What Is a Battle Honour, and How Does a Regiment Get One?

October 19, 2026

Look closely at a regiment's colours, or at the scrolls around some cap badges, and you will find place names: battles and campaigns the regiment took part in. These are battle honours, and they are awarded rather than claimed.

What they actually are

A battle honour is formal recognition that a regiment took part in a particular battle or campaign. It is granted through an official process, not adopted by the regiment itself, and once granted it belongs to the regiment permanently.

That permanence is the important part. Honours are inherited through amalgamations, which is why a modern regiment can carry honours from actions fought by predecessor regiments centuries before it existed. A regiment's honours are a map of every lineage that flowed into it.

Why only some are displayed

Most regiments with long histories have far more honours than can physically fit on a set of colours. The solution is selection: a limited number are emblazoned on the colours, chosen by the regiment from the full list.

So the honours you can see are a regiment's own choice about which parts of its history to display, which is a more interesting thing than a complete list would be. The full roll exists in the records; what goes on the colours is a statement.

Theatre honours and battle honours

There is a distinction worth knowing. Some honours name a specific battle; others name a whole campaign or theatre. They are awarded on different bases and recognise different things — participation in a named action, as against service in a campaign.

Both appear in regimental records, and the difference matters when you are trying to work out what a particular regiment actually did.

The regiments with none

The Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers carry no battle honours at all. Instead they carry a single word: Ubique, meaning everywhere.

The logic is that artillery and engineers were present at essentially every action the British Army fought, so listing them would be both impossible and beside the point. It is one of the great pieces of British military understatement, and it is why a Ubique scroll on a badge tells you immediately which family you are in.

Rifle regiments and colours

Rifle regiments have no colours to put honours on, because they never carried colours — colours were rallying points for troops fighting in formed lines, and rifle regiments fought as skirmishers.

Their honours exist and are recorded; they are simply displayed differently, for example on drums and appointments rather than on colours.

What this means for collectors

Honours on a badge date it. A badge bearing an honour cannot predate the award of that honour, which sometimes gives you a tighter date than the crown does.
Honours trace lineage. If a modern badge carries an honour from a much older action, that tells you which predecessor regiment the lineage runs through.
Colours and drums are a specialist area in their own right, and the honours displayed on them are documented.
Beware invented honours. On reproduction items, honours are sometimes approximated or misspelled. Checking an honour against the regiment's documented roll is a genuine authenticity test.

Where honours are actually displayed

Colours are the obvious place, but not the only one. Honours and regimental devices appear on:

Drums, particularly in regiments that carry no colours.
Appointments and accoutrements - belt plates, drum majors' sashes, and similar.
Cap badges, where a single honour is sometimes incorporated into the design.
Regimental silver and property, which is a substantial collecting field of its own.

A single honour on a cap badge is usually significant - it means the regiment selected that one action above every other in its history to carry on the badge every soldier wears.

Honours and amalgamation

When regiments amalgamate, the honours come with them, and the combined regiment inherits everything from every predecessor. Over several rounds of amalgamation that produces some very long lists indeed.

For research this is genuinely useful. If a modern regiment displays an honour from an eighteenth-century action, that tells you which predecessor lineage the regiment runs through - and often narrows down which battalion an item belongs to.

Checking an honour

Battle honours are documented, which makes them one of the better authenticity tests available on insignia. An honour that a regiment was never awarded, or one spelled in a way the official roll does not use, is a real warning sign on an item claimed as genuine.

Regimental museums hold the definitive rolls and are used to being asked.