Family research · Phase 14 of the world atlas

Flags of the Solomon Islands

For centuries before any European ship arrived, the Solomon archipelago was never one place: dozens of distinct Melanesian island communities and language groups held their own land, custom, and leadership, with no single flag or crown to speak for the whole chain. A Spanish expedition passed through in 1568 and left a name, not a colony. Britain's protectorate, declared in 1893, brought the islands under a single administration for the first time — and, a half-century later, onto the front line of the Pacific War, when Guadalcanal became one of the war's costliest and most pivotal battlegrounds.

Independence came peacefully in 1978. The flag chosen that year — a golden diagonal stripe splitting blue from green, five stars standing for the country's five founding provinces — is the one still flown today.

Scope of this page: the territory of the present-day Solomon Islands, pre-1893 to present, three entries. No internal governing split exists within this territory at any point covered here, so the map below is a single-region outline, not a partition. Part of a larger atlas — see the map and linked pages at the bottom.

One archipelago, three eras

The Solomon Islands' own real coastline, traced whole — there is no internal split to draw. Press play, or drag the slider, to watch who flew a flag over the archipelago, era to era.

No internal governing split exists within this territory at any point covered here. Britain's protectorate, declared in 1893 and expanded in stages, treated the archipelago as a single administration from the start, and independence in 1978 kept that same single-territory shape — so this page shows one region, not a partition.

Real traced coastline (Natural Earth 10m); neighboring-territory labels are placed at their real geographic positions using the same projection.

blue-and-green field split by a gold diagonal, five white stars

1978 – present

Independent Solomon Islands

Independent statePeter KeniloreaSecular (no state religion)

Migration & conquest:Emigration: seasonal labor to Australia & NZ (2007–)

Ruling house:House of Windsor

Who & why: the Solomon Islands gain independence from Britain on 7 July 1978, becoming a Commonwealth realm with the British monarch as head of state, represented locally by a governor-general. The new flag, adopted that same year, was chosen from a national design process ahead of independence.

What it represents: a yellow diagonal stripe runs from the lower hoist to the upper fly, dividing the field into a blue upper-hoist triangle and a green lower-fly triangle; the blue stands for the ocean surrounding the archipelago, the green for the land, and the gold stripe for the sun. Five white five-pointed stars in the blue triangle represent the country's five main island provinces at the time of independence — a number that has since grown to nine provinces, with the flag left unchanged.

Paint guide

Proportions1:2.

LayoutGold diagonal stripe from lower hoist to upper fly; blue triangle above-hoist, green triangle below-fly; five white stars in the blue triangle.

Blue#1E2F96

Green#2E8B3D

Gold#C9A13C

White (stars)#F4EFE1

Blue Ensign, Union Jack canton, colonial badge disc on the fly

1893 – 1978

British Solomon Islands Protectorate

ProtectorateQueen VictoriaChurch of England (colonial administration)

Migration & conquest:Occupied by: Japan (1942–43)

Ruling house:House of HanoverHouse of Windsor

Who & why: Britain declares a protectorate over the southern Solomon Islands in 1893, chiefly to police labor-recruiting abuses and forestall rival German claims in the region, later expanding it in stages to cover the whole archipelago. The protectorate becomes a major and fierce Pacific War battleground: the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942–43, fought substantially on Solomon Islands soil and in the surrounding waters, ranks among the pivotal, costliest engagements of the entire Pacific War.

What it represents: the British Blue Ensign, with the Union Jack in the canton marking colonial administration, carried the protectorate's own colonial badge as a disc on the fly — simplified here to a plain badge roundel rather than its full heraldic detail.

Paint guide

Proportions1:2.

LayoutBlue field, Union Jack canton, round colonial badge disc centered on the fly.

Blue#00247D

White#F4EFE1

Red#A4302A

Badge ring, gold#C9A13C

placeholder — pre-contact and early-contact era, no single flag

pre-1893

Indigenous Melanesian Solomon Islands communities

Indigenous nations, pre-contactNo single ruler documentedTraditional Melanesian religions (no single state faith)

Migration & conquest:Emigration: blackbirded labor to Queensland & Fiji (1870s–1904)

Who & why: for centuries before European contact, the archipelago was home to distinct Melanesian communities and language groups, each with its own land, leadership, and custom, and no single overarching polity uniting the islands. Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña sailed through in 1568 and named the islands after a rumor, taken at the time as fact, that they held the source of King Solomon's biblical gold — a rumor that drew no lasting Spanish settlement. For centuries afterward, into the colonial era, the islands remained under the control of their own communities.

What it represents: no securely documented flag survives from this era, and none is invented here to stand in for one; a passing name given by a foreign expedition is not a flag, and the archipelago's own distinct Melanesian communities used no single territorial banner of their own. Shown here honestly blank.

Paint guide

ProportionsN/A — no attested flag.

Reading the tags

Indigenous nations, pre-contact — no single flag, no colonial rule

Protectorate — under a foreign power's protective administration

Independent state — 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 Solomon Islands 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 Solomon Islands →

More of the atlas

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

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Pacific hubFourteen countries, Oceania