Flag: Mayotte Emoji

🇾🇹 is the flag of Mayotte, France's 101st département. Legally, Mayotte flies the French tricolore 🇫🇷, and the emoji renders the island's unofficial departmental banner instead: a white field with the coat of arms in the center and 'Département de Mayotte' across the top in red. The coat of arms was adopted on July 23, 1982 by the general council, designed by Réunion Archives director Michel Chabin and drawn by Pascale Santerre, then carried over when Mayotte formally became a French département on March 31, 2011.

Mayotte is an archipelago of two main islands (Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre) plus 30 or so smaller islets, wrapped by one of the largest coral lagoons on earth: 1,500 km² inside a double barrier reef. The population was 347,536 at mid-2026, making it the most crowded of France's overseas departments by density (about 927 people per km²). Roughly 95% of Mahorais are Sunni Muslim, which makes Mayotte the only majority-Muslim territory in the European Union. The first language for most residents is Shimaore, a Comorian Bantu language; Kibushi (a Malagasy language) is spoken by a Sakalava-descended minority; French is the official language of school, court, and government.

Mayotte's status is disputed. The Union of the Comoros has claimed Mayotte since its 1975 independence from France, and every UN General Assembly vote through the 1990s agreed. France holds the island on the basis of the 1974 referendum in which Mayotte voted against Comorian independence, and the 2009 referendum in which 95.5% voted to become a full département. The emoji shows up in French-overseas news coverage, Mahorais diaspora posts from Paris and Marseille, and (very heavily) around the December 14, 2024 Cyclone Chido, the most violent cyclone to hit Mayotte since 1934. Unicode's 🇾🇹 is a regional-indicator sequence (Y + T, matching the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code YT) added to Emoji 2.0 in 2015.

🇾🇹 posts cluster around three very different feeds. First: the Mahorais diaspora in metropolitan France, roughly 50,000 people concentrated in Marseille, Paris, and the Île-de-France banlieues, posting on Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, and grand-mariage (manzaraka) weddings that run for days. Second: French-politics accounts posting during Operation Wuambushu cycles, immigration debates, or post-Chido reconstruction updates. Third: travel accounts covering the lagoon, whale season (July to October), and manta rays (April to June), though Mayotte's tourism volume is tiny, around 60,000 visitors a year pre-Chido, compared to millions for Réunion or Mauritius.

The biggest single 🇾🇹 window in recorded social-media history was December 14 to 18, 2024, when Cyclone Chido hit the island with 250 km/h winds. French-media accounts, diaspora accounts, and international news posted the flag alongside donation links and survivor-family threads for weeks. A year on, reconstruction remains unfinished and the flag still trails the cyclone anniversary in news feeds.

Mayotte has no official flag, and its lineage is shorter than most. The island was a French protectorate from 1841, ceded by Sultan Andriantsoly in exchange for a pension and French protection against Malagasy and Comorian rivals. From 1912 to 1946 it was administered as part of the Comoros colony; from 1946 the Comoros became a French overseas territory; in 1974 France held a referendum on independence across the four main Comorian islands. Three (Grande Comore, Anjouan, Mohéli) voted for independence. Mayotte voted overwhelmingly to stay French. France split the ballot by island, Comoros declared independence on July 6, 1975, and Mayotte stayed.

The coat of arms that appears on the emoji was adopted by the general council on July 23, 1982, well before the island's 2011 promotion to full département status. It was designed by Michel Chabin, former director of the Réunion archives, and drawn by Pascale Santerre. The shield quarters the French national blue (Pantone 2945 C) and red (Pantone 485 C) and carries a gold Islamic crescent (for the ~95% Muslim population) and two gold ylang-ylang flowers (Mayotte's signature cash crop). Two silver seahorses support the shield as a nod to the lagoon. The engrailed silver border represents the double coral barrier reef. The Shimaore motto 'Ra Hachiri' (we are vigilant) runs along the bottom.

In March 2009, 95.5% of Mahorais voters chose to upgrade from 'overseas community' to full département. France formally declared Mayotte its 101st département on March 31, 2011, and an EU outermost region on January 1, 2014. The coat of arms was carried over unchanged. Comoros, the African Union, and the UN General Assembly (before the issue was moved off the agenda in 1995) all rejected the upgrade.

