Volleyball Emoji

A white and blue volleyball. 🏐 represents the world's fourth most popular sport with over 800 million fans and 370 million players globally. But this emoji carries more pop culture weight than any other sports ball.

Two iconic film moments tower over everything else associated with 🏐. First: the Top Gun beach volleyball scene (1986), where Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and friends play shirtless volleyball set to Kenny Loggins' "Playing with the Boys." Director Tony Scott shot it like a cologne commercial, which nearly got him fired, but it became one of the most parodied scenes in film history. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) paid tribute with a beach football scene.

Second: Wilson the volleyball from Cast Away (2000). Tom Hanks' character creates a face on a Wilson volleyball using his own blood, and the ball becomes his only companion for four years on a deserted island. The moment Wilson floats away is one of cinema's most emotional scenes about an inanimate object. An original prop sold for $162,500 at auction in 2024.

The third cultural force is anime. Haikyuu!! by Haruichi Furudate has sold over 75 million copies and reversed a decade-long decline in Japanese youth volleyball participation. On TikTok, "Playing Volleyball Because of Haikyuu" has 12.7 million posts.

🏐 splits across three distinct social media communities.

Beach and summer culture. 🏐 is a summer staple, used in beach day posts, vacation content, and outdoor activity discussions. Beach volleyball specifically combines athletics with beach aesthetic, making 🏐 popular in both sports and lifestyle content.

Competitive volleyball. Players and fans use 🏐 during school seasons, club tournaments, and Olympic years. Volleyball is the most-played girls' high school sport in America with over 564,000 participants in 2023-24. The VNL 2024 saw a 13% growth in attendance from 2023.

Anime fans. Haikyuu!! created an enormous online community that uses 🏐 alongside anime content. Fan art, match recreations, and "Haikyuu made me play volleyball" videos are everywhere on TikTok and Twitter.

Pop culture references. "Top Gun vibes 🏐" or "WILSON! 🏐" are instantly recognized. The emoji connects to two separate Tom Hanks/Tom Cruise moments that defined different eras of American cinema.

Volleyball was invented in 1895 by William G. Morgan, a physical education director at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Morgan wanted a less physically demanding alternative to basketball (which James Naismith had invented just four years earlier at a nearby YMCA). He took the net from tennis, the ball concept from basketball, and the use of hands from handball.

The original game was called "Mintonette," derived from badminton. It had wildly different rules: no limit on the number of players, no limit on hits before sending the ball over, second-chance serves, and nine-inning matches modeled after baseball. At its first public demonstration at Springfield College in 1896, an observer named Alfred Halstead noticed the defining mechanic of the game: volleying the ball. He suggested renaming it "Volleyball," and the name stuck.

The sport spread rapidly through the YMCA's international network. By the early 1900s, volleyball had reached Asia, and by the 1960s, it was one of the most-played sports on Earth. Beach volleyball was added to the Olympics in 1996 at the Atlanta Games and quickly became one of the most-watched Summer Olympic events.

Approved in Unicode 8.0 (2015) as U+1F3D0U+1F3D0 VOLLEYBALL. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

1. 1895William G. Morgan invents 'Mintonette' (volleyball) at the YMCA in Holyoke, Massachusetts
2. 1896Renamed 'Volleyball' after Alfred Halstead observes the volleying nature of the game at Springfield College
3. 1947FIVB (Fédération Internationale de Volleyball) founded in Paris
4. 1964Indoor volleyball debuts at the Tokyo Olympics
5. 1986Top Gun beach volleyball scene is filmed, cementing 🏐's shirtless-summer cultural shorthand
6. 1996Beach volleyball added to the Olympics at the Atlanta Games
7. 2000Cast Away premieres, turning Wilson the volleyball into one of cinema's most famous non-human characters
8. 2012Haikyuu!! manga begins serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump
9. 2015Volleyball emoji approved in Unicode 8.0 as U+1F3D0↗
10. 2024Wilson prop from Cast Away sells for $162,500 at Heritage Auctions↗

Volleyball's strongest cultural roots are in Brazil, where beach volleyball is practically a national religion. The country dominates Olympic beach volleyball and treats the indoor game with the intensity other nations reserve for soccer.

