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The coat of arms of the Swiss Confederation shows the same white-on-red cross as the flag of Switzerland, but on a heraldic shield instead of the square field.
The federal coat of arms (eidgenössisches Wappen) was defined by the Swiss Diet (Tagsatzung) in 1815 for the Restored Confederacy. A more elaborate federal seal was also defined, as the federal coat of arms surrounded by the twenty-two cantonal coats of arms. Similar heraldic arrangements representing the Thirteen Cantons of the Old Swiss Confederacy are on record from the mid-16th century.
The 1815 legislation remained in force in the federal state established in 1848, as was explicitly recognized by the Federal Council in 1889. While the simple coat of arms was in wide use, especially on coins, and from the early 20th century also on car number plates and passports, the full seal did not see official use beyond its representation in stained glass in the Federal Palace of Switzerland (c. 1900). The 19th-century definition of the federal seal and coat of arms was replaced only in 2017, with the adoption of a new law which defined the Swiss coat of arms as "a Swiss cross in a triangular shield" with fixed proportions, but which no longer recognizes a federal seal.
On coins, the red colour of the background is represented by a "hatched" background (that is, with thin vertical stripes as per heraldic tradition).
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