Kuwait Emoji

🇰🇼 the Kuwait flag emoji has three horizontal stripes, green on top, white in the middle and red at the bottom, with a black trapezoid along the side nearest the pole. Like every country flag emoji it is not a picture stored in Unicode but two regional indicator symbols, 🇰 and 🇼, for Kuwait's country code KW, which phones and Macs join into the flag. Windows has no flag pictures in its emoji font, so there you see the letters KW, while the person you send them to still sees the flag on their phone.

The flag was adopted in 1961, the year Kuwait became independent, and its four colours are the pan-Arab colours. Kuwaitis link them to a verse by the medieval poet Safi al-Din al-Hilli: white are our deeds, black our battles, green our lands and red our swords. Where flag emoji don't show, people write the flag in its colours, 💚🤍❤️🖤 or 🟩⬜🟥⬛, in that order. Before 1961 Kuwait used several flag designs, including red flags with كويت in white; there is no emoji for those old flags, and the nearest you can paste is 🟥 with كويت.

Kuwait means "little fort" in Arabic, a diminutive of kut, a fortress. Kuwait's official 2025 estimate is about 4.9 million people, most of them in and around Kuwait City on the bay at the top of the Gulf 🌊.

Kuwait flag vs UAE, Palestine, Jordan and Sudan flags

Five flags share the same four colours, and at emoji size they are easy to mix up. 🇰🇼 Kuwait has green on top and a black trapezoid at the pole. 🇦🇪 the United Arab Emirates has a vertical red band at the pole and green, white and black stripes. 🇵🇸 Palestine has black, white and green stripes with a red triangle, and 🇯🇴 Jordan is the same with a small white star in the triangle. 🇸🇩 Sudan has red, white and black stripes with a green triangle. If your screen shows letters instead of flags, KW is Kuwait, AE the Emirates, PS Palestine, JO Jordan and SD Sudan.

Kuwait's Gulf neighbours each have their own collection: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Kuwaiti dinar symbol: KD, KWD and د.ك

The Kuwaiti dinar has no currency sign of its own in Unicode. Prices are written KD in English (KD 5), KWD in banking, and د.ك in Arabic: dal and kaf, short for دينار كويتي (Kuwaiti dinar), with a full stop between them. To write it, copy د and ك from the grid and put a full stop between them; because Arabic runs right to left, د ends up on the right.

The dinar was introduced in 1961 and is divided into 1,000 fils 🪙, so prices often have three decimals: KD 1.250 is one and a quarter dinars. It is the most valuable currency unit in the world, worth a little over three US dollars, and its rate is managed against a basket of currencies. 💰 and 💵 are the money emoji people put next to it.

Arabic letters and numbers for Kuwait

Arabic is Kuwait's official language. At home Kuwaitis speak Kuwaiti Arabic, a Gulf dialect, but formal writing is Modern Standard Arabic in the Arabic script: 28 letters, written right to left; most join to neighboring letters and change shape depending on their position in a word. The grid groups the letters by shape: ب ت ث share one body and differ only in their dots, and so do ج ح خ, د ذ, ر ز, س ش, ص ض, ط ظ and ع غ. Hamza ء is the catch in the throat between vowels, ة (ta marbuta) ends most feminine words, and ى (alif maqsura) ends words like على. Paste ك و ي ت one after another and they form كويت; with the article ال in front, الكويت is Kuwait in Arabic.

Kuwaiti speech has sounds the standard letters don't show: ك often becomes ch, and ج often becomes y, so a man, رجال, is said rayyal. When people write the dialect in poetry, plays or chat, some use the Persian letter چ for the ch sound, which is why it sits at the end of the alphabet in the grid. Everyday Kuwaiti greetings you can paste are هلا والله (hala wallah, a warm hello) and شلونك؟ (shlonak, how are you?).

