Flag: Bahamas Emoji

The flag of the Bahamas: two horizontal aquamarine bands above and below a gold central band, with a black equilateral triangle set at the hoist. Adopted on July 10, 1973, the day the Bahamas became independent from the United Kingdom. The aquamarine is the color of the Caribbean and Atlantic waters that surround the 700-island archipelago; the gold is the sand and the sun; the black triangle stands for the strength and determination of the Bahamian people, pointed toward the gold and aquamarine to express resolve directed at the country's natural wealth. The final design was a composite assembled from multiple competition entries, principally credited to Dr Hervis Bain.

The flag replaced a British Blue Ensign with a pre-1973 colonial badge that depicted a British Royal Navy ship chasing two pirate vessels, a nod to the 1706 to 1718 stretch when Nassau functioned as a Pirate Republic under Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and Charles Vane. The new flag deliberately dropped both the Union Jack and the pirate imagery. Aquamarine and gold are horizontal because the Bahamas is horizontal: over 700 islands strung roughly north-west to south-east from Grand Bahama to Inagua, with only ~30 inhabited.

Socially, 🇧🇸 runs on three engines. The first is tourism, the largest in the Caribbean: the Bahamas hosts more annual cruise port calls than anywhere else on earth and owns most of the mega-cruise 'private island' destinations (Royal Caribbean's Perfect Day at CocoCay, Disney's Castaway Cay and Lookout Cay, Holland America's Half Moon Cay). The second is Junkanoo, the Boxing Day and New Year's Day street festival that wakes Bay Street at 3 a.m. with cowbells and goatskin drums. The third is the South Florida diaspora, centered on Miami's Coconut Grove 'Little Bahamas,' whose 100-year-old Goombay Festival runs every July to mark Bahamas Independence Day. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015 as the regional indicator sequence U+1F1E7 U+1F1F8U+1F1E7 U+1F1F8.

🇧🇸 peaks three times a year. The first is Boxing Day and New Year's Day Junkanoo, with the Bay Street 'rush' starting at 3 a.m. on December 26 and January 1. It's the oldest and largest traditional festival in the English-speaking Caribbean, centered on cowbells, goatskin drums, whistles, horns, and crepe-paper costumes that take the competing groups (the Valley Boys, the Saxons, One Family, the Genesis Warhawks) months to build. ZNS Bahamas streams it live, and the Bahamian diaspora in Miami, New York, and London posts 🇧🇸 clips across social all night.

The second is July 10 (Independence Day), commemorating the 1973 transition from the UK. Clifton Heritage Park fireworks, parade at Clifford Park, and diaspora posts from Miami (the Goombay Festival in Coconut Grove has run since 1976 and times itself to Independence). The third is the Exuma swimming pigs, which is not seasonal but is continuous: Pig Beach on Big Major Cay went Instagram-viral in the mid-2010s and has been a permanent 🇧🇸 engine ever since, with around 20 feral pigs greeting boat arrivals.

There's also a grimmer recurring driver. Hurricane coverage brings 🇧🇸 into the news feed almost every year during the June-to-November Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane Dorian (September 2019) was the defining event of this generation: Category 5, parked over Abaco for 48 hours, killed 70 people, destroyed 13,000 homes, caused US\$3.4 billion in damage. Bahamian social media during hurricane season tracks storms obsessively, and 🇧🇸 shows up heavily on evacuation threads and relief-fundraising posts.

• 🏛️
  Capital: Nassau, on New Providence island. Home to ~70% of the population.
• 👥
  Population: ~412,000 (2024 est.), spread across ~30 inhabited islands of 700+.
• 🗺️
  Area: 13,878 km² of islands, 100,000 sq mi of ocean territory.
• 💵
  Currency: Bahamian dollar (BSD), pegged 1:1 to USD. Both currencies circulate interchangeably.
• 🗣️
  Languages: English (official); Bahamian Creole / Bahamian Dialect spoken daily.
• 🏛️
  Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. King Charles III is head of state; PM Philip Davis leads the government.
• 📞
  Calling code: +1-242 (North American Numbering Plan).
• ⏰
  Time zone: EST / EDT (same as Miami and NYC), observes daylight saving.
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .bs

Foods that show up next to 🇧🇸

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The Bahamas had been a British colony since 1718, when Governor Woodes Rogers arrived with a royal pardon and broke the Pirate Republic. For the next 255 years, the islands flew a Blue Ensign featuring a naval badge of a British Royal Navy ship chasing two pirates, a quiet colonial boast that the Crown had tamed the place. By the early 1970s, Sir Lynden Pindling's Progressive Liberal Party, which had swept to power in the January 10, 1967 election that delivered majority rule, was negotiating independence.

