The current flag of El Salvador has two blue stripes.
Its design is a horizontal triband: blue on top, white in the middle, and blue on the bottom. The national coat of arms appears within the central white stripe on the Bandera Magna, the formal flag used for government and national occasions. Other versions replace the arms with the motto “Dios, Unión, Libertad,” meaning “God, Union, Liberty.”
The blue stripes symbolize the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with the Atlantic reference representing Central America as a whole even though El Salvador itself has no Atlantic coastline. The white stripe represents peace. The design descends from the blue-white-blue flag of the former Federal Republic of Central America, which in turn drew inspiration from Argentina’s flag.
A historical trap is that El Salvador once used a very different flag. From 1865 to 1912, it featured nine alternating blue-and-white stripes and a red canton with stars; the number of stars later rose to fourteen as departments were created. The modern triband was adopted again in 1912 and formally defined under the 1972 Law of National Symbols.