Curaçao's flag is a landscape turned into geometry. A deep blue field, a single yellow stripe running below the midline, two white stars in the corner: sky, sun, sea, and the two islands that make up the country. It was designed by a teenage student for a competition in the early 1980s, when Curaçao was still one island among several in the Netherlands Antilles, and it has outlived the federation it was born under. When Curaçao became an autonomous country in 2010, nobody saw a reason to touch it.
A competition on an island preparing for change
By the late 1970s the Netherlands Antilles, the Dutch Caribbean federation Curaçao belonged to, was starting to come apart. Aruba, the neighboring island, had adopted its own flag in 1976 and was negotiating its way out of the federation entirely. Curaçao, the largest island and seat of the federation's government in Willemstad, had no flag of its own. The island government decided to fix that and opened the choice to the public.
Around 2,000 designs were submitted. A selection committee narrowed the pile to ten finalists and, on November 29, 1982, picked the entry of Martin den Dulk, a local student still in his teens. Published accounts differ on whether he was eighteen or nineteen at the time; he later described his thinking in plain terms. He wanted the sky, the sea, and the sun, a big star for Curaçao and a small one for Klein Curaçao, and white stars because white meant peace.
The flag went up officially for the first time on July 2, 1984. The date was not an accident. On July 2, 1951, Curaçao's first Island Council had convened under the new constitutional arrangement that gave the Dutch Caribbean islands internal self-government, and the flag's debut was timed to that anniversary.
Reading the design
The proportions are 2:3. The field is blue, Pantone 280, split by a horizontal yellow stripe, Pantone 102. The three bands run 5:1:2 from top to bottom, which puts the stripe well below the center line: a wide expanse of blue above, a narrower one below. The top blue is the sky, the bottom blue is the sea, and the yellow between them is the sun. Curaçao sits outside the hurricane belt and gets sun most days of the year, so the emphasis is earned.
The two white five-pointed stars sit in the canton. The specification is precise: the smaller star has a diameter of one sixth of the flag's height and is centered one sixth of the height from both the hoist and the top edge; the larger star has a diameter of two ninths of the height, centered one third from each edge. The large star is Curaçao, the small one Klein Curaçao, the uninhabited islet about 10 kilometers southeast of the main island, home to a lighthouse, a few shipwrecks, and day-tripping snorkelers.
The five points carry the design's most distinctive claim: one point for each of the five continents from which Curaçao's people descend. It is a compact way of describing a population built from Arawak inhabitants, Dutch colonists, enslaved Africans and their descendants, Sephardic Jewish settlers, and later arrivals from South America, Asia, and the rest of the Caribbean. Papiamentu, the local creole language, carries the same layered history in its vocabulary.
From island flag to national flag
For its first 26 years the flag was an island flag, flying below the flag of the Netherlands Antilles in official contexts. That federation shrank steadily. Aruba left in 1986. In referendums during the 2000s the remaining islands voted for different futures, and on October 10, 2010 the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved. Curaçao became a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, running its own internal affairs while the Kingdom handles defense and foreign policy.
The flag crossed that constitutional line without alteration. Den Dulk's design had been drawn for an island; it now identified a country of roughly 150,000 people, and its symbolism required no updating since none of it referred to the federation. Other national symbols have changed around it. In 2025 the Netherlands Antillean guilder, a currency that had outlived its namesake federation by fifteen years, was finally replaced: the Caribbean guilder became legal tender in Curaçao and Sint Maarten on March 31, 2025, pegged to the US dollar at the same 1.79 rate as its predecessor.
Dia di Bandera
July 2 is a public holiday in Curaçao, Dia di Himno i Bandera, the day of the anthem and the flag. It commemorates the flag's first raising in 1984 and the Island Council's first meeting in 1951, and it doubles as a celebration of the anthem, "Himno di Kòrsou," which is sung in Papiamentu. The day brings official ceremonies, school events, and music across the island.
The flag itself is a constant presence outside the holiday. It hangs from government buildings in Willemstad's Punda and Otrobanda districts, appears on license plates and souvenirs, and travels with the island's athletes. Since 2010 it has entered international sport in its own right; Curaçao's footballers now compete under it in FIFA competitions, and the baseball players the island exports to the Dutch and American major leagues have made the blue-and-yellow a familiar sight in dugouts far from the Caribbean.
References
[1] "Flag of Curaçao," Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Cura%C3%A7ao
[2] "1984 | Curaçao National Flag," Curaçao History. https://www.curacaohistory.com/1984-curacao-national-flag
[3] "The Meaning and Story Behind the Design of the Curaçao Flag," Landhuis Chobolobo. https://www.chobolobo.com/articles/the-history-of-the-curacao-flag
[4] "Dia di Bandera, Curaçao: Flag Day on 2 July," Curaçao 365. https://visitcuracao365.com/events/dia-di-bandera
[5] "Caribbean Guilder," Centrale Bank van Curaçao en Sint Maarten. https://www.centralbank.cw/functions/banknotes-coins/caribbean-guilder