Skis Emoji

A single ski with a boot attached, angled downward as if descending a slope. Emojipedia shows varying designs by platform, but the core image is always a ski and boot.

People use 🎿 for ski trips, winter vacations, mountain adventures, and the Winter Olympics. It also shows up in après-ski content (the post-skiing social scene), snow condition reports, and climate change discussions about disappearing ski seasons.

The Unicode name is "SKI AND SKI BOOT," which is oddly specific. Most emojis describe a single object, but this one specifies both the equipment and a piece of what you wear. It's one of the few emojis that names a boot.

Skiing itself is ancient. Rock carvings in Rødøy, Norway dating to roughly 3000-4000 BC depict a figure on skis, and physical ski artifacts from Sweden date to 3300 BCE. The emoji represents one of humanity's oldest forms of transportation turned sport.

On Instagram and TikTok, 🎿 dominates during ski season (December through March in the Northern Hemisphere). It appears in trip announcements, slope selfies, après-ski posts, and lift ticket complaints. The hashtag #skiseason pulls billions of views.

The emoji has a clear seasonal pattern in Google Trends: it spikes in Q4 and Q1 every year, then drops to near zero in summer. This makes it one of the most reliably seasonal emojis in the entire Unicode set.

In climate and environmental contexts, 🎿 increasingly appears alongside discussions about shrinking ski seasons and resort closures. The US ski industry has lost an estimated $5 billion since 2000 due to declining snowfall.

There's also the "ski bro" and après-ski aesthetic on TikTok, where 🎿 is used alongside luxury resort content, designer ski wear, and the European Alpine drinking culture that surrounds the sport.

🎿 was approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F3BFU+1F3BF SKI AND SKI BOOT, joining Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

Skiing predates recorded history. The oldest evidence is rock carvings in Rødøy, Norway, dating to around 3000-4000 BC, depicting a figure on skis with a single pole. Physical ski artifacts are even older: the Kalvträsk ski from Sweden dates to 3300 BCE. For the Sámi people of northern Scandinavia, skis were transportation and hunting tools for thousands of years before anyone thought of them as recreation.

Modern skiing as a sport began in Norway in the 1800s. The word "ski" itself comes from the Old Norse "skíð" meaning "piece of wood." Norwegian immigrants brought skiing to the United States, and the first American ski club formed in 1872. The first Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France (1924) featured Nordic skiing events.

Today the global ski industry records over 366 million skier visits per season, with the US alone accounting for 61.5 million in 2024-25. But the sport faces an existential threat: 53% of European resorts are at very high risk for reduced snow supply if warming reaches 2°C, and 98% are in danger at 4°C.

In Scandinavia, skiing isn't a luxury sport. It's embedded in daily life the way cycling is in the Netherlands. Norwegian kids learn to ski almost as soon as they can walk. The phrase "Norwegians are born with skis on their feet" (Nordmenn er født med ski på beina) is a national cliché for a reason.

In the Alps (Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy), 🎿 carries strong après-ski associations. Après-ski culture developed in the 1950s as a formalized post-skiing social tradition: Jagertee in Austria, Bombardino in Switzerland, Glühwein everywhere. The social scene around skiing is as important as the skiing itself in these countries.

In the US and increasingly worldwide, skiing has become associated with wealth. A day at Vail costs $329 for a lift ticket in 2025 (up from $9 in 1972). That 3,600% increase has made skiing a class signifier. Posting 🎿 from Aspen or Verbier reads as a flex in a way it wouldn't in Norway.

In Japan, skiing is huge. The country has over 500 ski resorts and skiing infrastructure that rivals the Alps. Japanese powder snow ("Japow") is considered some of the best in the world and draws international skiers to Hokkaido and Nagano.

• •The oldest evidence of skiing is rock carvings in Rødøy, Norway dating to about 3000-4000 BC. In 2016, teenagers destroyed the carving by trying to "improve" it with tools.
• •A lift ticket at Vail cost $9 in 1972 and $329 in 2025. That's a 3,600% increase. Skiing has become one of the most expensive mainstream sports.
• •The US recorded 61.5 million skier visits in 2024-25, the second-best season on record. Globally, ski resorts see over 366 million visits per season.
• •53% of European ski resorts face very high risk of snow loss at 2°C of global warming. At 4°C, 98% are at risk. The US ski industry has lost an estimated $5 billion since 2000 from climate change.

• •A 5,000-year-old rock carving in Rødøy, Norway, depicting a figure on skis was one of the oldest images of skiing in the world. In 2016, local youths destroyed it by trying to "improve" the carving with tools, deepening the lines and damaging the original. The incident made international headlines.
• •The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina (February 6-22, 2026) are the next showcase for skiing emojis. The Games' visual identity features human movement as the central design concept, with sport pictograms that echo the gestural energy of ⛷️ and 🏂.
• •Vail Resorts reported an 8% decline in visits across the 2023-24 season after annual snowfall dropped 28%. The company, which owns 42 resorts across three countries, has become a barometer for how climate change is hitting the ski industry in real time.

• •🎿 is U+1F3BFU+1F3BF. The official Unicode name is SKI AND SKI BOOT (one of the few emojis that names a wearable item).
• •Common shortcodes: :ski::ski: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).

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