No Entry Emoji

A red disc with a white horizontal bar across the middle. ⛔ is the European-style "No Entry" traffic sign: you are looking at it, you cannot drive through. Under the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals this is known as Sign C1, and it lives at the exits of one-way streets, pedestrian zones, and restricted areas across most of Europe and Asia.

On screens, ⛔ means "you cannot do this" with more force than 🚫 but less finality than 🛑. 🚫 is a polite prohibition. 🛑 says stop moving. ⛔ says do not even approach. It's the emoji of blocked paths, banned users, closed subreddits, and anywhere a line has been drawn that you cannot cross.

Unicode gave ⛔ the codepoint U+26D4 in version 5.2 (2009) and promoted it to emoji in 6.0 (2010). Note the low codepoint: ⛔ predates the main emoji block and sits in Miscellaneous Symbols, making it one of a handful of emoji that are technically symbols first, pictures second.

Three main uses. Blocked or banned: "blocked him ⛔" or "banned from the group ⛔." The symbol lands harder than 🚫 because it implies a physical barrier, not a rule. Boundaries: "I don't discuss my ex ⛔," the verbal version of putting a bollard between yourself and a topic. Quick PSA: "don't do this ⛔" as a caution emoji for instructional content, stacked above the thing you shouldn't do.

Geographic skew matters. European users reach for ⛔ more often because the sign is on every corner of Amsterdam, Berlin, and Rome, so they recognize it instantly. US users lean on 🚫 or 🛑 because the "Do Not Enter" sign in the States looks different (MUTCD uses a white bar in a red disc too, but with a different aspect ratio and often paired with text).

The physical sign ⛔ mimics first appeared in European road regulations during the 1920s and 1930s, part of the continent's early effort to standardize traffic control. The modern form, red disc with a white horizontal bar, was locked in by the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals as Sign C1a. Most of Europe, much of Asia, Latin America, and all of the former Soviet states use this exact design.

The US has its own version under the MUTCD, a square with "DO NOT ENTER" in English plus the white bar. The emoji renders the international Vienna version, which is why American drivers sometimes find ⛔ visually unfamiliar.

Unicode predates the emoji standard here. ⛔ was added as a plain symbol in Unicode 5.2 (October 2009) at codepoint U+26D4, inside the Miscellaneous Symbols block. When Unicode 6.0 rolled out the first big emoji batch in October 2010, ⛔ was retroactively promoted to emoji status. This is why its codepoint sits far below the main 🚧/🚫 emoji block (U+1F6A7, U+1F6AB), and why some older fonts render it as a solid red circle without the bar.

1. 1968Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals defines Sign C1a: red disc with a white horizontal bar, meaning 'entry forbidden for all vehicles.'
2. 1978Vienna Convention enters into force. Most of Europe now uses identical no-entry signs.
3. 2009Unicode 5.2 adds U+26D4 as a Miscellaneous Symbol, not yet an emoji.
4. 2010Unicode 6.0 promotes ⛔ to emoji status in October.
5. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0. Apple, Google, and Microsoft ship matching red-disc-with-bar designs.
6. 2017Google's Android 8.0 Oreo redesigns ⛔ for clearer contrast against dark UI themes.

• •⛔ has codepoint U+26D4, which is dramatically lower than most other emoji because it was added to Unicode as a plain Miscellaneous Symbol in version 5.2 (2009) before emoji had their own block.
• •Under the Vienna Convention, ⛔ specifically means 'entry forbidden for all vehicles.' A separate sign (yellow version) means 'entry forbidden for vehicles with dangerous goods.' The emoji doesn't distinguish.
• •The MUTCD 'Do Not Enter' sign in the US is a square with text, not the round disc. American drivers sometimes don't immediately recognize ⛔ as a traffic sign.
• •In early Android versions, ⛔ was rendered as a solid red circle without the white bar, making it visually identical to a blocked-contact icon. Google fixed this in the Android 5.0 emoji redesign.
• •The sign dates to European road regulations in the 1920s and 1930s, but the exact modern design was only locked in by the 1968 Vienna Convention and didn't enter force until 1978.
• •⛔ and 🚫 were both approved under Unicode 6.0 in 2010, but ⛔ was technically added first, since it already existed as a plain symbol in Unicode 5.2 one year earlier.

• •Discord/Reddit moderation: ⛔ is one of the most common reactions used by moderators to flag rule-breaking content as "removed" or "blocked," alongside the explicit ban emoji 🔨.
• •Wikipedia's editing culture: the 'no entry' visual is used on protected pages and user blocks, making ⛔ a kind of unofficial Wikipedian shorthand for 'this is locked.'
• •European football ultras groups use ⛔ in banners and tweets to mark stadiums, streets, or clubs as "no-go zones" for rival fans, an aggressive adoption of the traffic sign into tribal iconography.

• •⛔ is codepoint U+26D4. Unicode name: NO ENTRY.
• •Common shortcodes: :no_entry::no_entry: on Slack, Discord, GitHub, Mastodon.
• •Codepoint predates the main emoji block (added Unicode 5.2, 2009), which means some ancient systems render it as a pure red circle without the bar.

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