World Emoji Day
Next: July 17, 2027
Say it with a tiny picture.
The story
Where it comes from
Emoji began in Japan. In 1999 the mobile operator NTT DOCOMO released a set of 176 little pictures for phones and pagers, drawn by Shigetaka Kurita on a grid of 12 by 12 pixels. World Emoji Day came much later. Jeremy Burge, founder of the website Emojipedia, created it in 2014, partly as a bit of fun, and picked 17 July because that is the date on Apple's calendar emoji, a nod to the day Apple announced its iCal app in 2002. The first was held on 17 July 2014.
How it's celebrated
People post their favourite emoji with #WorldEmojiDay, hold emoji parties, bake emoji cakes, or try answering every message in emoji only. Tech companies have used the day to preview new emoji, and in 2017 the Empire State Building was lit emoji yellow. Emojipedia, now owned by the app company Zedge, still runs the day.
Did you know
- The word comes from the Japanese e, 'picture', and moji, 'character'.
- In 2016 the Museum of Modern Art in New York added Kurita's original 176 emoji to its collection, a gift from NTT DOCOMO.
- DOCOMO first used emoji to send weather reports to pagers, which is one reason today's keyboards have so many moons and kinds of weather.
Coming up next
- Nelson Mandela International Day · July 18, 2027
- National Ice Cream Day · July 18, 2027
- Edgar Degas's Birthday · July 19, 2027
- International Moon Day · July 20, 2027
- World Chess Day · July 20, 2027
- Racial Harmony Day · July 21, 2027