To type Arabic on Windows, add the Arabic keyboard under Settings › Time & language › Language & region and switch with Windows+Space; on a Mac add Arabic under System Settings › Keyboard › Input Sources; on iPhone and Android add an Arabic keyboard and switch with the globe key. Arabic punctuation is turned to suit the script: the comma ، is upside down, the question mark ؟ is mirrored, and the semicolon is ؛. Eastern Arabic digits ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ appear on Kuwaiti banknotes, number plates and in Arabic text, and even inside right-to-left text a number is written largest place first, left to right: ٢٥ is 25. For the full alphabet with its vowel marks see the Arabic collection.

Kuwait National Day and Liberation Day emoji

Kuwait celebrates two days back to back. National Day on 25 February marks the accession of Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah in 1950, the ruler who led Kuwait to independence from British protection on 19 June 1961; the holiday was moved to February because June is too hot for street parties. Liberation Day on 26 February marks the end of the Iraqi occupation in 1991, which is why 🕊️ often joins the flag in posts that week.

The whole of February is festive, and the famous custom is the water fight: young people line Gulf Road, the seafront drive, with water balloons 🎈, water pistols 🔫 and cans of foam spray, cars are draped in 💚🤍❤️🖤 and fireworks 🎆 go up over the bay. Posts read 🇰🇼🎆🎉 with عيد وطني سعيد (Happy National Day) or 🇰🇼🕊️ with تحرير (liberation).

The Kuwait Towers, three needle towers on the waterfront with spheres covered in blue, green and grey discs, opened in 1979 and are the country's best-known sight, lit in the flag colours on National Day. Unicode has no Kuwait Towers emoji; 🗼 (Tokyo Tower) is the usual stand-in for any tower, so 🗼🌊🇰🇼 is how people write it.

Kuwait emoji for the sea, food, desert and football

Before oil, Kuwait lived from the sea. Its shipwrights built wooden dhows ⛵⚓ that traded as far as India and East Africa, and every summer the pearling fleet sailed out for months of diving for oysters 🦪. The women of the desert wove Sadu 🧶🧵, the striped geometric wool weaving of tent walls and cushions that UNESCO listed in 2020 together with Saudi Arabia. 🏝️🏛️ is Failaka Island, where Hellenistic Greeks later built a temple and a fort. Oil 🛢️ was struck at Burgan in 1938, one of the largest oil fields in the world, and it built the modern skyline 🏙️🌃 and malls like the Avenues 🛍️🏬.

Machboos is the national dish: rice 🍚🍛 cooked with spices, dried black lime 🍋‍🟩 (loomi) and chicken 🍗 or lamb. Mutabbaq samak is fish 🐟, often the prized zubaidi, on spiced rice, and murabyan is shrimp 🦐 rice. Bread 🫓 is baked fresh at bakeries, shawarma 🥙 and falafel 🧆 are everyday street food, and in Ramadan tables have harees 🥣, wheat and meat beaten smooth, and luqaimat, crisp dough balls soaked in date syrup or honey 🍯. Coffee ☕ means gahwa, light Arabic coffee with cardamom poured from a dallah into small cups and served with dates 🌴, and chai 🍵🫖 is the sweet tea that keeps the diwaniya going: the evening gatherings where Kuwaiti men meet friends, neighbours and politicians.

Summer in Kuwait regularly passes 50 °C ☀️🥵🌡️, and dust storms 🌫️🌬️ turn the sky orange. In the cooler months families go out to the desert 🏜️ for kashta, camping ⛺🏕️ with tents, fires and sometimes camels 🐪. 🐎 and 🦅 are the Arabian horses and falcons of Gulf tradition. Football ⚽ is the national passion: Kuwait won the Asian Cup in 1980, played at the 1982 World Cup and has won the Arabian Gulf Cup 🏆 ten times, more than any other team.

In Ramadan 🌙 Kuwaitis gather late at night for the ghabga meal, and in the middle of the month comes Gergean, when children in traditional clothes go from house to house singing and collecting nuts 🥜 and sweets 🍬. Eid greetings are عيد مبارك (Eid Mubarak) with 🌙🤲, 📿 is the misbaha prayer beads you'll see in many hands, and 🐑 belongs to Eid al-Adha.