic restoration has made it one of Europe’s most stable national identifiers, even as the coat of arms and state emblems around it have changed.
The colours trace to the medieval arms of the Kingdom of Hungary and to the Holy Crown’s associated heraldry. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, as a modern Hungarian identity matured within the Habsburg realms, reformers and cultural societies adopted red, white, and green cockades and ribbons. The 1848–49 revolution against Habsburg absolutism transformed these tinctures into a national banner: horizontal bands of red, white, and green aligned the cause with liberal nationalism and with the broader pan‑European language of tricolours.
Defeat in 1849 curtailed political rights and public display of the flag, but the colours’ popularity persisted. The Austro‑Hungarian Compromise of 1867 created the Dual Monarchy, granting Hungary internal autonomy and ushering in a period of civic expansion in which the tricolour became a familiar civil emblem. After World War I dissolved the empire, the Hungarian Democratic Republic (1918–1919) and then the Regency under Admiral Horthy (1920–1944) maintained the tricolour in various contexts, sometimes with arms for official standards.
Post‑1945 politics altered emblems more than colours. The republic proclaimed in 1946 reaffirmed the tricolour. The communist constitution of 1949 introduced a socialist state coat of arms; in the 1956 Revolution, protestors famously cut that emblem from flags, leaving holes that became icons of defiance. Later, the Kádár era used a modified socialist emblem, but by 1989–1990 Hungary restored its historical arms and a democratic constitution while leaving the plain tricolour unchanged as the national flag.
Current law prescribes a 1:2 ratio, exact colour references, and protocols for use. The plain national flag serves civil display; state and military flags carry the historical coat of arms centred on the white stripe. Vertical display places red at the viewer’s upper left; half‑masting follows set procedures for mourning. The flag must not touch the ground and should be retired respectfully when worn. Desecration or unauthorized commercial use can trigger penalties.
Symbolic readings—red for strength and the sacrifices of the nation, white for faithfulness and freedom, green for hope and the land—appear in state publications and education. The tricolour’s simplicity ensures legibility on buildings, at diplomatic missions, and in stadia, where diaspora communities rally beneath its bands. In a landscape of changing political iconography, the continuity of red‑white‑green has helped unify historical memory with modern constitutional identity.