A crown was added to Liechtenstein’s flag in 1937. The change followed the discovery at the 1936 Summer Olympics that Liechtenstein’s blue-and-red civil flag was identical to Haiti’s civil flag.
Liechtenstein’s delegation encountered the problem in Berlin, where the two flags could not be distinguished by their colors or horizontal arrangement. Liechtenstein responded by adding the prince’s crown in the canton, the upper corner nearest the flagpole. The modified design was formally adopted on 24 June 1937.
The crown was more than a visual identifier: it also emphasized that Liechtenstein is a principality. Haiti dealt with the Olympic confusion by displaying a version bearing its national arms, while Liechtenstein retained the new crown design.
The flag’s basic blue-and-red colors had been used since the nineteenth century and received official constitutional status in 1921. In 1982, Liechtenstein adopted a modified form of the crown still used today.