Flag: Bermuda Emoji

The flag of Bermuda is a British Red Ensign defaced with the colony's coat of arms. Red field, Union Jack in the canton, and on the fly a red lion standing on a grassy mount, holding an antique shield that depicts the wreck of the Sea Venture. That ship ran aground on Bermuda's reefs during a hurricane in July 1609, carrying 150 colonists bound for Jamestown, Virginia. The accidental landing founded the Bermuda colony, fed straight into Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' two years later, and is the only national flag on earth that builds itself around a shipwreck.

🇧🇲 is one of the more posted small-island flags despite a population of only ~64,700 people. The cultural footprint runs far ahead of the demographic one. It shows up around three things online: pink-sand beaches and cruise itineraries, the Bermuda Triangle (more meme than menace at this point), and the reinsurance industry that quietly sits in Hamilton and writes around 36% of the world's property-casualty reinsurance. The diaspora is small (the largest overseas Bermudian community is 5,800 in England and Wales) but tight, and 🇧🇲 functions as a code-flag among Bermudians abroad more than as a mass-cultural signal.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER BU+1F1E7 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER B + U+1F1F2 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER MU+1F1F2 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER M. Added in Emoji 2.0 (2015) alongside most country-flag sequences. Platforms that don't render flag emoji fall back to the letters BMBM. The Bermuda flag was first hoisted in its current Red Ensign form on October 4, 1910, with the coat of arms enlarged in a 1999 redesign. Bermuda is one of very few British Overseas Territories that flies a red ensign on land instead of the more common blue ensign, a holdover from 19th-century merchant-shipping conventions.

🇧🇲 splits cleanly across four feeds.

Travel content drives the biggest slice. Pink-sand beaches at Horseshoe Bay, Crystal Caves, the Royal Naval Dockyard, and rum-swizzle videos at the Swizzle Inn all anchor the standard Bermuda travel post. Cruise ships sailing out of New York, Boston, and Norfolk run a May-to-October Bermuda season that floods Instagram and TikTok with #Bermuda content; in 2024 the island welcomed 535,000+ cruise visitors plus 139,546 leisure air visitors.

Bermuda Triangle content drives sharp meme spikes. The TikTok Bermuda Triangle meme leans into childhood-fear nostalgia and 'why isn't this a bigger problem' jokes. The Bermuda Tourism Authority quietly leans into it now, with their own posts pointing out that 'our 21-square-mile island in the North Atlantic is far more than the legend.' 🇧🇲🔺 is the standard combo.

Sailing and finance. Bermuda hosted the 35th America's Cup in 2017, and 🇧🇲⛵ still shows up around the Newport Bermuda Race (every two years) and the World Triathlon Championship Series stop. The reinsurance industry uses 🇧🇲 in industry posts about ILS, catastrophe bonds, and hurricane-season retro placements.

Diaspora. Cup Match week (the Thursday/Friday before the first Monday of August) and Bermuda Day (last Friday of May) are the two big diaspora-homecoming windows, and 🇧🇲 spikes in posts from Bermudians in Sheffield, Nottingham, and Birmingham, Toronto, and the New York metro.

• 🏛️
  Capital: Hamilton (32.29°N, 64.78°W)
• 👥
  Population: ~64,700 (2025)
• 🗺️
  Area: 54 km² (21 square miles)
• 💵
  Currency: Bermudian dollar (BMD), pegged 1:1 to USD
• 🗣️
  Languages: English (primary), Portuguese (~10%)
• 📞
  Calling code: +1-441
• ⏰
  Time zone: AST (UTC-4), ADT (UTC-3) Mar-Nov
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .bm
• 🇬🇧
  Status: British Overseas Territory since 1612

Foods that show up next to 🇧🇲

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The story of the flag is the story of the colony, and both start with the same shipwreck.

1609: the wreck. The English ship Sea Venture, carrying 150 colonists and supplies for the struggling Jamestown settlement in Virginia, ran into a hurricane in late July 1609. Admiral Sir George Somers deliberately drove the foundering ship onto Bermuda's reefs to keep her from sinking with all hands. Everyone aboard made it to land. The colonists spent ten months on the uninhabited island building two new ships from Bermuda cedar and the Sea Venture's salvaged timbers, reached Jamestown in May 1610, then went back to settle Bermuda properly in 1612. News of the wreck reached London in 1610. Shakespeare wrote 'The Tempest' the next year.

