Polar Bear Emoji

🐻‍❄️ is the polar bear, shown as a white bear face against the Arctic. Technically it's a ZWJ sequence of 🐻 Bear + Zero Width Joiner + ❄️ Snowflake, meaning it renders as one emoji on modern phones but falls back to two separate characters (🐻❄️) on older software. Added in Emoji 13.0 (2020), approved in the same batch as 🥸 Disguised Face and 🫀 Anatomical Heart.

In texting, 🐻‍❄️ splits cleanly across three lanes. The first is literal: Arctic wildlife, winter content, zoo visits, anything north of the tree line. The second is emotional: cuteness, softness, and a certain gentle-giant energy that 🐻 brown bear doesn't have because its cultural baggage (Russia, Wall Street bears, Pooh) is louder. The third is ecological: the polar bear is the most recognized animal symbol of climate change on Earth, thanks to a chain reaction that started with a 2006 Al Gore documentary and a bear cub named Knut). Using 🐻‍❄️ in a climate post is never just cute.

The emoji itself exists because one guy refused to give up. German developer Frederik Riedel started campaigning for a polar bear emoji in 2015, got repeatedly rejected by Unicode for not being a high enough priority, then teamed up with journalist Samantha Sunne in 2019 and pivoted the argument to climate-crisis representation. That pivot worked. The Arctic's most famous animal got a keyboard slot because its story turned out to be humanity's story.

🐻‍❄️ lives in softer corners of the internet than 🐻 does. No Russian geopolitics here, no bear-market finance, no Winnie the Pooh baggage.

Climate content. 🐻‍❄️🌡️ and 🐻‍❄️🧊 are shorthand in climate journalism, NGO posts, and activist Twitter. The polar bear has been "the poster child of climate change" since Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth and that year's Time cover headlined "Be worried. Be very worried." It's so iconic that climate scientists have debated retiring it because it makes warming feel remote, polar, and other-people's-problem, rather than urgent and everywhere.

Wholesome posts. Polar bear TikTok is a real corner of the platform. Zoo cubs, rescue footage, bears sliding down snowbanks. Typical caption: "protecting them with my life 🐻‍❄️" or "making this my whole personality 🐻‍❄️."

Coziness and softness. 'Polar bear hug 🐻‍❄️🤗' reads as extra gentle compared to a regular bear hug. People use 🐻‍❄️ the way they'd use 🧸, but with Arctic flavor.

Winter / cold / snow. 🐻‍❄️❄️ and 🐻‍❄️🧊 are common for winter mood posts, Nordic travel, and "it is absolutely freezing here" complaints. In Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, and Russia, the polar bear reads as a local cultural marker rather than a distant novelty.

Rejected-cub stories. Knut's mass popularity (2006, Berlin Zoo)) made 🐻‍❄️ forever associated with hand-raised cubs. Zoo polar bear births are always news.

The polar bear emoji exists because one developer kept arguing for it.

The 4-year campaign. In 2015, German software developer Frederik Riedel discovered that anyone could propose a new emoji to the Unicode Consortium. He loved polar bears and thought it was strange that the most iconic Arctic animal on the planet had no keyboard slot. His early submissions got rejected: the subcommittee said polar bears were on the wishlist but not a high priority, and suggested he try a ZWJ sequence (combining existing emojis) rather than a standalone character.

In 2019, Riedel teamed up with journalist Samantha Sunne and filed proposal L2/19-296. The pivot was strategic: instead of arguing "cute animal," they argued that polar bears had become the visual shorthand for climate change, the single most covered environmental story of the century, and that emoji users around the Arctic (Canada, Russia, Greenland, Iceland, Alaska) had no way to represent the animal that defined their regions. The proposal worked. Emoji 13.0 approved the polar bear as 🐻 + ZWJ + ❄️, which is why modern renderers show a white bear with a snowflake-like accent on its ear.

The climate icon moment. The polar bear became the animal face of global warming in an unusually short window. In 2006, Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth animated a drowning polar bear trying to climb onto a shrinking ice floe. That same year, Time's global warming cover ran a stranded polar bear above the headline "Be worried. Be very worried." Within eighteen months the US government listed polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (the first species listed specifically because of climate change). The Columbia Journalism Review called the animal a "bear witness."

