Saudi Arabia Emoji

🇸🇦 the Saudi flag emoji is green with white Arabic writing and a white sword beneath it. Like every country flag emoji it is not a picture stored in Unicode but two regional indicator symbols, 🇸 and 🇦, for the country code SA, which phones and Macs join into the flag. Windows has no flag pictures in its emoji font, so there you see the letters SA, while the person you send them to still sees the flag on their phone. KSA, the abbreviation you see on shirts and hashtags, stands for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, المملكة العربية السعودية.

The writing is the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith: لا إله إلا الله محمد رسول الله, "There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God". Because it carries those words, the Saudi flag is never lowered to half-mast, and real flags are made from two sheets sewn back to back so the writing reads correctly, right to left, from both sides. Since 2023, 11 March has been Saudi Flag Day.

Where flag emoji don't show, Saudis write the flag in its colours: 💚🤍, 🟩⬜ or 🟢⚪. The national emblem is two crossed swords under a palm tree, which you can paste as ⚔️🌴, and 👑 stands for the kingdom and its king. By CLDR's estimate about 36.5 million people live in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi riyal symbol: ⃁, SAR and ر.س

For decades the Saudi riyal had no sign of its own. Prices are written SAR or SR in English and ر.س in Arabic: ra and sin, short for ريال سعودي (Saudi riyal), with a full stop between them, or simply ريال after the number. U+FDFC ﷼ is a compatibility character for the Iranian rial; Saudi Arabia’s separate sign is ⃁ (U+20C1).

In February 2025 the Saudi Central Bank introduced a new riyal symbol, drawn from the Arabic calligraphy of the word riyal, and Unicode added it as U+20C1 SAUDI RIYAL SIGN in Unicode 17.0 in September 2025. Fonts and keyboards are still catching up, so on many devices it shows as an empty box; in HTML it is ⃁. Until it displays everywhere, SAR and ر.س are what you can rely on.

A riyal is 100 halalas 🪙, and since 1986 it has been pegged to the US dollar at 3.75 riyals, which is why 💵 sits next to 💰 here.

Arabic letters and numbers for Saudi Arabia

Arabic is Saudi Arabia's official language. People speak their regional dialects, Najdi Arabic in Riyadh and the centre (CLDR estimates about 1.1 million speakers), Hejazi in Jeddah, Mecca and Medina, Gulf Arabic in the Eastern Province. They use the Arabic script; formal writing generally uses Modern Standard Arabic: 28 letters, written right to left; letters that join take different forms according to their position and neighbours. 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 represents a glottal stop and often sits on a carrier: أ إ آ ؤ ئ. ة (ta marbuta) ends most feminine words and ى (alif maqsura) ends words like على. Paste ا ل س ع و د ي ة one after another and they join into السعودية, Saudi Arabia.

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 are on Saudi banknotes and number plates, and even inside right-to-left text a number is written largest place first, left to right: ٢٣ is 23.

For the vowel marks and the full alphabet see the Arabic and Najdi Arabic collections; the neighbours Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan and Iraq have their own collections too.

Kaaba emoji 🕋: Mecca, Medina, Hajj and Ramadan

🕋 the Kaaba emoji shows the black-draped cube at the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca, the direction Muslims everywhere face in prayer. It arrived in Unicode 8.0 in 2015 together with 🕌 and 📿. 🕌 can also stand for the Prophet's Mosque in Medina with its green dome, and the two cities are why the king's title is Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. Pilgrims coming home from Hajj are greeted with حج مبرور (Hajj mabrur, "may your Hajj be accepted") and 🕋🤲, and the sheep 🐑 belongs to Eid al-Adha, which falls on 10 Dhul-Hijjah during the Hajj.

In Ramadan 🌙 people send رمضان كريم (Ramadan Kareem). Fried sambosa 🥟 and a jug of Vimto 🥤, a British fruit cordial especially popular in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan, are common on iftar tables, and Eid al-Fitr brings عيد مبارك (Eid Mubarak) and ma'amoul date cookies 🍪. The ligatures ﷽ (Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, "In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful"), ﷲ (Allah) and ﷺ (the blessing written after the Prophet's name) are single characters, which is why people copy them rather than type them.

