Flags of Honduras

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Flags of Honduras

From undocumented pre-conquest polities, through three centuries as a peripheral province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, a brief annexation to the First Mexican Empire, a Central American federation that produced its most famous unionist statesman, and on to a sovereign republic whose flag still carries five stars — one for each state of a federation that dissolved in 1838–41 but whose hoped-for reunification Honduras has never stopped signaling on its own banner.

Honduras shares its blue-white-blue with Guatemala and El Salvador for the same reason: all three inherited it from the 1823–1841 Federal Republic of Central America. General Francisco Morazán, the federation's most determined defender and its last president, was Honduran-born — and the five stars added to the flag in 1866 are a direct, explicit tribute to the union he died trying to hold together.

Scope of this page: the lands of present-day Honduras, from the pre-conquest era to the present, seven political entities. Honduras was a peripheral province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala and later a founding member of the Central American federation, so its early chapters are shared history with Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica — each covered on its own page in this atlas. The map below traces Honduras's own real border whole; its modern territory was never internally split in the way some other countries in this atlas were. Part of a larger atlas — see the linked pages at the bottom.

One border, seven rulers

Honduras's own real border, traced whole — there's no genuine internal split to show here. Press play, or drag the slider, to watch who held all of it, era to era.

This is a single-region page, not a split one. Honduras spent three centuries as one peripheral province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, then passed as a whole through Mexican annexation, the Central American federation, and independence — it was never partitioned into rival zones of its own territory the way, say, Hungary's Habsburg and Ottoman-held lands were. What changes here is only who ruled all of it at once.
to 1524
GUATEMALA NICARAGUA HONDURAS
Lenca, Maya, and other pre-conquest polities

Real traced coastal boundary (simplified from public GeoJSON), no internal partition — see the rule box above for why.

blue-white-blue with five stars, proportions and shade codified in 1949
1949 – present

Republic of Honduras (modern)

Republic, independentJuan Manuel GálvezSecular (no state religion)
Migration & conquest:Emigration: to the United States (1990s–)

Who & why: President Juan Manuel Gálvez's 26 January 1949 decree fixes the exact positions of the five stars and specifies the flag's official proportions and shade of blue in law, formalizing a design already in wide use. Honduras briefly flew an official turquoise shade from January 2022 — following a university-committee recommendation — before reverting to the traditional navy blue on 27 January 2026, restoring the shade shown here.

What it represents: the same blue-white-blue and five stars adopted in 1866, now with an exact legal specification; the stars still stand for the five states of the vanished federation and the enduring hope, however distant, of Central American reunification.

Paint guide
Proportions1:2, codified 1949.
LayoutHorizontal blue-white-blue, five blue five-pointed stars arranged in an X across the white stripe (simplified here as plain circles).
Honduras blue (navy)#0073CF
White#F4EFE1
five stars added to the white stripe, one for each federation state
1866 – 1949

Republic of Honduras (five-star flag)

Republic, independentJosé María MedinaSecular (no state religion)
Migration & conquest:Immigration: West Indian banana-industry laborers

Who & why: President José María Medina modifies the national flag on 16 February 1866, adding five blue five-pointed stars to the white stripe. The gesture is explicitly unionist: it honors the five member states of the defunct Central American federation and expresses hope for their eventual reunification — a cause Francisco Morazán, Honduran-born and the federation's last president, had died for in 1842 after a failed attempt to reunite the isthmus by force.

What it represents: the same blue-white-blue field, now permanently marked with the five stars that remain on the flag to this day, arranged in an X pattern across the center.

Paint guide
ProportionsNo fixed ratio recorded before 1949; shown at 3:2.
LayoutHorizontal blue-white-blue, five stars added to the white stripe in 1866 (simplified here as plain circles).
Blue#0073CF
White#F4EFE1
plain blue-white-blue, before the five stars were added
1838 – 1866

Republic of Honduras (early sovereignty)

Republic, independentFrancisco MorazánRoman Catholic (traditional continuation)
Migration & conquest:Occupied by: Britain (Bay Islands, 1852–61)

Who & why: Honduras formally secedes from the crumbling Federal Republic of Central America in November 1838, one of the first states to leave; the rest of the federation limps on for a few more years before fully dissolving by 1841. Honduras spends its early decades as a sovereign state entangled in near-constant regional wars, including repeated attempts by Francisco Morazán and others to force the federation's reunification by arms.

What it represents: Honduras keeps the federation's own blue-white-blue horizontal stripes essentially unchanged in these early years — a visual statement that even in leaving, it never fully let go of the union's colors.

