Introduction

The flag of Miami, Florida, is a civic banner consisting of a white field bearing the city seal at its center, rendered in the city's characteristic orange and green. It represents the City of Miami proper, as distinct from Miami-Dade County, which flies its own flag.

The seal depicts a royal palm tree and a steamship, framed by the legend "City of Miami, Florida" and the year of incorporation, 1896. The palm and the ship condense the city's two founding realities: a subtropical landscape and a port economy.

The orange and green palette is strongly associated with Miami's civic identity and Florida's citrus heritage, and makes the flag immediately identifiable among the many seal-on-white municipal flags of the United States.

Meaning & Symbolism

The white field stands for the light and openness of a subtropical coastal city. The royal palm in the seal represents South Florida's natural landscape, while the steamship recalls the maritime trade and the arrival of the Florida East Coast Railway era that turned a small settlement into a major port city.

The orange tones evoke the citrus groves and sunshine that drew settlers to the region, and the green the tropical vegetation. The legend's date, 1896, marks Miami's incorporation, famously voted by just over 300 citizens.

History of the Miami Flag

Miami was incorporated in 1896, and its seal dates from the city's early period. Like many American cities, Miami placed its municipal seal on a plain field to serve as the city flag, a design that has remained essentially stable while the city around it transformed from a railroad town into a global metropolis.

Curiosities

  • The seal's steamship and royal palm summarize Miami's origins: a port settlement in a subtropical landscape, incorporated in 1896 by a vote of a few hundred residents.
  • The orange and green civic palette is echoed across Miami institutions, most famously by the University of Miami, whose colors were inspired by the Florida orange tree: orange for the fruit, green for the leaves.
  • Vexillologists class the design as a 'seal on a field' flag, a style common among US city flags, though Miami's unusual orange-green palette makes it easier to identify than most.

Download Flag

Download the flag of Miami in high-quality SVG vector format or PNG raster images. SVG files can be scaled to any size without losing quality.

Digital icon artwork; its proportions may differ from the official flag proportions listed on this page.

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Construction Sheet

The flag is a white rectangle with the circular city seal centered on the field. The seal, in orange and green line work, contains the royal palm and steamship vignette surrounded by the city's name and incorporation year. No official construction sheet with precise geometric ratios is published; in practice the seal's diameter is roughly half the flag's height.

Flags Similar to Miami Flag

Common Misidentifications

Rarely misidentified due to its unique design, but the color scheme may evoke loose associations with tropical or Southwestern U.S. imagery.