Saudi emoji for gahwa, kabsa and places

Coffee ☕ here means gahwa: lightly roasted Saudi coffee spiced with cardamom, poured from a dallah 🫖 into small handleless cups 🍵 and served with dates 🌴. Arabic coffee is on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, and 2022 was named the Year of Saudi Coffee. Jareesh is the officially selected national dish; kabsa is a spiced-rice dish 🍚🍛 with chicken 🍗 or lamb 🍖 and often dried black lime 🍋‍🟩; mandi is rice and meat slow-cooked in a pit; jareesh and saleeg are home-cooked pots 🍲; shawarma 🥙 and falafel 🧆 are everyday street food, and laban 🥛 and honey 🍯 are on the table too.

🏙️ is the Riyadh skyline and 🏰 Masmak Fort, the mud-brick fortress Abdulaziz Al Saud took in 1902; the 🚇 Riyadh Metro opened in December 2024. In Jeddah ⛲ is King Fahd's Fountain, the tallest fountain in the world, 🏗️ the Jeddah Tower, planned to be the first building over a kilometre tall, and 🚄 the Haramain high-speed railway that has linked Mecca, Jeddah and Medina since 2018. In AlUla 🪨 stands for Hegra's Nabataean tombs carved into sandstone, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site (2008), 🐘🪨 for Elephant Rock and 🪞 for Maraya, the mirror-clad concert hall in the desert.

🪸🐠🤿🏝️ are the Red Sea reefs and islands; 🏜️ is the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter, the largest continuous sand desert on Earth; ⛰️ the cliffs of the Edge of the World near Riyadh and the green Asir mountains around Abha; and 🌹 the roses of Taif, distilled into rose water and oil every spring. 🛢️ is oil, first struck in commercial quantity at Dammam in 1938. In winter Saudis go out to the desert to camp ⛺🔥 under the stars 🌌; in summer it is ☀️🥵. 🐪 camels have their own festival with beauty contests, falconry 🦅 and Arabian horses 🐎 are old traditions, and 🐆 is the Arabian leopard, critically endangered and the focus of a breeding programme in AlUla.

Saudi National Day emoji, Founding Day and sport

Saudi National Day is 23 September, the day in 1932 when King Abdulaziz united his lands as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Buildings light up green, cars fly flags, fireworks 🎆 go up, and posts read 🇸🇦💚🎆 with اليوم الوطني (National Day) or دام عزك يا وطن ("may your glory last, homeland"), often with a salute 🫡. Founding Day, 22 February, has been a holiday since 2022 and marks 1727, when Imam Muhammad bin Saud founded the first Saudi state in Diriyah. At both you will see the ardah ⚔️🥁, the sword dance with drums and poetry that UNESCO lists as intangible heritage. 🎡 is Riyadh Season, the winter festival of concerts and fairs, and 🎬🍿 the cinemas that reopened in 2018.

Football ⚽ is the national passion. On 22 November 2022 Saudi Arabia beat Argentina 2–1 at the World Cup in Qatar, and the next day was declared a public holiday; the kingdom hosts the 2034 World Cup 🏟️. Fans paste their club's colours: 💙 for Al Hilal, 💛💙 for Al Nassr, Cristiano Ronaldo's club since 2023, 💛🖤 for Al Ittihad and 💚🤍 for Al Ahli. Jeddah has hosted a Formula 1 night race on its Corniche since 2021 🏎️🏁, the Dakar Rally has run through Saudi deserts since 2020 🏍️🚙, the Saudi Cup in Riyadh is the world's richest horse race 🏇, and Riyadh hosts world-title boxing 🥊 and the Esports World Cup 🎮. 🧑‍🚀 is for Prince Sultan bin Salman, who flew on the Space Shuttle in 1985 as the first Arab in space, and Rayyanah Barnawi, the first Saudi woman in space in 2023.