1635: the first arms. The first coat of arms incorporating the Sea Venture wreck was granted around 1635, only twenty-five years after the event. The composition has barely changed: a red lion, a grassy mount, an antique shield with a stylized scene of the ship in the rigging being dashed against the cliffs.

1707-1801: ensigns at sea. Bermuda flew the British Red Ensign at sea from the 1707 Acts of Union onward, like every other British colony.

1910: the warrant. On October 4, 1910, King Edward VII signed the Royal Warrant formally granting Bermuda the right to fly the Red Ensign defaced with the colony's coat of arms. Most British colonies got Blue Ensigns; Bermuda is one of the rare exceptions, having continuously used the Red Ensign on land since the 1800s.

1999: the redesign. The current flag took shape in 1999 when the coat of arms was substantially enlarged, making the Sea Venture scene visible from a distance for the first time. Earlier versions had a small badge that was almost illegible on the fly.

The Latin motto under the shield, 'Quo Fata Ferunt' ('Whither the Fates Carry Us'), is the only national motto on earth that openly admits the country was founded by accident.

• 🎆
  January 1: New Year's Day: Quiet, family-focused. Hamilton fireworks the night before.
• 🪁
  April 3, 2026: Good Friday: Bermudians fly homemade hexagonal kites in the parks. The signature Easter image of the island.
• 🥇
  May 29, 2026: Bermuda Day: Last Friday of May. Heritage Parade, Half-Marathon Derby, the unofficial first day of summer. Peak 🇧🇲 of the year.
• 🦸
  June 15, 2026: National Heroes Day: Honors Mary Prince, Dr. E.F. Gordon, Dame Lois Browne-Evans, and others. Replaced Queen's Birthday in 2008.
• 🏏
  July 30, 2026: Emancipation Day: Day one of Cup Match. Commemorates August 1, 1834 abolition. Cricket between Somerset and St. George's begins.
• 📜
  July 31, 2026: Mary Prince Day: Day two of Cup Match. Renamed in 2020 from Somers' Day to honor [Mary Prince](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Prince), abolitionist born enslaved in Bermuda 1788.
• ✊
  September 7, 2026: Labour Day: Trade union parades through Hamilton. Marches organized by the Bermuda Industrial Union founded by Dr. E.F. Gordon.
• 🪶
  December 26: Boxing Day: [Gombey troupes](https://www.gotobermuda.com/inspiration/article/introduction-gombeys-bermuda) walk neighborhood-to-neighborhood in elaborate peacock-feather costumes. The most photogenic 🇧🇲 day of the year.

• •Bermuda is the oldest remaining British Overseas Territory, continuously British since 1612. Older than the United States by 164 years.
• •The Sea Venture shipwreck inspired Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' (1611). The play's magical island, storm, and castaways pull directly from contemporary accounts of the wreck written by survivors William Strachey and Sylvester Jourdain. Bermuda is the only flag on earth whose coat of arms inspired a Shakespeare play.
• •Bermudians are nicknamed 'Onions' because Bermuda was the world's largest exporter of sweet onions to New York between 1830 and 1920. The export collapsed when Texas planted the same variety. The nickname stuck.
• •Bermuda has the northernmost coral reefs in the world, warmed by the Gulf Stream. The reefs are why so many ships, including the Sea Venture, hit Bermuda.
• •The pink in Bermuda's pink-sand beaches comes from foraminifera, single-celled red-shelled sea creatures whose remains mix with white coral sand.
• •Bermuda shorts are formal business attire on the island. The traditional combo is shorts (just above the knee), knee-high socks, dress shoes, blazer, and tie. Government ministers wear them in parliament.
• •Bermuda's reinsurance market wrote $171 billion in gross premium in 2023, roughly 36% of global property-casualty reinsurance, from a 21-square-mile island.
• •Bermuda is the only continuously Black-majority British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic; ~52% of residents identify as Black, ~31% as white, ~9% as multiracial, with a sizeable Portuguese-Bermudian community descended from 19th-century Azorean migrant farmworkers.