SOON Arrow Emoji

The word "SOON" in capital letters with a right-pointing arrow above it. It's a text-in-an-emoji, which makes it unusual. Most people ignore the arrow entirely and use it purely for the word.

Emojipedia describes it as the SOON arrow, approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the wonderfully literal name SOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVESOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE. It's part of a five-emoji family of word-arrows that were originally designed for Japanese mobile phone calendars in the late 1990s: 🔙 BACK, 🔚 END, 🔛 ON!, 🔜 SOON, and 🔝 TOP. Together they functioned as event status indicators: something was coming up (SOON), happening now (ON!), or finished (END).

In modern use, 🔜 is the teaser emoji. Brands, creators, and friends use it to build anticipation without revealing details. "Big announcement 🔜" is the emoji version of a movie trailer's "Coming Soon." But the word "soon" carries baggage in internet culture, where it can mean anything from "tomorrow" to "never," depending on who's saying it.

🔜 shows up in three main contexts. First, marketing and announcements: brands, game studios, and content creators drop it to tease upcoming releases. "Something's cooking 🔜" in an Instagram story is standard pre-launch behavior.

Second, casual planning: "dinner plans 🔜" or "vacation 🔜" in group chats, where it functions as a vague timeline that everyone understands means "it'll happen but don't ask me when exactly."

Third, and most interesting, is the ironic use. In gaming culture specifically, "soon" has become a joke thanks to Valve Time, the legendary tendency of Valve Software to miss release dates by months or years. "Half-Life 3 🔜" is the ultimate sarcastic use of this emoji. The broader internet adopted "Soon™" (with a trademark symbol) as shorthand for promises that may never materialize. When someone says 🔜 about a project that's been delayed three times, the emoji reads as dark humor, not excitement.

The "SOON" meme adds another layer. Since at least 2001, images of animals (usually cats or dogs) staring menacingly at something with the caption "SOON" have been a staple of image macro culture. The meme implies the animal is plotting something. When someone sends just "🔜" with no context, it can carry that same ominous, I'm-planning-something energy.

The word-arrow emojis have a specific and traceable origin. According to a Language Log analysis of the original Japanese emoji sets, these five emojis (🔙🔚🔛🔜🔝) were designed by Japanese mobile phone carriers in the late 1990s for use in calendar and scheduling applications.

In the original NTT Docomo emoji set (1999), the three temporal arrows (SOON, ON!, END) appeared near a night sky emoji and a clock emoji, suggesting they were event status indicators. SOON meant an event was coming up. ON! meant it was happening right now. END meant it was over. BACK and TOP were navigation controls: previous page and top of page.

When Unicode standardized these emoji in 2010, they kept the English text intact, even though the emojis were originally Japanese. This was unusual since most emoji are purely visual symbols that work across languages. A Japanese user looking at 🔜 sees the English word "SOON," making it one of the few emojis that's language-specific by design.

The word "soon" itself carries ancient weight. It comes from Old English "sōna," meaning "at once, immediately." The modern usage has drifted considerably. "Soon" now means anything from "in five minutes" to "eventually" to "when I feel like it." The internet made this drift worse. Valve Software's legendary delays turned "soon" into a punchline, and the trademarked "Soon™" became a universal symbol for promises without timelines.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) under the name SOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVESOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. It belongs to a family of five word-arrow emojis: 🔙 (BACK WITH LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVEBACK WITH LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVE), 🔚 (END WITH LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVEEND WITH LEFTWARDS ARROW ABOVE), 🔛 (ON WITH EXCLAMATION MARK WITH LEFT RIGHT ARROW ABOVEON WITH EXCLAMATION MARK WITH LEFT RIGHT ARROW ABOVE), 🔜 (SOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVESOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE), and 🔝 (TOP WITH UPWARDS ARROW ABOVETOP WITH UPWARDS ARROW ABOVE). These names are hilariously over-specified for what are basically text labels.

