The tropical royal flycatcher (Onychorhynchus coronatus) is a passerine bird that the International Ornithological Committee (IOC) places in the family Tityridae.

[5][6] The tropical royal flycatcher was formally described in 1776 by the German zoologist Philipp Statius Müller under the binomial name Muscicapa coronata.

[7] Müller based his account on a hand-colored illustration of the "Tyran hupé de Cayenne" that had been engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet.

BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) retains the four-species treatment that IOC abandoned.

[12] Through 2022 the Clements taxonomy treated the northern, Amazonian, Pacific, and Atlantic taxa as a single species, the royal flycatcher.

In 2023 Clements split the Atlantic from it and lumped the other three taxa as the tropical royal flycatcher, achieving somewhat earlier the same two species as the 2024 IOC change.

However, Clements placed them, five other flycatchers, and the sharpbill (Oxyruncus cristatus) in family Oxyruncidae, rather than in Tityridae like the IOC.

In the nominate subspecies O. c. coronatus it is red with blue tips in the male and yellow or orange in the female.

O. c. fraterculus is slightly smaller than mexicanus, with a paler cinnamon rump and tail and even less barring on the breast.

In elevation it ranges from sea level to 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in much of Central America and Colombia though lower in Costa Rica.

The species typically forages singly or less often in pairs, and occasionally joins mixed-species feeding flocks.

The species' calls include "a loud, mellow, hollow-sounding keeeyup or keee-yew", "a low-pitched sur-líp", and "a squeaky to hollow, plaintive whee-uk or see-yuk".

[17] The IUCN follows HBW taxonomy and so has separately assessed the northern, Amazonian, and Pacific royal flycatchers.