Curling Stone Emoji

A curling stone, the 42-pound polished granite disc with a handle that athletes slide down ice in curling, one of the Winter Olympics' most-watched and most-meme'd sports. Approved in Unicode 10.0 (June 2017) as U+1F94C CURLING STONEU+1F94C CURLING STONE and added to Emoji 5.0 the same year. Most vendors render it as a red- or blue-handled stone sitting on ice; Apple's handle is red, Google's is dark grey, Samsung's is cyan.

Curling has one of the most unusual economies in world sport. Every Olympic-grade curling stone is made from granite mined on one of two sources on earth: Ailsa Craig (a tiny volcanic plug island off Scotland's Ayrshire coast) and Trefor, Wales. Kays of Scotland, founded in 1851, is the sole global manufacturer of competition-grade stones. The World Curling Federation and the IOC both use Kays exclusively. Every stone at the Winter Olympics has, quite literally, come from a single workshop in Ayrshire for nearly two centuries.

🥌 gets used mostly around the Winter Olympics (every four years), the World Curling Championships, Canadian national events like the Brier, and the increasingly online curling scandal economy (yes, curling has viral scandals, see "Boopgate" in 2026). Outside those windows it's a niche emoji, used by actual club curlers and Canadians who treat curling as a second religion.

Curling has a wildly spiky online presence. For 46 months out of every 48, 🥌 is niche, used mostly by club curlers, Canadian sports media, and the small community of people who treat the sport as a year-round commitment. Then the Winter Olympics happens and the emoji goes feral.

The Olympic spike. Beijing 2022 drew 2.01 billion unique viewers across TV and digital, a 5% increase over PyeongChang 2018. Curling specifically became the "surprise sport" casual viewers fell in love with. Twitter/X floods with 🥌 during every curling match; casual fans discover "hurry hard," the yelling, the brooms, and the science of ice friction all over again.

Boopgate 2026. The most recent viral moment. In February 2026, Canadian skip Marc Kennedy was accused of an illegal "finger boop" on a stone during a match against Sweden, producing one of the most meme'd Winter Olympics controversies in years. 🥌👆😡 went wall-to-wall on Canadian sports X for a week.

Canadian identity. Canada has won more World Curling Championships than any other country (36 gold medals for the men's team). 🥌🇨🇦 carries deep cultural weight, the Brier and Scotties (women's national championship) are broadcast annually by TSN and treated as major sports events. A Canadian posting 🥌 is usually not about the Olympics; it's about a Thursday night league game.

Broomstacking & beer. The sport's traditional post-match ritual is "broomstacking", the winning team buys the losing team drinks. 🥌🍺 captures this cultural side of the sport. For club curlers, the broomstacking is arguably the main event.

Curling is one of the oldest team sports still played, and its origin is firmly Scottish. The earliest known curling stone, inscribed with the date 1511, was found when an old pond was drained at Dunblane, Scotland. A second stone dated 1551 was found in the same location. Both are now housed in the Stirling Smith Museum. The word "curling" first appears in print in a 1620 poem by Henry Adamson of Perth.

The Kilsyth Curling Club claims to be the world's oldest, formally constituted in 1716 and still in existence. By the 1800s, curling was an established Scottish pastime, and Scottish emigrants carried it with them to Canada, where the Royal Montreal Curling Club was founded in 1807, still the oldest sports club of any kind in North America.

The nickname "the roaring game" comes from the sound the stones make on rough pond ice. On modern manufactured ice (which is pebbled with tiny droplets that freeze into bumps), the sound is more of a low rumble than a roar, but the name stuck.

The stones themselves are a geological specialty. Olympic curling stones are made from granite quarried exclusively from Ailsa Craig, a small uninhabited volcanic plug island off the Ayrshire coast, and Trefor in Wales. Kays of Scotland, founded in 1851, holds exclusive harvesting rights from the Marquess of Ailsa. The Ailsa Craig granite comes in two varieties: Blue Hone (used for the running edge because it's impervious to water absorption) and Common Green (used for the body because it resists splintering on impact). Every Olympic stone in the world comes from one Scottish workshop.