In Italy, men's volleyball (Serie A) is one of the world's premier leagues, with packed stadiums and fierce local rivalries. Italy's men's team is consistently world-ranked in the top three.

In Japan, volleyball was already popular before Haikyuu!! supercharged it. The manga reversed a decade of declining youth participation: volleyball club membership fell from 41,000 to 37,000 students between 2006-2012, then rebounded to over 46,000 by 2016 after the anime aired. Japan's men's team entered the 2024 Paris Olympics ranked fourth in the world.

In the US, volleyball is the most-played girls' high school sport with over 564,000 participants. College volleyball has a devoted following, and beach volleyball is woven into West Coast and Florida culture.

• •Volleyball was originally called "Mintonette" when invented in 1895. The original rules allowed unlimited players, unlimited hits before sending the ball over, and nine innings modeled after baseball. It was renamed "Volleyball" in 1896.
• •The Top Gun volleyball scene (1986) was set to Kenny Loggins' "Playing with the Boys" and has been parodied in everything from Hot Shots! to Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Director Tony Scott nearly got fired for shooting it like a commercial.
• •Wilson the volleyball from Cast Away is one of cinema's most beloved "characters." Wilson Sporting Goods provided 60 volleyballs for production and approximately 100 more for promotion. An original prop sold for $162,500 in 2024.
• •Beach volleyball became an Olympic sport in 1996 at the Atlanta Games. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings won three consecutive gold medals (2004, 2008, 2012), going 112 matches unbeaten at one point.
• •Haikyuu!! has sold over 75 million copies and reversed a decade-long decline in Japanese youth volleyball participation. On TikTok, "Playing Volleyball Because of Haikyuu" has 12.7 million posts. An NHK documentary titled "We Became Strong Through Manga" details the anime's real-world impact on athletes.
• •Volleyball is the most-played girls' high school sport in the US with over 564,000 participants in 2023-24, ahead of basketball and soccer.
• •The 2024 Volleyball Nations League saw 13% attendance growth from 2023 and 33% growth from 2022. In Brazil, a single men's match drew 2.8 million TV viewers.
• •Volleyball and basketball were both invented at YMCA locations in Massachusetts, four years apart. William G. Morgan invented volleyball in Holyoke in 1895 explicitly as a less physical alternative to James Naismith's 1891 Springfield invention.
• •Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings went 112 consecutive matches unbeaten in international beach volleyball from 2007 to 2009. They won three straight Olympic gold medals (2004, 2008, 2012) before Walsh Jennings took a bronze in 2016 with a different partner.
• •At Paris 2024, Japan's men's volleyball team briefly ranked #1 in the world. The timing overlap with Haikyuu!!'s manga finale was not coincidental. Many of that roster's players grew up reading the manga.

• •Top Gun (1986) contains one of the most iconic and most-parodied scenes in American cinema. Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer play shirtless volleyball to Kenny Loggins' "Playing with the Boys." Top Gun: Maverick (2022) paid tribute with a beach football scene.
• •Cast Away (2000) turned Wilson the volleyball into one of cinema's most beloved non-human characters. Tom Hanks' scream of "WILSON!" as the volleyball floats away is one of the most memed and referenced moments in film. The original prop sold for $162,500 in 2024.
• •Haikyuu!! (2012-2020 manga, 2014-2020 anime, 2024 films) is the most culturally significant volleyball property in fiction. Over 75 million copies sold, reversed Japan's youth volleyball decline, and created a global community of fans who took up the sport because of the series.
• •Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, the most decorated beach volleyball duo in Olympic history, were the public faces of American beach volleyball for over a decade. Their three straight golds made 🏐 a summer-Olympics staple in US broadcast rotations.

• •🏐 is U+1F3D0U+1F3D0. Common shortcodes: :volleyball::volleyball: (Slack, Discord, GitHub).
• •Color differs subtly by vendor: Apple uses a soft yellow-blue, Google's design is whiter, Samsung goes colorful. All preserve the panel seam pattern.

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