World Emoji Day July 17

We use emojis every day, so why not celebrate them? World Emoji Day! Did you even know that there’s a World Emoji Day? Well, there is … and it’s on July 17!  Not a day goes by where I don’t use a little party popper emoji to add color to a conversation or a joy face to laugh at a joke. Emoji have become major tools of communication over the past decade alongside gifs and memes and so this year’s World Emoji Day is on Saturday, July 17.

So why July 17? July 17 is famously displayed on the Calendar Emoji, which is why we chose it as the date for World Emoji Day. The calendar emoji date is the reason this July 17 was chosen, but the day is much bigger than just one emoji. World Emoji Day is a celebration of all emojis.

Emoji is the fastest-growing language in history. Five billion emojis are sent every day, just on Facebook Messenger. They’re appearing in some surprising places too. One court judge in England used a smiley face emoji in a document to make it easy to explain the court’s decision to children. It’s not surprising that there’s a day to celebrate emojis, but what do you know about its organizers, the website Emojipedia?

The company Unicode actually creates the computer code that gives us emojis, but Emojipedia is where you can learn exactly what each emoji means and how to use it. Most of us probably know and use the most popular emojis, like the classic smiley face, heart, or the smiling face with tears of laughter. But if you want to grow your emoji vocabulary, you can use Emojipedia to find out new ways to speak emoji.

Save the date!

There’s some emoji history behind how Emojipedia chose 17 July to celebrate World Emoji Day. Check out the calendar emoji on Emojipedia and look carefully. Can you see the date? The code for each emoji is the same, but different platforms, like Twitter or Facebook, for example, design their emojis in different ways. When Emojipedia was deciding which day to hold the celebration, only Apple was using a calendar emoji with a date on, 17 July. So they decided to celebrate emojis on 17 July too.

Apple chose that date because it was when Apple introduced its iCal calendar feature for Mac in 2002. Now, other platforms have added dates to their calendar emojis. Facebook Messenger uses its launch date of 9 August. Twitter’s calendar emoji shows 21 March because that’s the date Twitter created its company. It used to show Twitter’s launch date, which was 15 July, but that was too close to World Emoji Day’s date, so they changed it.

Happy World Emoji Day! 

So, if you want to send someone a message using emoji to celebrate the day, Emojipedia has plenty to choose from, including six colors of raising hand emojis, five-party emojis, and two kinds of fireworks. You can even choose a world globe that shows the part of the world you live in. Whichever emojis you choose to celebrate, we wish you Happy World Emoji Day!