The emoji arrived much later. 🥌 was approved in Unicode 10.0 in June 2017 as U+1F94C CURLING STONEU+1F94C CURLING STONE, part of a release that also added 🥅 (goal net, 2016), 🥊 (boxing glove), 🥋 (martial arts uniform), and several other sport-related emojis. The timing aligned with the lead-up to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

1. 1511Earliest known curling stone (dated 1511) found at Dunblane, Scotland↗
2. 1620First printed reference to "curling" in Henry Adamson's poem, Perth, Scotland
3. 1716Kilsyth Curling Club founded, claims to be world's oldest, still in existence
4. 1807Royal Montreal Curling Club founded, oldest sports club of any kind in North America
5. 1851Kays of Scotland founded, begins making curling stones from Ailsa Craig granite↗
6. 1924Curling's first Winter Olympics appearance at Chamonix, recognized retroactively in 2006
7. 1998Curling becomes an official Olympic sport at Nagano
8. 2017🥌 emoji approved in Unicode 10.0 as U+1F94C CURLING STONE↗
9. 2022[Beijing Olympics](https://www.olympics.com/en/news/how-curling-has-grown-after-the-2022-winter-olympics) draws 2.01B unique viewers, curling goes viral globally
10. 2026"[Boopgate](https://wttrends.com/boopgate-curling-meme-canada-sweden-2026-olympics/)" at Milano Cortina Olympics becomes curling's defining meme moment

🥌 carries very different weight depending on where you're reading it.

Canada: Curling's cultural home. Canada has won 36 World Curling Championship gold medals on the men's side alone, the most decorated team in the sport's history. The Brier (men's national championship) and Scotties (women's) draw huge TSN audiences annually. 🥌 in Canadian social media is a year-round fixture, not a four-year Olympic blip.

Scotland: The sport's birthplace. Every Olympic stone is still made from Scottish granite, and the Kilsyth Curling Club (founded 1716) is the world's oldest. 🥌 carries heritage weight, Scottish curling is less about top-level competition than about tradition and community clubs.

Sweden, Norway, Switzerland: Strong traditional curling cultures. Sweden's men's team has won multiple Olympic golds. Norway is famous for its outrageous Olympic curling pants (2010, 2014, 2018, a beloved running bit). Switzerland has one of Europe's strongest programs.

Japan: An unexpected curling story. LS Kitami / Team Fujisawa won silver at PyeongChang 2018 (women) and bronze at Beijing 2022, making curling a growing Japanese niche sport. The Hokkaido region has the deepest curling culture outside Canada/Scotland.

USA: Small but passionate. Men's team won gold at PyeongChang 2018 (the "Miracle on Ice" of curling, led by John Shuster). Club participation is concentrated in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and upstate New York. Outside those regions, curling is almost exclusively an Olympic-year curiosity.

Elsewhere: Niche or unknown. Curling is an Olympic-only discovery for most of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. 🥌 in Brazil or India will read as "that weird sport with the brooms" to most people.

• •The earliest known curling stone dates to 1511 and is housed at the Stirling Smith Museum in Scotland.
• •All competition curling stones come from a single Scottish workshop: Kays of Scotland, founded 1851. They hold exclusive rights to harvest granite from Ailsa Craig.
• •A regulation curling stone weighs 19.96 kg (44 lb) and is 91 cm in circumference, dimensions that have been standard since the World Curling Federation was formed in 1966.
• •Canada's men's team has won 36 World Curling Championships, more than any other nation in the sport's history.
• •The Royal Montreal Curling Club, founded 1807, is the oldest sports club of any kind in North America.
• •The 2022 Beijing Olympics drew 2.01 billion unique curling viewers, 5% more than PyeongChang 2018.
• •Norway's men's curling team is famous for wearing outrageous custom patterned pants at every Winter Olympics, argyle, American flag, unicorns, Christmas ornaments. The pants arguably out-draw the curling on social media.
• •Curling's traditional post-match ritual, "broomstacking," requires the winning team to buy the losing team drinks. The tradition dates to 16th-century Scotland.
• •The US men's curling team won gold at PyeongChang 2018 under skip John Shuster, the first US curling gold ever. Shuster became a late-night TV regular after the win.

• •Men With Brooms (2002), Paul Gross's Canadian comedy about a small-town curling team remains the definitive curling movie. A modest international release, it's a cultural staple in Canada.
• •"Boopgate" (2026), Canada vs Sweden finger-boop controversy became the most-meme'd moment of the Milano Cortina Olympics and launched a thousand TikTok edits of Marc Kennedy's outstretched finger.
• •Norway's Curling Pants, The men's team's quadrennial pants stunt has become bigger than the team's actual results. 2014 and 2018 were especially viral.
• •John Shuster on late-night TV, After winning 2018 Olympic gold, Shuster was on Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Ellen, and basically every cable news morning show in the US for a month. Rare for any curler, let alone an American one.
• •The Simpsons "Boy Meets Curl" (S21E12), The 2010 episode where Marge and Homer join a curling team and go to the Vancouver Olympics. Introduced a generation of American kids to the sport.