elmatecoYerba mate has its own emoji — and getting there took years of work by a dedicated team of fans. Here’s the full story of how “Mate Drink” 🧉 became one of the first Latin American emojis ever approved by Unicode.
The Proposal
The push for a mate emoji began with a grassroots campaign led by the team behind #EmojiDelMate. In 2018, they submitted a formal proposal to the Unicode Consortium — the organization responsible for standardizing emojis worldwide — and presented their case at Emojicon NYC 2018, the official Unicode Emoji Convention, in a talk titled “International Brew: The History of the Mate Emoji.”
The proposal itself was thorough, including maps and geographic data on the top producing and consuming countries — Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and even Syria — along with images of famous mate drinkers like Pope Francis, Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona, Che Guevara, and former US President Barack Obama. You can still read the original proposal document today.
Approval
The proposal advanced through Unicode’s review process over the following months, and by early 2019 it reached the final stage of approval. On March 5, 2019, Unicode confirmed the mate emoji as part of the Emoji 12.0 release, under the official Unicode name “Mate Drink.”
Rollout
Following the Emoji 12.0 release, platforms like iOS and Android gradually rolled out the new emoji set throughout 2019, and 🧉 has been available on smartphones ever since — one of the first Latin American emojis to make it into the standard set, alongside symbols like the maté de Argentina traditions it represents.
Next time you send 🧉 to a friend, you’ll know the years of work — and the campaign led by real mate lovers — that made it possible. Ready to enjoy the real thing? Check out our guide on how to make yerba mate the traditional way.
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