Flag: St. Martin Emoji

The flag of Saint-Martin, the French half of an 87 km² Caribbean island shared with the Dutch constituent country 🇸🇽 Sint Maarten. Since the Treaty of Concordia on March 23, 1648, Saint-Martin has been split between France and the Dutch Republic (now the Kingdom of the Netherlands). That border is the only sovereign land border between France and the Netherlands anywhere on Earth, and Saint-Martin is the world's smallest inhabited island shared by two sovereign states. The northern 53 km² (roughly 60% of the island's land) is French Saint-Martin; the southern 34 km² is Dutch Sint Maarten. Capital: Marigot. Population: roughly 32,000 (2024 est.). The official flag of the French side is the French tricolore 🇫🇷, since Saint-Martin is an overseas collectivity of France (collectivité d'outre-mer, COM) that took effect on July 15, 2007. Before the split, Saint-Martin was administered as part of Guadeloupe. Most emoji platforms render 🇲🇫 as a variant of the French tricolore with a local coat-of-arms device on a central white field; Apple's current rendering shows a blue-yellow-red shield with pelican and Caribbean wave motifs.

The border between Saint-Martin and Sint Maarten is open: no customs, no passport control, no border fence. The only official markers are a handful of stone obelisks, the twin Friendship Monuments (one on each side), and the 1948 Concordia Monument atop Mount Concordia, where the original 1648 treaty was signed. You can walk, drive, or swim across. The economic side-effects are stark: the French side runs on the euro and French minimum wage, the Dutch side runs on the Caribbean guilder (XCG) with lower labor costs, and cross-border arbitrage on fuel, alcohol, and cigarettes is a daily fact of life. Most tourists fly into Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM) on the Dutch side and are renting cars or taxis to both halves within the hour.

Socially, 🇲🇫 runs on four engines. The first is gastronomy: Grand-Case), a narrow village on the French side's northwest coast, markets itself as the 'gastronomic capital of the Caribbean', with roughly 30 French and Creole restaurants lined up along a single 2-km beachfront boulevard, including several Michelin-recommended kitchens. The second is the binational Saint Martin's Day on November 11, when the French Prefect and the Dutch King's Commissioner meet at the Concordia Monument for a joint ceremony. The third is Hurricane Irma: on September 6, 2017, a Category 5 landed on the island and destroyed or seriously damaged 90% of structures; the French side's post-Irma recovery is still ongoing and drives a significant share of the flag's news-cycle usage. The fourth is the split-island content genre, YouTube videos and TikToks comparing 'Dutch side vs French side' of the same beach, meal, or supermarket. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015 as the regional indicator sequence U+1F1F2 U+1F1EBU+1F1F2 U+1F1EB.

🇲🇫 has three big posting windows plus a heavy cross-border baseline. November 11 Saint Martin's Day is the single biggest binational window. The Concordia Monument on Mount Concordia is the treaty site; each year, French Prefect and Dutch King's Commissioner meet at the monument for speeches, flag-raising, and church service. The date is also the Catholic saint day of Martin of Tours), the island's patron. The Friendship Monument at the Bellevue-Cole Bay border is lit up for the occasion. 🇲🇫 and 🇸🇽 fly side-by-side across both halves' social feeds.

Carnival season (January to Ash Wednesday) runs on the French side with the Catholic calendar, culminating in the Marigot Grand Parade and Vaval burning. (The Dutch side's SXM Carnival runs separately, typically April to early May, around the Catholic Easter octave.) The French side's Carnival is smaller and more neighborhood-anchored than Guadeloupe's or Martinique's, with core parades through Marigot and Grand-Case.

September 6 Hurricane Irma anniversary is a somber annual window. The 2017 storm destroyed or seriously damaged 90% of structures, and parts of the French side (especially Quartier d'Orléans and Sandy Ground) are still rebuilding in 2026. Local news outlets, the Collectivity of Saint-Martin, and diaspora accounts in Paris and Guadeloupe mark the date annually.

Outside those windows, 🇲🇫 runs on gastronomic content (Grand-Case restaurants post heavily through the December-to-April high season), on beach content (Orient Bay on the east coast is the island's most-photographed beach, with a long clothing-optional tradition at its southern end), on yacht charter content (Marigot's lagoon is a Caribbean yacht hub), and on cross-border arbitrage humor (cheaper fuel on the Dutch side, cheaper cheese on the French side, cheaper everything on someone's side depending on the week's exchange rate).

