What 🇬🇼 means
🇬🇼 is the flag: Guinea-Bissau emoji, filed under Flags in the country-flag subgroup of the Unicode emoji index.
It was added in Emoji 2.0 (2015) and the underlying characters entered Unicode in version 6.0 (2010). The characters therefore predate their emoji presentation by 5 years.
How it is encoded
🇬🇼 is a sequence of 2 code points (U+1F1EC U+1F1FC), joined so that they render as one glyph. Software that counts characters will report 2, not 1 — the usual source of broken emoji handling.
It is RGI (recommended for general interchange), so every major platform ships artwork for it.
Use it for Guinea-Bissau itself, its people, places, culture, sport, or national events.
If it renders as letters, the recipient may not recognize the country flag.
Don't confuse it with
4Worth knowing
- Guinea-Bissau adopted this flag in 1973, when it declared independence from Portugal. The design comes from the flag of the independence party PAIGC, and the black star stands for African unity.
Questions people ask
1Why does 🇬🇼 show as letters on Windows?
It can. As of 2026, Windows does not render country flags, so it may show the regional-indicator letters GW or a box instead.
How to type 🇬🇼
:flag-gw:the common shortcode; support varies by platform.🇬🇼Codes and encoding2 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.