Size: 17-24 mm. The skin is relatively smooth, and the "usual" coloration includes a bright red back, some small black spots, black to dark blue hind legs, and a red belly, which occasionally is red and blue, and can vary toward tan and white in some Panamanian localities.

Unusual color variations occur on the small islands off the coast of Panama (in the Bocas del Toro archipelago), including these color combinations: blue above and below, without spots; green above and below with small spots; green above and white below, with small spots; red above and white below, with small spots; and olive green above and yellow below, with black flecks. In each population there is generally only a single color morph, but on the Island of Bastimentos there are different colors in one population. Males have a tan-grayish vocal pouch under the throat, visible when they call to defend their territory. When removed from their territory, they lose the vocal pouch coloration fairly rapidly (Summers et al. 1997).
 

A Spanish-language species account can be found at the website of Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio). In 2011, the genus Dendrobates was subdivided into seven genera, including the new genus Oophaga by Brown et al (2011).