The Parachute Regiment: The Maroon Beret and What It Takes to Earn One

September 28, 2026

The maroon beret is probably the most recognisable piece of British military headwear after the Guards' bearskin, and unlike the bearskin it is worn by people who are still doing the job. It is also, more than almost any other item of British uniform, understood as something earned rather than issued.

Formed for a new idea

The Parachute Regiment dates from 1942, formed as Britain built an airborne capability during the Second World War. The concept — delivering infantry by parachute and glider behind or beyond an enemy — was new, and the regiment was built around it from scratch rather than converted from something older.

That gives it a much shorter history than most British infantry regiments and a much more concentrated one. Everything the regiment is known for happened within living memory or close to it.

Utrinque Paratus

The motto is Utrinque Paratus — "ready for anything", or more literally "prepared on both sides". For a regiment whose defining characteristic is arriving somewhere unexpected and often without support, it is a fairly practical statement of the situation.

The badge and the wings

The cap badge combines a winged parachute with a lion and crown, and it is unmistakable. Alongside it sits the other airborne marker: parachute wings, worn on the sleeve, which indicate qualification as a military parachutist.

Two things are worth being clear about, because they are constantly confused:

The cap badge means the regiment. It says which unit somebody belongs to.
The wings mean the qualification. They say the wearer is a qualified military parachutist — and personnel from other units who qualify wear them too.

So wings on a sleeve do not automatically mean the Parachute Regiment, and that distinction matters when identifying loose insignia or a uniform.

Why the beret colour carries weight

The maroon beret is worn by airborne forces, and within the British Army it is understood as a qualification marker rather than simply a unit colour. It is associated with a selection process with a formidable reputation, and that association is why the colour is treated the way it is.

Practically, for anyone buying: maroon berets are sold openly and there is no restriction on owning one. But it is worth understanding what the colour signifies before wearing one in a setting where people may draw conclusions. The same applies to the green beret of the Royal Marines. Nothing legal — simply worth knowing what you are saying.

Collecting airborne material

Wings come in many patterns. Different periods, different materials, different backing colours, and versions for different qualification levels. This is one of the deeper areas of British insignia collecting.
Reproductions are common, because demand is high. Wartime airborne items in particular are among the most reproduced British insignia there is.
Check materials against the claimed period. Design is easy to copy; wartime cloth, thread and construction are not.
Airborne formation signs — the wider divisional and brigade insignia — are a rewarding area in their own right, and less faked than wings.

A note on buying berets

A maroon beret is a wool beret like any other, and everything about shaping, sizing and care applies exactly as it does to any other colour. Buy to your head measurement, shape it wet on your own head, and never dry it on a radiator.

Airborne forces are more than one regiment

The Parachute Regiment is the best-known part of British airborne forces but it has never been the whole of them. Airborne operations need artillery, engineers, signals, medical and logistic support, all of it parachute-trained, and those personnel wear the maroon beret while retaining their own corps cap badges.

This is the single most useful thing to understand when identifying airborne material. A maroon beret with a Royal Engineers badge is not a mistake — it is an airborne sapper, and entirely correct. The beret indicates airborne status; the badge indicates the corps.

Formation signs and the Pegasus

Alongside regimental insignia, British airborne forces carry formation signs at divisional and brigade level, and these are among the most collected pieces of British military insignia there is. The winged horse associated with British airborne forces is instantly recognisable and has appeared in numerous versions and variants over the decades.

Because demand is so high, this is also one of the most heavily reproduced areas of British insignia. Design copying is trivial; matching period cloth, thread and construction is not, so materials rather than appearance are what to judge on.

Buying airborne items sensibly

Assume reproduction until the materials say otherwise on anything claimed as wartime. That is not cynicism, it is the state of this particular market.
Post-war and modern items are plentiful and honest, and a good place to build a collection without risk.
Wings come in many patterns across periods and qualification levels — a genuinely deep collecting area on its own.
Buy the beret separately from the badge. They are almost always separated anyway, and a beret sold with a badge already fitted is worth checking rather than assuming the pairing is original.