1. 1913Nils Granlund creates the first movie trailer for The Pleasure Seekers. It plays AFTER the film, which is why they're called 'trailers'↗
2. 1999NTT Docomo's original emoji set includes word-arrow symbols for calendar event status, including SOON, ON!, and END↗
3. 2001The 'SOON' meme appears in the webcomic The Parking Lot Is Full, featuring a menacing figure captioned 'Soon'↗
4. 2007The cat-staring-at-Chihuahua 'SOON' image macro goes viral on I Can Has Cheezburger↗
5. 2010Unicode 6.0 standardizes U+1F51C SOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE↗
6. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, available on all major platforms

• •The five word-arrow emojis (🔙🔚🔛🔜🔝) were originally designed for Japanese phone calendars circa 1999 to indicate event status: upcoming, happening, or finished.
• •Movie trailers are called "trailers" because the first one in 1913) played AFTER the film, not before. Nils Granlund created it for The Pleasure Seekers at Loew's theaters.
• •The "SOON" meme (a menacing animal captioned "Soon") predates the emoji by over a decade. It first appeared in a 2001 webcomic and went mainstream on I Can Has Cheezburger in 2007.
• •Valve Time is Valve Software's own wiki page documenting the difference between their announced dates and actual release dates. They maintain it themselves, which is either admirable self-awareness or a flex.
• •The Unicode name for 🔜 is SOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVESOON WITH RIGHTWARDS ARROW ABOVE, which is 37 characters long. Most people just see a word that says SOON and ignore the arrow completely.
• •🔜 is one of very few emojis that contain English text, making it language-specific by design. A Japanese user still sees the English word "SOON," not a Japanese translation.

• •Using 🔜 without ever following through turns the emoji into a running joke. If you tease "big announcement 🔜" three times with no announcement, the fourth time nobody will care.
• •In professional contexts, 🔜 is too vague. "Feature update 🔜" in a client-facing Slack is not a timeline. Give a date or don't promise.
• •Some people read 🔜 as passive-aggressive when used in response to requests: "When will you fix this?" "🔜" reads as dismissive rather than reassuring.

• •The "SOON" meme (2001-present) — One of the internet's oldest meme formats. A 2001 webcomic (The Parking Lot Is Full) featured a figure thinking "Soon..." behind someone's shoulder. By 2007, I Can Has Cheezburger was flooded with cats and dogs staring menacingly with the caption "SOON." The format implies imminent (and usually hilarious) scheming.
• •Valve Time / "Soon™" (2003-present) — Valve Software's legendary inability to hit release dates spawned "Soon™" as internet shorthand for promises without timelines. The company's own developer wiki maintains a page tracking the discrepancy. "Half-Life 3 🔜" remains the internet's most ironic use of the word.
• •"Coming Soon" in cinema (1913-present) — The very first movie trailer was created in 1913 by Nils Granlund), and the phrase "Coming Soon" has been synonymous with film marketing ever since. The emoji captures that same energy: anticipation without a date.
• •Product launch teasers — Apple, Samsung, gaming studios, and influencers routinely use 🔜 in social media teasers. The emoji has become shorthand for "we're about to announce something but we're going to make you wait for the details." When Apple tweets 🔜 before a keynote, tech Twitter loses its mind.

• •The codepoint is U+1F51CU+1F51C. Shortcodes: :soon::soon: (GitHub, Slack). The full word-arrow family: :back::back: (🔙), :end::end: (🔚), :on::on: (🔛), :soon::soon: (🔜), :top::top: (🔝).
• •These emojis render with English text on every platform, making them unusual among emoji. If your app targets non-English audiences, be aware that 🔜 always displays "SOON" regardless of locale.
• •The word-arrow family occupies codepoints U+1F519U+1F519 through U+1F51DU+1F51D. They're consecutive, which is helpful if you're programmatically filtering them as a group.

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