Knut. On December 5, 2006, Knut) was born at the Berlin Zoo and rejected by his mother Tosca. Keepers hand-raised him. "Knutmania" made him the most photographed animal on Earth in 2007. Annie Leibovitz photographed him for Vanity Fair's Green Issue alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. Knut died at age 4 in 2011, drowning in his enclosure pool during a seizure caused by anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. 600-700 people were at the enclosure when he collapsed. He has the sad honor of being both a climate icon and a warning about the emotional cost of captive-bred wildlife celebrity.

Coca-Cola. Separate from climate symbolism, Coca-Cola has used polar bears in advertising since 1922, when a French print ad showed a polar bear squirting Coke into the mouth of an anthropomorphized sun. The iconic animated Coca-Cola polar bears debuted in 1993's "Northern Lights" TV spot, created by Ken Stewart and animated by Rhythm & Hues. Stewart said the design was inspired by his labrador, which is why the Coca-Cola bear looks fluffier and friendlier than an actual polar bear.

🐻‍❄️ was approved in Emoji 13.0 (March 2020) as a ZWJ sequence: U+1F43BU+1F43B BEAR + U+200DU+200D ZWJ + U+2744U+2744 SNOWFLAKE + U+FE0FU+FE0F VS16. Not a standalone codepoint, which is why older devices show it as two separate emojis. Apple rolled it out on iOS 14.2 in November 2020. Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and WhatsApp followed through the winter.

1. 1922First Coca-Cola polar bear print ad appears in France, showing a bear squirting Coke into the mouth of the sun↗
2. 1993Coca-Cola's 'Northern Lights' TV spot debuts during the NBA Finals, launching the Always Coca-Cola polar bear campaign↗
3. 2006Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth features a drowning polar bear. Time magazine's 'Be worried' cover runs with a stranded polar bear. Knut is born at Berlin Zoo.↗
4. 2008Polar bears listed as 'threatened' under the US Endangered Species Act, the first species listed because of climate change
5. 2011Knut dies at Berlin Zoo at age 4, drowning in his enclosure pool during a seizure↗
6. 2015Frederik Riedel begins his polar bear emoji campaign↗
7. 2019Riedel and Samantha Sunne submit revised proposal L2/19-296 arguing climate-crisis representation↗
8. 2020🐻‍❄️ approved in Emoji 13.0 as ZWJ sequence of 🐻 + ❄️, ships on iOS 14.2↗
9. 2023'Polar Bear 2026' AI creepypasta spreads on Russian and English TikTok↗

🐻‍❄️ carries different weights depending on where the message lands.

Inuit / Indigenous Arctic: For Inuit peoples, the polar bear is Nanuq / Nanook (ᓇᓄᖅ), a sacred animal and master of all bears. Inuit mythology treats nanuq as almost-human, the one animal that's equally at home on land and in water and whose hunting closely resembles human hunting. The bear features in Inuvialuit spirituality, art, and song. Hunters traditionally hang the hide in a special part of the igloo and offer spirit gifts to the dead bear. Using 🐻‍❄️ casually in Inuit contexts without awareness of this reverence can land wrong.

Canada, Russia, Greenland, Alaska: Functionally a local animal. Polar bears wander into towns. Churchill, Manitoba is the 'polar bear capital of the world,' with patrol units and a literal polar bear jail. Tourists travel there to see them. 🐻‍❄️ in Canadian or Russian social media carries national-wildlife pride, not distant novelty.

Germany: Knut's death made the polar bear a grief object for a generation. German polar bear content often carries that shadow: Berlin Zoo still draws visitors who remember him.

US: Primarily two strands, Coca-Cola's advertising polar bears (warm, fuzzy, festive) and climate-change poster child (melancholic, endangered). The same emoji can mean a holiday Coke ad or IPCC report depending on the surrounding context.

Denmark / Svalbard / Iceland: The polar bear appears on Greenland's coat of arms. Svalbard has a legal requirement for travelers to carry firearms outside settlements because of polar bear risk. The Arctic countries have mandatory bear-safety reality built into the emoji.

