Six months af­ter it was an­nounced that changes would be made to the coun­try’s Coat of Arms, the new­ly mod­i­fied em­blem has been pro­claimed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo.

The new Coat of Arms fea­tur­ing the Steel­pan which is T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment, will of­fi­cial­ly be utilised from Feb­ru­ary 25.

The Procla­ma­tion brings The Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) Act, 2025 (“the Act”), in­to op­er­a­tion.

The Act af­fects the re­place­ment of the im­ages of Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships with a gold Steel­pan and its icon­ic two pan sticks.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the changes to the Coat of Arms on Au­gust 18, 2024 – dur­ing a spe­cial PNM con­ven­tion held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), to con­sid­er the re­port of the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion re­view com­mit­tee.

The new de­sign was done by jew­eller and artist Gillian Bish­op.

It fol­lowed one month af­ter the steel­pan was named the na­tion­al in­stru­ment as the Na­tion­al Mu­si­cal In­stru­ment Act 2024 was passed.

The Coat of Arms can be found on mon­ey; gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cles and build­ings, in­clud­ing em­bassies and high com­mis­sions abroad; and of­fi­cial doc­u­ments such as birth cer­tifi­cates, pass­ports and ID cards.

It was de­signed by a com­mit­tee formed in 1962 to se­lect the sym­bols to rep­re­sent T&T’s peo­ple and in­clud­ed artist Carlisle Chang and de­sign­er George Bai­ley.