• 🏛️
  Capital: [Marigot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marigot,_Saint_Martin), on the western lagoon shore. Population ~5,000. Market Tuesday-Saturday, Fort Louis (1789) overlooking the harbor.
• 👥
  Population: ~32,500 (2024 est.). [January 2021 census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivity_of_Saint_Martin): 31,477. Plus Sint Maarten's 42,000 on the Dutch side makes the whole island ~75,000.
• 🗺️
  Area: 53 km² (20 sq mi). Northern 60% of the 87 km² island shared with Dutch Sint Maarten. Highest point: Pic Paradis (424 m).
• 💱
  Currency: Euro (€) on the French side. The Dutch side uses the Caribbean guilder (XCG); US dollars circulate freely across both halves.
• 🗣️
  Languages: French (official). English is the daily lingua franca across the whole island. Saint-Martin Creole (French-based) is also spoken in older households.
• 🏛️
  Government: [Overseas collectivity (COM) of France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivity_of_Saint_Martin) since July 15, 2007. 23-seat Territorial Council. Preéfet (shared with Saint-Barthélemy). 1 deputy in the National Assembly, 1 senator in Paris.
• 📞
  Calling code: +590 (shared with Guadeloupe and Saint-Barthélemy from the pre-2007 administrative unity).
• ⏰
  Time zone: AST (UTC-4), no daylight saving. Same as Atlantic Standard Time year-round.
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .mf (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, delegated 2007 after separation from Guadeloupe).

Foods that show up next to 🇲🇫

Landmarks that anchor travel content

The Kalinago called the island Soualiga), 'the salt land', for its abundant salt pans. Columbus sighted it on November 11, 1493 (the feast of Saint Martin of Tours, which gave the island its Spanish and later French name). Spain made no serious settlement, and by the 1620s Dutch and French settlers had both established outposts. In 1633, Spain briefly retook the island; in 1648, after Spain withdrew from the minor Caribbean theater, France and the Dutch Republic signed the Treaty of Concordia on March 23, 1648 on Mount Concordia, dividing the island between them. The agreement gave the northern 53 km² to France and the southern 34 km² to the Dutch Republic, with open movement for residents of either nationality and joint rights to the salt pans. The border has moved slightly over 375 years, but the treaty's essential framework of peaceful coexistence has held through 16 subsequent wars between France and the Netherlands or its various allies.

Slavery was abolished on the French side on May 28, 1848 (same year as the other French Caribbean DOMs, five days after Martinique). On the Dutch side, abolition came 15 years later, on July 1, 1863. Saint-Martin was administered as a commune of Guadeloupe until the July 15, 2007 COM law created the Collectivity of Saint-Martin as a separate overseas entity of France, alongside the Collectivity of Saint-Barthélemy. A local Territorial Council now handles most of the island's civil matters; defense, justice, and foreign affairs remain with the French state via the Préfet de Saint-Martin (who also oversees Saint-Barthélemy).

The 2017 Hurricane Irma was the defining modern event. Irma struck on September 6, 2017 as a Category 5 with sustained winds of 295 km/h. 90% of structures on the island were destroyed or seriously damaged, including most of Marigot's waterfront, the Sandy Ground neighborhood, Quartier d'Orléans, Grand-Case's beachfront restaurants, and every school in the French side. Eleven people died on Saint-Martin; post-Irma reconstruction has been slow, tangled in French insurance law, French zoning regulations, and the COM's limited budget. Irma also exposed the economic asymmetry: the Dutch side's hotel industry recovered faster, while parts of the French side's Sandy Ground are still being rebuilt almost a decade later.