• •Frederik Riedel spent 4+ years getting the polar bear emoji approved, starting in 2015. His first proposals were rejected. The winning 2019 revision with Samantha Sunne pivoted to climate-crisis representation. Anyone can propose an emoji to Unicode; it just takes persistence.
• •Polar bears have black skin and transparent hollow fur. The black absorbs solar heat. The fur scatters visible light and only appears white. They're essentially solar panels in fiber optic coats.
• •A female polar bear swam 426 miles (687 km) in 9 days straight, the longest documented swim. She lost 22% of her body mass. Her yearling cub died during the journey. As sea ice retreats, forced long swims are getting more common.
• •The IUCN estimates 26,000 polar bears in 20 subpopulations across the Arctic. Population is projected to decline 30% by 2050 due to sea ice loss.
• •Knut), the Berlin Zoo cub, was the most-photographed animal of 2007. Annie Leibovitz shot him for Vanity Fair alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. He died at age 4 in 2011 during a seizure, drowning in his enclosure pool in front of 600+ visitors.
• •Coca-Cola's first polar bear ad ran in 1922, a French print ad showing a polar bear squirting Coke into the mouth of an anthropomorphized sun. The modern animated bears didn't debut until the 1993 'Northern Lights' TV spot. Ken Stewart designed them based on his labrador retriever.
• •In Inuit mythology, the polar bear is Nanuq / Nanook (ᓇᓄᖅ), the master of bears, who decides if hunters succeed. Inuit treat the bear as 'almost-human' because of how closely its hunting resembles human hunting.
• •Polar bears are legally marine mammals, the only bear species with that classification. They spend most of their lives on sea ice.
• •Grizzly-polar bear hybrids ('pizzly' or 'grolar' bears) were confirmed in the wild in 2006 on Banks Island, Canada. All 8 known wild hybrids descend from the same female polar bear. Climate change is expected to make hybrids more common as ranges overlap.
• •Churchill, Manitoba calls itself the 'polar bear capital of the world.' It has a Polar Bear Alert program, patrol trucks, and a literal polar bear jail for animals caught wandering into town.

• •Not the same as 🐻. Different cultural freight entirely. 🐻 carries Russia, bear markets, Winnie the Pooh, LGBTQ+ 'bear' culture. 🐻‍❄️ is Arctic-specific and climate-coded.
• •On older devices, 🐻‍❄️ renders as two separate emojis (🐻❄️). If someone's phone is pre-2020, they'll see bear + snowflake.
• •Climate communicators have been retiring the polar bear as a climate icon because it makes warming feel remote and other-people's-problem. Using 🐻‍❄️ in a climate post can read as slightly dated to people in that field.

• •Coca-Cola Polar Bears (1922-present) have anchored Coke's holiday advertising for over a century. The 1993 'Northern Lights' TV spot, created by Ken Stewart and animated by Rhythm & Hues, debuted during the NBA Finals and became one of the most recognizable animated mascots in advertising history. Stewart said his reference was his own labrador retriever.
• •Knut (2006-2011)) was a hand-raised cub at Berlin Zoo who became a 2007 media phenomenon. Annie Leibovitz shot him for Vanity Fair alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. His sudden 2011 death at age 4 during a seizure caused by anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis was witnessed by 600-700 visitors.
• •An Inconvenient Truth (2006) animated a drowning polar bear trying to climb back onto a melting ice floe. That scene and the same year's *Time* cover ('Be worried. Be very worried.') made the polar bear the visual shorthand for climate change worldwide.
• •Lost (2004-2010) opened with a polar bear chasing survivors on a tropical island. The out-of-place bear became one of the show's most famous mystery signals and sparked years of fan theorizing.
• •Bear in the Big Blue House (1997-2006) featured a gentle brown bear, not a polar bear, but Jim Henson's Creature Shop also built the Coca-Cola polar bear puppets, which share construction DNA with Big Bird and Bear.
• •Lyra's armored bear Iorek Byrnison in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (1995 novels, 2007 film, 2019-2022 HBO series) is a mythic polar bear warrior king. Arguably the most famous fictional polar bear after the Coca-Cola bears.
• •The Golden Compass (2007)) adapted the Iorek storyline into a mainstream film, briefly making 'panserbjørne' (armored bears) a pop culture touchstone.

• •🐻‍❄️ is a ZWJ sequence: U+1F43BU+1F43B + U+200DU+200D + U+2744U+2744 + U+FE0FU+FE0F. Not a single codepoint.
• •Older devices (pre-iOS 14.2, pre-Android 11) render as 🐻❄️ (two separate emojis). If you support older devices, test the fallback.
• •Shortcode: :polar_bear::polar_bear: on most modern platforms. Some older Slacks don't have it; they show :bear::snowflake::bear::snowflake: as a fallback.
• •For Arctic or climate-themed UI, pair 🐻‍❄️ with ❄️, 🧊, 🌊 to anchor the cold-climate context.
• •There is no skin tone modifier. Single composed emoji.

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