The Flag of Alberta: Blue Skies and Wild Roses

A Flag Beneath Big Sky Country

Alberta’s flag was adopted on June 1, 1968, and features the provincial shield of arms centred on a royal blue background. The ultramarine blue was chosen to represent Alberta’s famously expansive skies.

Design and Symbolism

The shield displays the Cross of St. George across the top, with Alberta’s landscape below: rolling foothills of green with a wheat field in the foreground, a range of snow-capped Rocky Mountains in the background, and a prairie landscape stretching to the horizon. The shield is the same one granted to the province in 1907, two years after Alberta joined Confederation.

Alberta’s flag is notable for being one of the few provincial flags to depict an actual landscape rather than abstract heraldic symbols. The mountains, foothills, prairies, and wheat field capture the province’s extraordinary geographic diversity in a single image. The wild rose, Alberta’s floral emblem, does not appear on the flag but is closely associated with the province’s identity.