Sun Emoji

A bright yellow sun, often depicted with rays emanating outward. ☀️ is as fundamental as emoji get. The sun is the most important object in the sky, the source of all energy on Earth, and the oldest symbol in human religious history. When you send ☀️, you're using a symbol that humans have been painting, carving, and worshipping for at least 10,000 years.

Added to Unicode 1.1 (1993) as a text symbol, gaining emoji presentation in Emoji 1.0 (2015). The sun symbol (☀) is one of the oldest characters in the Unicode standard, predating the entire emoji concept by over two decades.

In texting, ☀️ means warmth, positivity, summer, morning, and good vibes. 'Good morning ☀️' is one of the most common text messages in human communication. But beneath the casual usage lies the weight of every civilization that ever looked up and decided the burning ball in the sky was a god.

Solar deities appear in virtually every ancient culture. Egyptian Ra (falcon-headed sun god whose daily journey across the sky renewed the world). Greek Helios (chariot driver pulling the sun from east to west). Japanese Amaterasu (sun goddess, ancestor of all Japanese emperors, still venerated in Shinto). Aztec Tonatiuh (fifth sun god who demanded human sacrifice to keep moving). The same star, radically different mythologies, across every inhabited continent.

☀️ has three main lanes.

Morning/positivity. 'Good morning ☀️' is the default sunrise text. 'Sunny day ☀️' is the weather report. 'You are my ☀️' is the love declaration. The sun represents the start of something good.

Summer/warmth. ☀️ usage spikes seasonally. Summer posts, beach photos, vacation captions, heatwave complaints. "Finally summer ☀️" appears millions of times every June.

Mental health/energy. The connection between sunlight and mood is real. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) affects millions during winter months when sunlight is scarce. Sunlight triggers serotonin production and accounts for over 90% of vitamin D synthesis. When someone posts '☀️ energy' or 'need some ☀️ in my life,' they might be speaking more literally than it seems.

The sun also appears on multiple national flags. Japan's Hinomaru (red circle on white, "Land of the Rising Sun"). Argentina's Sun of May (sun with a face, representing independence). Kiribati's rising sun (17 rays for 17 islands). North Macedonia's Vergina Sun (8 rays, the "new sun of liberty"). The sun on a flag always means the same thing: this nation is beginning, rising, alive.

The sun is humanity's oldest religious symbol.

Britannica documents that sun worship can be found "throughout most of recorded history in various forms." Before writing, before agriculture, before cities, humans looked at the sun and decided it was divine. The evidence goes back at least 10,000 years.

Ra, the Egyptian sun god, was portrayed as a falcon-headed figure with a solar disk on his head. Ra's journey across the sky each day symbolized the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. When Ra descended at sunset, he traveled through the underworld (Duat) and battled the serpent Apep before rising again at dawn. Every sunrise was a cosmic victory.

Helios, the Greek sun god, drove a chariot pulled by four horses from east to west across the sky. The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was a 33-meter statue of Helios built around 280 BC.

Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess, is the most important deity in Shinto. She's believed to be the direct ancestor of all Japanese emperors. Japan's name (日本, Nihon/Nippon) literally means "origin of the sun," and the Hinomaru flag depicts the sun itself. The sun goddess isn't just mythology; she's woven into Japan's national identity.

Tonatiuh, the Aztec sun god, was the fifth sun in Aztec cosmology. The Aztecs believed four previous suns had been destroyed and Tonatiuh demanded human sacrifice to keep moving across the sky. The famous Aztec Sun Stone (often called a calendar stone, though it's not exactly a calendar) depicts Tonatiuh at its center.

Stonehenge (built approximately 3000-2000 BC) is aligned with the summer and winter solstices. Thousands of people still gather there every June 21 to watch the sunrise align with the Heel Stone. A 5,000-year-old monument built to track the sun, still drawing crowds.

Christmas itself may derive from the Roman festival of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), celebrated on December 25 during the winter solstice. The date when the sun begins its return, the days start getting longer again. The sun's rebirth became a religious holiday.

Part of Unicode 1.1 (1993) as U+2600U+2600 BLACK SUN WITH RAYS (the Unicode name describes the filled-in design, not the color). One of the oldest symbols in the Unicode standard. Gained emoji presentation via U+FE0FU+FE0F variation selector in Emoji 1.0 (2015). The sun symbol has been in computing since before the World Wide Web existed.

1. -3000Stonehenge construction begins. The monument is aligned with the summer and winter solstices, tracking the sun's position.↗
2. -280Colossus of Rhodes built: a 33-meter statue of the sun god Helios, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
3. 1870Japan adopts the Hinomaru (sun disc) as its national flag. The design dates to at least the 12th century.↗
4. 1993Unicode 1.1 includes U+2600 BLACK SUN WITH RAYS. The sun becomes a digital character.
5. 2015Emoji 1.0 gives ☀ emoji presentation via variation selector.

