Leo Emoji

The astrological symbol for Leo, the Lion. ♌ covers birthdays from July 23 through August 22 and is the fifth sign of the zodiac. The glyph is a stylized drawing of a lion's head and mane with a curling tail, sometimes read as a sideways figure-eight. It's one of the most recognizable zodiac symbols because the curve really does look like a flowing mane.

The character was encoded in Unicode 1.1 in 1993 as U+264CU+264C LEO and promoted to full color emoji in Emoji 1.0 (2015). In astrology, Leo is a fixed fire sign ruled by the Sun, the only sign ruled by a star instead of a planet, which is the entire origin of the 'Leo = center of everything' reputation. 'Fixed' means Leo is a stabilizer sign (as opposed to cardinal starters like Aries or mutable shapeshifters like Gemini), so Leos are stereotypically loyal once they commit but incredibly hard to budge once they've decided something.

Online, ♌ is the flex emoji of the zodiac. It's shorthand for confident, dramatic, attention-aware energy, deployed with roughly equal amounts of self-love and self-mockery.

♌ does its heaviest work during Leo season (July 23 – August 22), when astrology accounts run Leo-themed content nonstop. The emoji lives in birthday posts, bios, astrology memes about Leo energy, and compatibility content that pairs Leo with its fellow fire signs (Aries ♈, Sagittarius ♐) or its opposite Aquarius ♒. It's also the signature emoji for 'confident icon' posts. Public Leo celebrities, Barack Obama, J.Lo, Madonna, Kylie Jenner, get trotted out every Leo season as proof that the sign really does produce main characters. The self-deprecating Leo genre ('yes I made it about me again ♌') is one of the more charming zodiac-meme corners.

The lion that became Leo is, specifically, the Nemean Lion, the first of Heracles's twelve labors. If you're a Leo, your zodiac sign is technically a dead monster.

The Nemean Lion was a beast with impenetrable golden fur that could shrug off arrows and swords. Hera had raised it specifically to terrorize the countryside around Nemea, and King Eurystheus assigned Heracles to kill it as his first labor. Heracles tried arrows, a club, and a sword, none of which worked. He eventually cornered the lion in its cave, blocked one entrance, and strangled it with his bare hands. Athena told him to use one of the lion's own claws to skin it, since nothing else could cut the pelt. Heracles then wore the Nemean Lion's skin as armor for the rest of his labors. Zeus, impressed by the whole operation, placed the lion in the sky as the constellation Leo.

The myth is a flex about Heracles, but the lion gets the constellation. Ancient astronomers loved this stretch of sky because the constellation actually looks like a lion. The 'sickle' of stars that forms the lion's head and mane is one of the clearest pictorial constellations in the northern sky. Babylonians and Egyptians both saw a lion in the same stars, and the Egyptians linked the constellation to the annual flooding of the Nile: the sun was in Leo when the floods began, which is why lion-headed fountains became a decorative staple in Egyptian architecture. Statues with water flowing from lion mouths) are, structurally, Leo-season references.

When the Greeks imported the zodiac and the Romans standardized it, Leo kept the royalty / sun / power associations. The Sun's rulership over Leo is the oldest assignment in Western astrology, it hasn't been disputed or reassigned like Pluto-over-Scorpio was. One sign, one star, no turnover.

Encoded in Unicode 1.1 (1993) as U+264CU+264C LEO. Part of the Miscellaneous Symbols block. Sits between ♋ Cancer and ♍ Virgo. Promoted to full color emoji in Emoji 1.0 (2015). The Unicode name matches the Latin constellation name.

1. -3000Sumerian and Babylonian astronomers named this group of stars after a great lion.
2. -2500Ancient Egyptians linked Leo's rising with the annual Nile flood, producing lion-headed fountains and doorknockers.
3. 1993Encoded in Unicode 1.1 as `U+264C` LEO.
4. 2015Promoted to full color emoji in Emoji 1.0 alongside all twelve zodiac signs.

• •Leo's brightest star, Regulus, was called 'the heart of the lion' by ancient astronomers and was considered the 'royal star' in Persian astrology. Regulus is actually a four-star system about 79 light-years away.
• •The Leonid meteor shower appears to radiate from Leo every November. It's one of the most dramatic annual meteor showers, producing up to 1,000 meteors per hour during major events (every 33 years, most recently 1998-2002).
• •Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Benito Mussolini were all Leos, along with Fidel Castro. Leo's political rulership stereotype is one of the few astrology patterns with noticeable statistical clustering among world leaders.
• •The MGM lion logo (roaring at the start of every MGM movie) isn't astrologically a Leo tribute, but gets co-opted as one every Leo season. The original lion, Slats, was used from 1924 to 1928.
• •Leo shares dates with the MLB All-Star week, Shark Week on Discovery, and most summer festival seasons. The 'Leo season as peak summer' framing has material backup in the northern hemisphere.
• •The Great Sphinx of Giza is sometimes argued (controversially) to be astronomically aligned with the constellation Leo as it rose on the horizon around 10,500 BCE. Mainstream Egyptology rejects the dating, but the theory keeps appearing in History Channel documentaries.
• •According to YouGov polling, Leo ranks among the most 'charismatic' zodiac signs in US public opinion, though it also lands high on 'self-centered.'
• •Leo is the second-largest constellation among the twelve zodiac signs by sky area (after Virgo). Astronomically it punches about as hard as its astrological reputation suggests.

• •Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961, the Leo-president archetype. Astrology content cites his charisma and stage presence as textbook Sun-ruled Leo energy.
• •Jennifer Lopez, born July 24, 1969, probably the most-cited Leo celebrity in astrology content. Performer, producer, the whole Leo package.
• •Madonna, born August 16, 1958, the decades-long reinvention arc and refusal to leave the spotlight read as Leo stamina at its most extreme.
• •Mick Jagger, born July 26, 1943, the frontman stereotype distilled. Cosmopolitan's Leo celebrity list puts him near the top.
• •Kylie Jenner, born August 10, 1997, the birthday extravaganza, the beauty brand, the main-character feed. Leo-coded across every axis.
• •Meghan Markle, born August 4, 1981, the public-facing Leo who married into a non-Leo institution. Astrology blogs have a lot to say about that chart.
• •Dua Lipa, born August 22, 1995, technically a Leo-Virgo cusp, claimed by both camps depending on the moon's mood.
• •Chris Hemsworth, born August 11, 1983, the Thor-actor pick for Leo golden-boy energy.
• •Shawn Mendes, born August 8, 1998, the sensitive-performer Leo, demonstrating the sign's quiet-warmth variant.

• •♌ is U+264CU+264C LEO in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600–U+26FF). Zodiac block spans U+2648 through U+2653.
• •No variation selector required on modern platforms. Older monochrome fonts may render the glyph as a flat black symbol.
• •For horoscope apps, use the sun's ecliptic longitude (120°–150° = Leo) rather than hard-coded calendar dates. Exact sign boundaries shift by up to 24 hours per year.

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