• 🎉
  January 1: New Year's Day: Public holiday. Simpson Bay Lagoon fireworks visible from both French and Dutch halves.
• 🎭
  Early January to Ash Wednesday: French-side Carnival: Weekly Sunday parades through Marigot and Grand-Case. Ka drums, satirical floats, Vaval. Separate from the Dutch side's SXM Carnival (April to May).
• 🐣
  April 3 + 6, 2026: Good Friday and Easter Monday: Public holidays. Family beach picnics on Grand-Case, Orient Bay, and Friar's Bay on Easter Monday.
• 👷
  May 1: Labour Day: French-side public holiday. The Dutch side does not observe May 1.
• 🕊️
  May 8: Victory in Europe Day: Public holiday. Ceremonies at the Marigot war memorial.
• 🕊️
  May 28: Abolition Day: French-side Abolition Day commemoration. Distinct from Guadeloupe's May 27 and Martinique's May 22. Ceremonies at Marigot town hall.
• 🇫🇷
  July 14: Bastille Day: French national holiday. Parade in Marigot, military fly-past. The only date when 🇫🇷 clearly dominates over 🇲🇫 on the French side.
• 🌀
  September 6: Hurricane Irma anniversary: Not a public holiday, but a deeply observed annual commemoration. [Ceremonies at Sandy Ground and Quartier d'Orléans](https://www.sunsail.com/blog/st-martin-hurricane) mark the 2017 storm that destroyed 90% of the island.
• 🤝
  November 11: Saint Martin's Day (binational): The island's defining day. French Prefect and Dutch King's Commissioner meet at the [Concordia Monument](https://www.visitstmaarten.com/monuments/concordia-monument/). Church service at Marigot's Notre-Dame-des-Terres-Basses. Feast day of Saint Martin of Tours.
• 🎄
  December 25: Christmas Day: Public holiday across the whole island. French-style réveillon on Christmas Eve; English-language Christmas carols dominate radio across both halves.

• •Saint-Martin shares the only French-Dutch land border) anywhere in the world. It is also the world's smallest inhabited island divided between two sovereign states. No border control, no fence, no customs: just obelisks, monuments, and a handful of 'Bienvenue côté français / Welcome to the Dutch side' signs.
• •The 1648 Treaty of Concordia has one of the oldest peaceful-coexistence arrangements of any colonial treaty still in effect. France and the Netherlands have fought 16 wars against each other (or through allied blocs) since 1648, and the treaty's open-border provisions have never been formally suspended.
• •Saint Martin of Tours, the island's patron saint), was a 4th-century Roman soldier who tore his cloak in half to share with a beggar. His feast day (November 11) coincides with Columbus's 1493 sighting of the island, which is how the island got its European name. Both halves of the island observe November 11 as the binational public holiday.
• •Grand-Case markets itself as 'the gastronomic capital of the Caribbean' and has roughly one restaurant per 50 residents along its 2 km Boulevard de Grand-Case. Tuesday 'Harmony Nights' in high season turn the entire street into an outdoor dining festival. Several of the restaurants are Michelin-recommended.
• •Saint-Martin's local flag includes a brown pelican on its coat of arms, the same bird that appears on Sint Maarten's official flag on the Dutch side. The pelican is the island's de facto binational symbol, predating the 1648 treaty and appearing on both sides' tourism branding.
• •Princess Juliana Airport (SXM)) is on the Dutch side, but serves both halves of the island. The runway threshold sits at the edge of Maho Beach on the Dutch side, producing the viral videos of planes landing 10 metres above beachgoers' heads. After Hurricane Irma, SXM was closed to commercial flights for roughly five months and took nearly five years to fully rebuild the main terminal; reopening was completed in November 2024.
• •There is a small movement) for a unified independent Saint Martin that would combine the French and Dutch halves into a single sovereign nation. It has never had majority support on either side, but it produces its own unity flag (a rainbow-striped design) that occasionally shows up on both halves during Saint Martin's Day.
• •The French-side official language is French, but English dominates daily life across the whole island, a legacy of 18th-century British and American commercial influence in the Caribbean. Government and schools operate in French; stores, taxi drivers, and restaurants default to English with French as a secondary option.

• •🇲🇫 is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1F2U+1F1F2 (M) + U+1F1EBU+1F1EB (F). ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code: MFMF.
• •Shortcode: :flag_mf::flag_mf: or :saint_martin::saint_martin: on most platforms.
• •The .mf country-code TLD was delegated after the 2007 separation from Guadeloupe. The +590 calling code is shared with Guadeloupe and Saint-Barthélemy.
• •🇲🇫 and 🇸🇽 together cover the full 87 km² island. Both emojis are needed for a complete picture; don't substitute one for the other.

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