The yellow stripe is one-half of the flag of Colombia. Colombia’s horizontal yellow-blue-red tricolor follows a 2:1:1 height ratio, so the yellow band occupies half of the flag while the blue and red bands each occupy one quarter.
This unusual proportion is one of the quickest ways to distinguish Colombia’s flag from similar flags associated with Ecuador and Venezuela. All three countries use yellow, blue, and red because of their shared historical connection to the independence movements and the former state of Gran Colombia, but their stripe dimensions and details differ.
The yellow band sits at the top, with blue below it and red at the bottom. The design’s arrangement was officially adopted on November 26, 1861, although the color tradition reaches back to the flag created by Francisco de Miranda in the early nineteenth century.
People sometimes answer one-third because they expect a standard three-stripe tricolor with equal bands. That would be true for many national flags, but not Colombia’s. On a flag divided into four equal-height units, yellow fills two units and the blue and red bands fill one unit each.