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Flags of Andorra

Andorra's defining fact is a piece of paper: the 1278 Pareatges (and a confirming second treaty in 1288), which ended a dispute between the Bishop of Urgell, in Catalonia, and the Count of Foix, in France, by making them joint co-princes of the Andorran valleys rather than letting either side win outright. Nearly seven and a half centuries later, that exact arrangement still runs the country — the French co-prince's title has simply passed down through inheritance and, since 1607, automatic transfer to whoever holds the French crown or, after 1789, the French presidency.

That makes the sitting President of France, however briefly they hold office and whatever else is on their desk, also a reigning co-prince of Andorra today — a genuinely unique constitutional survival, not a ceremonial title invented for tourism.

Before 1278, Andorra was not yet a state at all: a Carolingian charter of 843 confirms the Diocese of Urgell's rights over the valleys, and for the next four centuries competing feudal and ecclesiastical claims — not a single government — held sway, until the Pareatge finally settled them.

Scope of this page: the Andorran valleys, c. 843–present, four political phases. The core governing structure — joint headship by the Bishop of Urgell and a French co-prince — has never actually broken since 1278; what changes is who holds the French half of the title and how democratic the internal government becomes. No internal partition map applies. Part of a larger atlas — see the linked pages at the bottom.

One border, one co-principality

Andorra's own real border, traced whole — a single mountain co-principality with no internal region to carve out honestly. Press play, or drag the slider, to move through all three eras.

Andorra has never split into separate internal territories. Before the 1278 Paréages settled joint rule between the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix, the valleys were a disputed feudal and ecclesiastical dependency rather than a state of their own, and since 1278 Andorra has been one small Pyrenean co-principality — so this page shows one border throughout, with only the ruling arrangement and flag changing.

c. 843

Carolingian Grant & Feudal Andorra

Real traced border, no internal partition — Andorra has been one co-principality throughout its history.

blue-yellow-red tricolor with the national coat of arms — formalized 1866

1866 – present

Co-Principality of Andorra (modern, with coat of arms)

Co-principalityJosep CaixalRoman Catholic (Bishop of Urgell as co-prince)

Migration & conquest:Immigration: Spanish, Portuguese & French labor migration

Ruling house:House of Bourbon

Who & why: an 1866 reform under Bishop-co-prince Josep Caixal modernizes Andorra's internal government while leaving the 1278 co-principality itself untouched, and the tricolor with the national arms is fixed as the flag around this period. The co-principality survives France's own revolutions and republics — the French National Convention briefly renounces the co-prince title in 1793 before Napoleon restores it in 1806 — and Andorra adopts its first written constitution only in 1993, ending centuries of ad hoc feudal governance while explicitly keeping both co-princes as heads of state.

What it represents: blue, yellow, and red bands (echoing both France's blue-white-red and Catalonia's gold-and-red) charged with Andorra's own coat of arms — the bishop's mitre and crozier, the counts of Foix's arms, and the Béarn and Catalan cattle, under the motto Virtus Unita Fortior.

Paint guide

Proportions7:10, three equal vertical bands.

LayoutBlue, yellow, red vertical tricolor, national coat of arms centered on the yellow band.

Blue#002B7F

Yellow#FCD116

Red#E30000

plain blue-yellow-red tricolor, before the arms were added

1806 – 1866

Co-Principality of Andorra (restored, plain tricolor)

Co-principalityNapoleon BonaparteRoman Catholic (Bishop of Urgell as co-prince)

Ruling house:House of Bourbon

Who & why: Napoleon, as First Consul, formally restores the French co-prince title in 1806 after the revolutionary National Convention had renounced feudal privileges including it in 1793 — a nominal gap Andorra's own governance mostly rode out unaffected, since the bishop's half of the co-principality never lapsed. Andorra remains a quiet, isolated, largely self-governing valley society through this period, with local government run by a Council of the Land drawing from the valleys' leading families.

What it represents: the blue-yellow-red tricolor in its plain, unmarked form, tracing to Andorra's dual French-Catalan heritage, flown before the national coat of arms is formally added mid-century.

Paint guide

ProportionsNo fixed ratio recorded for this period; shown at 7:10.

LayoutBlue, yellow, red vertical tricolor, no emblem.

Blue#002B7F

Yellow#FCD116

Red#E30000

joint episcopal and comital heraldry, shown schematically — no fixed national flag yet

1278 – 1806

Co-Principality of Andorra (founding co-principality)

Co-principalityBishop of Urgell & Count of FoixRoman Catholic (Bishop of Urgell as co-prince)

Ruling house:House of FoixHouse of Bourbon

Who & why: a long-running dispute over feudal rights to the Andorran valleys between the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix is resolved by the Pareatge of 1278, confirmed by a second Pareatge in 1288, establishing the pair as joint co-princes with shared sovereignty — neither ruling alone, both entitled to tribute and homage. The Foix title later passes by inheritance to the Kings of Navarre and then, through Henry IV, to the Kings of France itself in 1607, fixing the French crown (and its later republican successors) as the permanent holder of the secular half.

What it represents: no single Andorran national flag is documented this early; the valleys were represented, when at all, by the separate heraldic arms of the two co-princes — the Bishop of Urgell's episcopal colors and the Counts of Foix's own arms — shown here only schematically as a reminder of the joint headship, not an attested banner.

Paint guide

ProportionsN/A — no attested national flag.

placeholder maroon field — disputed feudal and ecclesiastical dependency, no banner of its own

c. 843 – 1278

Carolingian Grant & Feudal Andorra

Feudal / ecclesiastical dependency, disputed overlordshipCharles the Bald (843 charter)Roman Catholic (Diocese of Urgell)

Migration & conquest:Granted to: Diocese of Urgell (843 charter)

Who & why: a long-standing Andorran tradition holds that Charlemagne granted the valley's inhabitants privileges around 805 CE in gratitude for their help fighting the Moors, but the earliest document that actually survives is a charter of his grandson Charles the Bald in 843, confirming the Diocese of Urgell's rights over the Andorran parishes. For the following four centuries Andorra is not a state of its own but a disputed ecclesiastical and feudal dependency — the bishop's spiritual authority overlapping with competing temporal claims from the Counts of Urgell and the viscounts of Caboet and Castellbò — a tangle of rights that the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix (who inherited the Caboet-Castellbò claims by marriage) finally settle with the 1278 Pareatge.

What it represents: no flag or fixed heraldic device is documented for Andorra in this era; such authority as existed was represented, if at all, by the separate arms of the Diocese of Urgell and the various feudal claimants, not by any banner specific to the valleys themselves. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented.

World context: the 843 Urgell charter is contemporary with the Treaty of Verdun that same year, which permanently splits Charlemagne's empire among his three grandsons; the following centuries bring Viking raids across the rest of early medieval Europe, the height of the Abbasid Caliphate's Islamic Golden Age in Baghdad, and, as this era closes, the construction of Gothic cathedrals such as Notre-Dame de Paris (begun 1163) just as the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix negotiate the 1278 settlement that finally gives Andorra its own government.

Paint guide

ProportionsN/A — no attested flag for this feudal-era dependency.

Reading the tags

Co-principality — jointly headed by the Bishop of Urgell and a French co-prince, unbroken since 1278

Leader — the named ruler most associated with the era's start

State religion — the official/established faith, not the population's

Find the records

Family history research for Andorra lives in a different project, Record Atlas, which maps which archive actually holds the paper for a given place and era.

Search Record Atlas for Andorra →

More of the atlas

This page is one lineage in a larger set. See the other microstates and the full index:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Europe's Microstates hubFive states, some with the longest unbroken statehood on Earth