Tear-off Calendar Emoji

A page-a-day desk calendar, shown as a top page about to be torn off to reveal tomorrow's date. 📆 reads as time passing: a countdown to a deadline, a date to remember, the next page in a series. It's distinct from 📅 Calendar (a single sheet with a red top) and 🗓️ Spiral Calendar (a small spiral-bound pad), though all three are interchangeable for most everyday scheduling use.

Approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in October 2010 as U+1F4C6U+1F4C6. On Apple, Google, Samsung, Twitter, and JoyPixels designs, the visible date is July 17, which is World Emoji Day. Microsoft, Facebook, and WhatsApp use other dates or generic placeholders.

📆 carries more emotional weight than the plain calendar emoji because tearing off a page implies time slipping away. "📆 ___ days to go" is a common countdown format. "📆 mark your calendar" reads as urgency or excitement, depending on context.

In business and team contexts, 📆 shows up in scheduling messages, deadline reminders, and sprint plans. Three calendar emojis exist (📅 📆 🗓️) and most people don't strongly distinguish them, so 📆 often appears just because someone tapped the first calendar in their picker.

A quieter use: page-a-day calendars are still a real product category (kanji-a-day, gardening tips, jokes, daily quotes, the Old Farmer's Almanac Everyday Calendar). 📆 in lifestyle and Japanese mindfulness content references that physical object literally.

📆 was approved in Unicode 6.0 in October 2010, part of the original 722-emoji set that brought Japanese mobile carrier emoji into the Unicode standard. Page-a-day tear-off calendars are a long-established Japanese desk item (the daily 日めくり kanji or proverb calendar is a cultural fixture), which is likely why this format was distinct enough to merit its own codepoint alongside 📅.

The most-discussed thing about both 📆 and 📅 is the date they show: July 17. The original reason was historical. Apple premiered iCal at MacWorld Expo on July 17, 2002, and when Apple designed its calendar emoji it baked that date in as a reference. When Jeremy Burge launched World Emoji Day in 2014, he picked July 17 specifically because of the calendar emoji. Other vendors gradually followed Apple's lead. Today most major platforms (Apple, Google, Samsung, Twitter/X, JoyPixels) show July 17 on at least one calendar emoji. Microsoft, Facebook, and WhatsApp don't.

1. 2002Apple premieres iCal for Mac at MacWorld Expo on July 17. The date later becomes the reference for the calendar emoji.↗
2. 2010Tear-off calendar emoji approved in Unicode 6.0, part of the original 722-emoji set.↗
3. 2014Jeremy Burge launches World Emoji Day on July 17, picking the date because of the iCal-derived calendar emoji.↗
4. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, with the July 17 date locked in across most major vendor designs.
5. 2017Apple begins using each World Emoji Day to announce upcoming iOS emoji additions, deepening the July 17 association.

• •Most major vendors (Apple, Google, Samsung, Twitter/X, JoyPixels) render 📆 with the date July 17. Microsoft, Facebook, and WhatsApp are the main holdouts.
• •The July 17 date traces to Apple's iCal launch at MacWorld Expo on that date in 2002. The emoji art baked it in, and it stuck.
• •Jeremy Burge picked July 17 for World Emoji Day in 2014 specifically because the calendar emoji showed that date. Since 2017, Apple uses the day to announce upcoming iOS emoji.
• •Page-a-day tear-off calendars (日めくり, himekuri) are a Japanese desk staple. The format predates the emoji by more than a century.
• •📆 was part of the original 722-emoji set that shipped in Unicode 6.0 in October 2010.
• •Three calendar emojis exist (📅 📆 🗓️) because each came from a slightly different Japanese carrier symbol. Most users don't distinguish between them.