Paint guide
ProportionsNo fixed ratio recorded; shown at 3:2.
LayoutPlain horizontal blue-white-blue, no emblem.
Blue#0073CF
White#F4EFE1
the federation's blue-white-blue with five-volcano arms and cap of liberty
1823 – 1838

Federal Republic of Central America

Federation memberManuel José ArceRoman Catholic (constitutionally established)

Who & why: after Mexican annexation collapses with Iturbide's 1823 abdication, Honduras joins the other four former provinces of the Captaincy General in forming the United Provinces (soon the Federal Republic) of Central America. The federation produces its single most consequential figure here: Francisco Morazán, born in Tegucigalpa in 1792, rises to become the union's dominant general and, from 1830, its president — fighting to the end to hold the federation together against localist revolt.

What it represents: blue-white-blue horizontal stripes with five volcanoes and a Phrygian cap of liberty, adopted 21 August 1823 — the direct ancestor of Honduras's own post-federation flag.

Paint guide
ProportionsNo fixed ratio recorded; shown at 3:2.
LayoutHorizontal blue-white-blue, five volcanoes and a cap of liberty on the white stripe (simplified here as triangular peaks).
Federal blue#4997D0
White#F4EFE1
Arms gold#A9762F
the First Mexican Empire's green-white-red, briefly flown over Honduras
1821 – 1823

Independence, then annexation to Mexico

Empire, annexedAgustín de IturbideRoman Catholic (exclusive, per the Plan de Iguala)

Who & why: the Captaincy General of Guatemala, including the province of Honduras, declares independence from Spain on 15 September 1821. As in the rest of the isthmus, conservative elites vote to annex the new nation to Agustín de Iturbide's First Mexican Empire in early 1822, an arrangement that collapses when Iturbide abdicates in March 1823.

What it represents: the Mexican Empire's green-white-red tricolor with its eagle emblem flies briefly over Honduran territory during this short, contested union, before the Central American provinces break away to form their own federation later in 1823.

Paint guide
ProportionsNo fixed ratio recorded for this brief period; shown at 3:2.
LayoutVertical green-white-red tricolor, eagle-and-serpent emblem on the white band (simplified here as a gold disc).
Green#006341
White#F4EFE1
Red#A4302A
the Cross of Burgundy, used across the Spanish Empire's colonies
1524 – 1821

Honduras under the Captaincy General of Guatemala

ColonyCristóbal de OlidRoman Catholic (Spanish Crown, exclusive)
Migration & conquest:Conquered by: Spain (from 1524)Immigration: enslaved Africans (forced, mining labor)

Who & why: Spanish conquistador Cristóbal de Olid lands on the Honduran coast in 1524, sent by Hernán Cortés, though effective Spanish control over the interior and its Lenca and other indigenous peoples takes decades longer to establish. Honduras becomes a peripheral province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, valued chiefly for silver mining around Tegucigalpa and, on its Caribbean coast, contested for centuries by English and Miskito raiders and settlers.

What it represents: the Cross of Burgundy — a red saltire of knotted, ragged branches on a white field — served as a common military and colonial banner across the Spanish Empire, flown here alongside the royal arms of Spain throughout three centuries of colonial rule.

Paint guide
ProportionsNo fixed civil ratio; shown at 3:2.
LayoutWhite field, red diagonal saltire (simplified here as plain crossed bars; the historical version used knotted, ragged branch-like arms).
White#F4EFE1
Saltire red#9C3B28
NO FLAG DOCUMENTED
placeholder field — pre-conquest era, no flag survives
to 1524

Lenca, Maya, and other pre-conquest polities

No flag documentedNo single ruler documentedIndigenous polytheism (no unified state)
Ruling house:Yax K'uk' Mo' Dynasty of Copán

Who & why: before European contact, the territory of present-day Honduras is home to a mix of peoples — Maya settlement in the west, around the great Classic-era site of Copán, and Lenca, Pech, Tolupan, and other indigenous groups across the central highlands and Caribbean lowlands. No single state ever unifies this territory before Spanish arrival; it remains a patchwork of chiefdoms and small kingdoms.

What it represents: no securely documented flag or banner survives for any of these polities; Shown here honestly blank rather than invented, consistent with the same treatment given to this region's other pre-conquest chapters across this atlas.

Paint guide
ProportionsN/A — no attested flag.

Reading the tags

No flag documented — no securely attested banner survives
Colony — governed as Spanish (or Mexican) territory
Federation member — one state within the Central American federation
Republic, independent — sovereign under its own government
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 Honduras 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 Honduras →

More of the atlas

This page is one lineage in a larger set. See the region-wide map and the other countries here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Central America hubFive countries, one shared federation Flags of GuatemalaThe federation's largest member state