Regional Indicator Sequence U+1F1FEU+1F1FE (Y) + U+1F1F9U+1F1F9 (T), matching Mayotte's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code YT. Added in Emoji 2.0 (2015) as part of the full regional-indicator rollout. Renders as 'YT' text on Microsoft Windows, which does not display country flag emojis.

🇾🇹 reads differently depending on who posts it. A Mahorais-in-Marseille poster usually uses it to mark an Eid, a wedding, a family visit, or a post about Chido survivors; the flag appears next to 🇫🇷 as a matter of course, since most Mahorais carry French citizenship and see the two flags as complementary, not competing. A metropolitan-French journalist or politician tends to use it for overseas-department coverage, Operation Wuambushu updates, or post-Chido reconstruction. A Comorian-diaspora account may use 🇰🇲🇾🇹 together to make a political point that the two islands should be one country.

The everyday Mahorese calendar is Muslim, not Catholic: Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr (called Idi el Fitri), Eid al-Adha (Idi el Hadj), and Maulida an-Nabi structure the year. Women wear the salouva (wrap skirt) and kishali (shoulder scarf), often with msindzano, a pale sandalwood-paste face mask used as both sunscreen and beauty treatment. Wedding etiquette is the island's signature performance: a full grand mariage (manzaraka) can run three to seven days, features women's mbiwi and deba percussion dances, and can cost a year's salary.

For travel accounts, 🇾🇹 sits between Réunion and Comoros: higher-income than Comoros (Mayotte is the poorest French département but still richer than Comoros), lower-infrastructure than Réunion. Flights land at Dzaoudzi on Petite-Terre; a short ferry crosses to Grande-Terre. There are no luxury resorts, almost no chain hotels, and most visitors stay in family-run gîtes or small lodges that feel a generation behind the Mauritian competition.

• Eid al-Fitr (Idi el Fitri): End of Ramadan. Biggest cultural window of the year. 2026: March 20-21. Communal morning prayer, matching family outfits, open-house visits.
• Abolition of Slavery Day: April 27. Commemorates the 1846 abolition in Mayotte, two years ahead of metropolitan France's 1848 decree.
• Eid al-Adha (Idi el Hadj / Tabaski): Feast of the Sacrifice. 2026: May 27. Families slaughter a goat or zebu; women prepare mtsolola and pilau.
• Bastille Day: July 14. Military parade in Mamoudzou, fireworks over the lagoon. Most visibly 'French' day on the calendar.
• Maulida / Mawlid an-Nabi: Prophet Muhammad's birthday. 2026: August 25. Maulida shenge chants at mosques and villages.
• Cyclone Chido Anniversary: December 14. Not a public holiday but the defining modern date. The 2024 cyclone killed dozens (hundreds feared) and destroyed 35,000 homes.

• •Mayotte has no official flag. The emoji renders the unofficial departmental banner used by the general council; the tricolore 🇫🇷 is the legal national flag.
• •About 95% of Mahorais are Sunni Muslim, making Mayotte the only majority-Muslim territory in the European Union.
• •Ylang-ylang accounts for 84% of Mayotte's exports. Chanel No. 5 and most major French perfume houses buy Mahorais ylang essential oil.
• •Mayotte's 1,500 km² lagoon sits inside one of only three double barrier reefs on earth, alongside Belize and New Caledonia.
• •The motto on the coat of arms is 'Ra Hachiri' (we are vigilant) in Shimaore, the local Comorian dialect, not in French.
• •Slavery was abolished in Mayotte in 1846, two years before metropolitan France's 1848 decree. It was the first French-ruled Indian Ocean territory to abolish slavery.
• •The population is very young: median age 17.3, the lowest of any French département and among the lowest on earth.
• •Cyclone Chido on December 14, 2024 was the most violent cyclone to hit Mayotte since 1934. It destroyed 35,000 homes and caused $3.9 billion in economic losses, the costliest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the South-West Indian Ocean basin.