Clinking Glasses Emoji

Two champagne flutes clinking in a toast. Approved in Unicode 9.0 in 2016 as U+1F942U+1F942 CLINKING GLASSES, added to Emoji 3.0. The formal cousin of 🍻 (beer mugs) and the celebratory follow-up to 🍾 (bottle pop).

🥂 is almost exclusively used for celebration — New Year's Eve, weddings, engagements, promotions, graduations. It's one of the most unambiguously positive emojis in the whole set; the only way to send it ironically is to send 🥂 about something terrible, which is itself a recognized format.

The champagne it depicts is hitched to a real ~$8 billion global industry with a fascinating history: the drink was refined (not invented) by Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon in the late 1600s), and became culturally anointed by Louis XIV at Versailles.

🥂 is the most seasonally predictable drink emoji. Google Trends shows 'champagne emoji' searches jumping from a baseline of ~25 to 56-82 every December, then crashing back in January. The pattern is as reliable as 🎃 in October or ☘️ in March.

Outside New Year's, 🥂 anchors wedding content (it's the most-used drink emoji in wedding hashtags), engagement announcements ('he proposed 🥂💍' / 'she said yes 🥂'), promotion posts ('officially a [title] 🥂'), and milestone moments — book launches, graduations, anniversaries. It's the default in LinkedIn celebration posts where 🍾 might feel too loud.

Textually, 🥂 signals classy celebration: 'dressed up, really happy for you.' On dating apps 🥂 in a bio reads as 'date-night energy.' In group chats it closes a 'we did it' thread cleanly. The emoji does not play well with casual contexts — sending 🥂 about a Tuesday beer feels incongruous, which is part of its charm.

Platform patterns: Instagram skews aspirational (hands-holding-flutes, wedding table shots), X uses it more ironically, TikTok uses it in 'level up' narrative content ('from this to this 🥂'), LinkedIn uses it almost exclusively for promotion and milestone announcements.

🥂 is the newer of the two clinking-drinks emojis — 🍻 shipped in 2010, but 🥂 didn't arrive until Unicode 9.0 in June 2016. The gap is significant because it meant six years where the only emoji 'cheers' was a pair of beer mugs. 🥂 filled a formal-celebration niche the set had been missing.

The drink behind the emoji has a specifically aristocratic French history. The myth says Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon (1638-1715)) invented champagne, supposedly saying 'Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!' upon discovering sparkling wine. Neither part is true — Dom Pérignon joined Hautvillers Abbey in 1668 and worked there for 47 years, but he's best documented for refining champagne blending and production, not inventing bubbles. The 'tasting the stars' quote was a late-19th-century advertising copywriter's invention.

What actually made champagne champagne was: - 1662: English scientist Christopher Merret published the sugar-in-wine technique that reliably generates bubbles. - 1728: Louis XV authorized shipping wine in bottles — a rule that let the Champagne region become the world's sparkling-wine monopoly. - 1936: Moët & Chandon released the first 'Dom Pérignon' prestige cuvée (1921 vintage), retroactively making the monk a brand.

Louis XIV adored the drink and made it the court beverage at Versailles. By the early 20th century, restaurants like Martin's in New York were insisting 'champagne only after 9pm on New Year's Eve,' cementing the holiday pairing. The emoji inherits all of that — aristocratic, ritualized, specifically celebratory.

1. 1668Dom Pierre Pérignon joins Hautvillers Abbey; refines (does not invent) champagne↗
2. 1728Louis XV authorizes shipping wine in bottles, enabling champagne's export and cultural rise
3. 1936Moët & Chandon launches 'Dom Pérignon' prestige cuvée, retroactively turning a monk into a luxury brand
4. 2016Approved in Unicode 9.0 as U+1F942 CLINKING GLASSES; added to Emoji 3.0↗
5. 2020Pandemic New Year's Eve produces peak 'virtual toast' 🥂 usage — the emoji carries ritual when the party can't happen
6. 2024[Champagne exports fall 9.2% to 271.4 million bottles globally](https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/champagne-market-112162), LVMH's champagne division down 12%. 🥂 social usage barely moves — another 'aesthetic decoupling' case
7. 2025Low-alcohol and NA 'celebration wines' expand into weddings and New Year's content; 🥂 starts appearing on zero-proof sparkling content

• •Dom Pérignon didn't actually invent champagne). The Benedictine monk (1638-1715) refined blending techniques at Hautvillers Abbey, but sparkling champagne didn't become dominant until the mid-19th century. The 'I am tasting the stars!' quote was a late-1800s ad copywriter's invention.
• •English scientist Christopher Merret published the technique for reliably getting bubbles into wine in 1662 — six years before Dom Pérignon even joined his abbey. The French usually get the credit; the English deserve at least a footnote.
• •Only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France can legally be called 'champagne' under EU and international law. Prosecco (Italy), Cava (Spain), and Franciacorta (Italy) are similar but cannot share the name.
• •Google Trends data shows 'champagne emoji' searches spike from a baseline of ~25 to 56-82 every December, then crash in January. The pattern is so consistent it functions as a calendar.
• •Moët & Chandon produces about 28 million bottles of champagne per year — roughly 12% of total global champagne output. One brand is 🥂's primary real-world substance.
• •In 2024, global champagne exports fell 9.2% to 271.4 million bottles, and LVMH's champagne/wine division revenue dropped 12%. The actual drink is in decline; the emoji's social-media usage has barely moved.
• •🥂 is the third-youngest drink emoji in the core beverage set, only shipping in Unicode 9.0 in 2016. Before that, digital formal toasts had to use 🍻 (beer mugs), which never quite worked for weddings.
• •Formula 1 podium champagne sprays became a tradition in 1967 when Dan Gurney spontaneously shook and sprayed a bottle after winning Le Mans. Every F1 race since has amplified champagne's celebration-coding on global TV, feeding directly into how 🥂 reads.
• •Louis XIV kept hundreds of champagne bottles in his Versailles cellars. When the court drank, Europe's aristocracy followed. The Sun King basically brand-launched champagne for all of human history.

• •Sex and the City: Carrie and the girls popped champagne constantly — 🥂 inherited a lot of its 'single-woman celebration' aesthetic from the show's 1998-2004 run.
• •F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: champagne towers and Gatsby's parties made flutes the ultimate Jazz Age luxury signifier. Every 🥂 post is distantly echoing a Gatsby brunch.
• •Succession (2018-23): the Roy family's champagne-soaked milestones made 🥂 an irony-coded emoji for 'dysfunctional wealth' in the years the show aired.
• •Formula 1 podium celebrations: the iconic champagne spray on Grands Prix podiums gave 🥂 a globally-televised cultural foundation every two weeks through racing season.
• •Parks and Recreation 'Treat Yo' Self' episodes: Tom Haverford and Donna Meagle's celebratory excess (which always involved champagne) made 🥂 a meme for 'indulge without apology.'

• •🥂 is U+1F942U+1F942. Common shortcodes: :clinking_glasses::clinking_glasses: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Emoji 3.0 / Unicode 9.0 — supported universally since mid-2016. Pre-2016 devices may render as missing glyph.
• •Because 🥂 is strongly celebration-coded, it's a good choice for UI success states (payment completed, milestone hit, account upgraded). 🎉 is more generic; 🥂 implies something was earned.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.