Mate Emoji

A mate gourd (calabaza) with a metal bombilla straw. Approved in Unicode 12.0 in 2019 as U+1F9C9U+1F9C9 MATE. Added to Emoji 12.0. One of the most culturally specific drink emojis in the set — it depicts a 400-year-old South American social ritual, not just a beverage.

Mate is made from yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis), a caffeinated evergreen related to holly. Argentines drink about 6 kg per person per year — roughly 100 liters annually — and over 85% of Argentine households consume mate daily. It's the national drink of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, and the regional drink of southern Brazil (where it's called chimarrão).

🧉 was celebrated across South America when it arrived in Unicode 12.0. For the first time, a distinctively regional drink emoji existed alongside the Western-default ☕ and 🍵. Argentine, Uruguayan, and Paraguayan users rallied around it as a cultural win.

🧉 is one of the most geographically clustered emojis in the set. Usage concentrates in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Brazil, with a smaller diaspora footprint in Spain, Italy (Italian-Argentine ties), and Miami/NYC South American communities.

Daily-life content. Mate is not special-occasion; it's continuous. 🧉 shows up in morning routines, office posts, beach photos, study groups, road trips. It's everywhere. Argentine social media volume for 🧉 rivals ☕'s in coffee-first countries.

Argentina national team / football content. The 2022 World Cup made 🧉 globally visible. Argentina brought ~1,100 pounds of yerba mate to Qatar (twice Uruguay's supply). Messi and teammates were photographed stepping off the team bus holding gourds and thermoses. Messi's post-win Instagram photo became the most-liked post in Instagram history — 75+ million likes — and 🧉 flooded surrounding content.

Wellness / health-alternative content. Yerba mate contains roughly 80mg caffeine per cup (similar to coffee) plus antioxidants and polyphenols. 2024-25 has seen growth in carbonated yerba mate drinks (Guayaki, CLEAN Cause) and American wellness content using 🧉.

Etiquette / cultural education. TikTok explainer content about how to prepare and share mate — the cebador system, passing order, 'don't say gracias until you're done drinking' — has found millions of views.

Mate has a deep pre-colonial history. The Guaraní people of what is now Paraguay, southern Brazil, northern Argentina, and Uruguay cultivated and drank yerba mate centuries before European contact. Spanish Jesuit missionaries encountered the drink in the 1500s-1600s, attempted to ban it (viewing it as pagan), failed, and eventually adopted and commercialized production. By the 1700s, mate was the most-traded commodity of colonial South America.

The specific paraphernalia the emoji depicts — the gourd (calabaza), the metal straw (bombilla with filter tip), the thermos of hot water — developed across centuries of everyday use. Today, the cultural protocol is nearly universal: a designated cebador prepares and serves the mate, everyone drinks in order from the same bombilla, and saying 'gracias' means 'I'm done.' It sounds like etiquette; it's actually load-bearing infrastructure for South American social life.

🧉 shipped in Unicode 12.0 in March 2019. Argentine and Uruguayan users campaigned for it years before approval. When it landed, South American Twitter celebrated at scale — it was one of the rare cases of a non-Western drink getting its own emoji.

The 2022 FIFA World Cup globally amplified mate's profile. Argentina's victory — and the photographs of Messi and teammates with gourds in hand — turned 🧉 into a crossover emoji. Yerba mate brand exports grew sharply in 2023-2024 on the back of that visibility.

1. 1500Guaraní peoples of modern Paraguay and surrounding regions cultivate and consume yerba mate long before Spanish contact
2. 1610Spanish Jesuit missions begin formalizing mate cultivation, after failed attempts to ban the drink
3. 1750Yerba mate becomes the most-traded commodity of colonial South America
4. 2019Approved in Unicode 12.0 as U+1F9C9 MATE; [celebrated across South America](https://emojipedia.org/mate)
5. 2022[Argentina brings 1,100 pounds of yerba mate](https://sherlockcomms.com/how-lionel-messi-and-the-argentine-national-team-are-turning-yerba-mate-into-a-global-lifestyle-product/) to Qatar for the World Cup; Messi's post-win Instagram becomes the most-liked post in platform history
6. 2023[Guayaki and other yerba mate brands](https://matecaps.com/blogs/yerba-country/the-rise-of-yerba-mate-carbonated-drinks-a-refreshing-trend) see export growth; carbonated yerba mate drinks enter US wellness market at scale
7. 2024[Argentine per-capita consumption](https://www.taragui.com/en/post/mate-consumption-in-argentina) holds at ~6 kg / 100L annually; US yerba mate wellness trend continues growing

• •Argentina drinks about 6 kg of yerba mate per person per year — roughly 100 liters annually. 85%+ of Argentine households consume mate daily.
• •Syria is the world's largest importer of yerba mate, driven by early-1900s Syrian-Lebanese immigration to Argentina and the cultural exchange that followed.
• •Argentina brought 1,100 pounds of yerba mate to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar — twice Uruguay's supply. The team was photographed stepping off their bus with gourds and thermoses.
• •Messi's 2022 World Cup-victory Instagram photo is the most-liked post in Instagram history with over 75 million likes. Surrounding content flooded feeds with 🧉.
• •Mate has about 80mg caffeine per cup — similar to coffee. Traditional multi-refill sessions can exceed 260mg per sitting, making it one of the most-caffeinated traditional drinks on Earth.
• •Spanish Jesuit missionaries tried to ban yerba mate in the 1600s, viewing it as a pagan indulgence. They failed, then commercialized production. By the 1700s it was colonial South America's most-traded commodity.
• •The emoji shipped in Unicode 12.0 in March 2019 after years of lobbying by Argentine and Uruguayan users. It's one of the few non-Western-default drink emojis in the set.
• •Pope Francis is Argentine-born and famously drinks mate. His mate habit has helped keep Argentine traditions visible in Vatican coverage.
• •Uruguay has the world's highest per-capita mate consumption. Uruguayans walking through public spaces with a thermos tucked under one arm and a gourd in the other hand) is an iconic national image.
• •Yerba mate comes from Ilex paraguariensis, a South American holly species. Its caffeine-holly cousin yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) was historically consumed by Indigenous peoples in the southeastern United States, though that tradition largely died out.

• •Lionel Messi's 2022 World Cup victory posts: single biggest cultural amplification of 🧉 in the emoji's history.
• •Antoine Griezmann: the French striker famously loves mate (picked up during his Atlético Madrid years). 🧉 shows up in his Instagram constantly; he's a rare non-South-American mate evangelist.
• •Pope Francis: Argentine-born, known to drink mate regularly. The emoji occasionally appears in Vatican / religious content that references him.
• •Rolling Stone described Argentina's yerba mate consumption at Qatar as 'the secret weapon' of the national team — caffeine plus ritual plus cultural grounding.
• •Guayaki's US brand marketing: built around sustainability, rainforest-ranching, and 'clean energy.' 🧉 in US wellness content is largely Guayaki-coded.

• •🧉 is U+1F9C9U+1F9C9. Common shortcodes: :mate_drink::mate_drink: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Emoji 12.0 / Unicode 12.0 — supported since 2019. Older devices (pre-2019) render as missing glyph.
• •For apps targeting South American markets, 🧉 is one of the most meaningful drink emojis in the set. Consider featuring it in beverage selectors for Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Brazil.

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