The sun is worshipped differently across cultures, but it's worshipped everywhere.

In Japan, the sun is female (Amaterasu, goddess). In Egypt and Greece, the sun is male (Ra, Helios). In Aztec culture, the sun demands sacrifice. In Christian tradition, the sun's winter rebirth may underlie Christmas. Every culture has a relationship with the sun; the nature of that relationship varies.

Modern sun attitudes split along geographic lines. In Northern European and Scandinavian cultures, the sun is precious and scarce; ☀️ in a Norwegian text carries genuine excitement because sunny days are rare. In tropical and equatorial cultures, the sun is constant and sometimes oppressive; ☀️ might mean "it's too hot" rather than "beautiful day."

• •Sun worship is found in virtually every ancient civilization. Ra (Egypt), Helios (Greece), Amaterasu (Japan), Tonatiuh (Aztec), Surya (Hindu), Sol (Norse). The sun is humanity's most universal deity.
• •Japan's name (日本, Nihon/Nippon) literally means "origin of the sun." The Hinomaru flag is the sun itself. The sun goddess Amaterasu is believed to be the ancestor of all Japanese emperors.
• •The Colossus of Rhodes was a 33-meter statue of the sun god Helios, built around 280 BC. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, destroyed by an earthquake in 226 BC.
• •Christmas may derive from Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), a Roman festival on December 25 marking the winter solstice when the sun begins its 'return.' The sun's rebirth became a religious holiday.
• •The sun symbol ☀ has been in Unicode since version 1.1 (1993), making it older than the World Wide Web (which Tim Berners-Lee made public in 1993). The emoji is as old as the internet.
• •Stonehenge is aligned with the solstices and was built between 3000-2000 BC. It's a 5,000-year-old solar observatory that still draws thousands of visitors every summer solstice.
• •The sun appears on the flags of at least 25 countries, including Japan, Argentina, Uruguay, Kiribati, and North Macedonia. A sun on a flag always signals national identity through celestial power.
• •Sunlight accounts for over 90% of human vitamin D synthesis. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) affects millions during winter months when sunlight is scarce. ☀️ isn't just positivity. It's medicine.
• •The sunniest city on Earth is Yuma, Arizona with 4,015 annual sunshine hours. The least sunny major capital is Reykjavík at 1,326. That's a 3x gap. When an Icelander texts ☀️ after months of winter darkness, it carries a weight that a Phoenician's July ☀️ doesn't.
• •Humanity passed 1.18 terawatts of installed solar PV in 2022, a milestone that took 40 years of slow buildup. Then we doubled it in just 2 years. By end of 2024 the world had 1,865 GW installed; 2025 estimates cross 2.25 TW. The sun's energy capture has a hockey-stick curve.
• •2024 was the warmest year in global temperature records per Copernicus, at 0.72 °C above the 1991-2020 baseline, and the first calendar year with global mean temperature above 1.5 °C pre-industrial. The sun didn't get brighter. The atmosphere got better at holding its heat.

• •Stonehenge summer solstice gatherings (annual, June 21) draw tens of thousands of druids, pagans, tourists, and curious visitors to watch the sunrise align with 5,000-year-old stones. English Heritage documents the tradition. It's humanity's oldest recurring sun celebration.
• •The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" (1969, George Harrison) is one of the most beloved songs in pop history. It was written in Eric Clapton's garden after a long, cold winter. The sun as metaphor for relief and hope.
• •The Aztec Sun Stone (c. 1502-1520) is one of the most famous artifacts in Mesoamerican archaeology. Weighing 24 tons with Tonatiuh (the sun god) at its center, it's now in Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology.
• •Louis XIV of France called himself the Sun King (Le Roi-Soleil), identifying himself with Apollo. The Palace of Versailles was designed as a solar temple. The most powerful king in European history chose the sun as his personal brand.
• •Teletubbies featured a baby's face as the sun, creating one of the most iconic (and slightly unsettling) children's TV images of the 1990s. The baby-sun, Jess Smith, grew up and was identified in 2014.

• •☀️ is U+2600U+2600 + U+FE0FU+FE0F (variation selector for emoji presentation). Without the VS16, it renders as a text character (☀) on some platforms. Always include U+FE0FU+FE0F for consistent emoji display.
• •Part of Unicode 1.1 (1993). One of the oldest symbols in the standard. Also see 🌞 (U+1F31EU+1F31E, sun with face) for the personified version and 🌤️ (U+1F324U+1F324, sun behind small cloud) for weather contexts.
• •☀️ usage shows seasonal patterns in analytics data. Expect higher engagement with ☀️ content during Q2 and Q3 (Northern Hemisphere summer) and lower during Q4 and Q1.

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