In preparation for the 1973 transition, the Bahamian government held a public flag-design competition. More than 100 entries arrived. No single design was chosen outright. The final flag was assembled from multiple top entries, with the principal credit going to Dr Hervis Bain, an Anglican clergyman, who had submitted the aquamarine-gold-aquamarine triband with the black hoist triangle. The palette broke sharply from the Union Jack's red-white-blue and from the British Blue Ensign it replaced: aquamarine for the water, gold for the sand, black for the people, in a composition that read cleanly against the white facades of Nassau's colonial parliament district.

Independence was declared at Clifford Park, Nassau, at midnight on July 10, 1973. The Union Jack was lowered. The new Bahamian flag rose to the national anthem 'March On, Bahamaland,' written by Timothy Gibson. Prince Charles (then 24) attended as representative of Queen Elizabeth II. Sir Lynden Pindling became the first prime minister of an independent Bahamas. The country retained the Commonwealth monarchy and has not, unlike Barbados, transitioned to a republic.

• 🎭
  January 1: New Year's Day Junkanoo: The second of the two annual [Junkanoo Rushes](https://www.bahamas.com/events/junkanoo). Bay Street 3 a.m. start, cowbells, goatskin drums, costumes. Peak 🇧🇸 window after Boxing Day.
• 🗳️
  January 10: Majority Rule Day: Commemorates the 1967 general election won by the Progressive Liberal Party under [Sir Lynden Pindling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynden_Pindling). Public holiday since 2014.
• 🐣
  April 3 to 6, 2026: Easter window: Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. Annual Eleuthera fish fry over Easter weekend.
• ☀️
  May 25, 2026: Whit Monday: Public holiday.
• ⚒️
  June 5, 2026: Randol Fawkes Labour Day: First Friday of June. Honors [Sir Randol Fawkes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randol_Fawkes), Bahamian trade union leader.
• 🇧🇸
  July 10: Independence Day: Commemorates independence from the UK on July 10, 1973. Fireworks at Clifton Heritage, parade at Clifford Park, diaspora Goombay Festival in Miami.
• ✊
  August 3, 2026: Emancipation Day: Commemorates the August 1, 1834 abolition of slavery across the British Caribbean.
• 🦸
  October 12, 2026: National Heroes Day: Replaced Discovery Day in 2013 to center Bahamian rather than Columbus-era history.
• 🎄
  December 25: Christmas Day: Public holiday.
• 🥁
  December 26: Boxing Day Junkanoo: The first and largest Junkanoo Rush of the season. 3 a.m. Bay Street parade. Peak 🇧🇸 window of the year.

• •The Bahamas comprises 700+ islands and 2,400+ cays spread across 100,000 square miles of ocean, but only about 30 islands are inhabited. The name comes from the Spanish baja mar, 'shallow water.'
• •Nassau's Pirate Republic ran from roughly 1706 to 1718. Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and Charles Vane all operated out of the harbour. About 1,000 pirates lived in Nassau at the peak.
• •The swimming pigs of Pig Beach are not native. The most common origin story is that local Staniel Cay boaters dropped pigs on the uninhabited cay in the 1990s with a plan to farm them; the pigs learned to swim to incoming boats for food and never got eaten.
• •The Bahamian dollar is pegged 1:1 to the US dollar and US dollars are accepted everywhere on the islands. You can carry one currency and pay in either.
• •Shaunae Miller-Uibo is one of only four women to win consecutive Olympic 400m titles. The 2016 Rio final, where she dove across the line to beat Allyson Felix by seven hundredths of a second, is one of the most-replayed finishes in track-and-field history.
• •The Bahamas is the only sovereign nation in the Caribbean that is geographically in the Atlantic, not the Caribbean Sea. The country is oriented almost entirely east of the Caribbean basin proper.
• •Bahamian conch salad uses raw tenderized conch meat, cut on the spot by the cook, dressed with lime juice, diced onion, tomato, bell pepper, and bird pepper. The live-prep at Arawak Cay in Nassau is a tourist draw on its own.
• •Junkanoo competing groups train for months ahead of Boxing Day. The Valley Boys (est. 1958) and the Saxons (est. 1978) are the longest-running competitors. Costumes can weigh 50+ pounds; the cowbell sections can run 60 or 80 people deep.

• •🇧🇸 is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1E7U+1F1E7 (B) + U+1F1F8U+1F1F8 (S). ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code: BSBS.
• •Shortcode: :flag_bs::flag_bs: or :bahamas::bahamas: on most platforms.
• •The .bs.bs TLD is lightly used. Bahamian businesses more often use .com.bs.com.bs or generic gTLDs.

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