Playing Card Symbols

Unicode encodes a comprehensive set of playing card characters spanning three distinct blocks: the four classic suit symbols (♠♥♦♣), a full deck of 59 Western playing cards with individual characters for every card, and a complete set of Mahjong tile characters. This guide covers all of these symbols with their code points, explains how they are organized in Unicode, and discusses practical uses in text-based games and applications.

The Four Suit Symbols

The most widely used playing card characters are the four suit symbols, found in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600--U+26FF):

Unicode provides both "black" (filled) and "white" (outline) versions of each suit. The naming convention is historical: "black" means filled/solid, "white" means outline/hollow. In traditional Western card games:

• Spades ♠ and Clubs ♣ are printed in black
• Hearts ♥ and Diamonds ♦ are printed in red

The filled versions (♠♥♦♣) are far more commonly used in digital text than the outline variants.

The Playing Cards Block (U+1F0A0--U+1F0FF)

Unicode 6.0 (2010) introduced a dedicated Playing Cards block containing individual characters for an entire deck of cards. This block covers 59 card characters organized by suit.

Card Back and Jokers

Spades (U+1F0A1--U+1F0AE)

Note that U+1F0AC is the Knight of Spades -- a card used in Tarot decks but not in standard 52-card decks. Each suit in this block includes a knight between the jack and queen, giving 14 cards per suit (ace through king plus knight) instead of the standard 13.

Hearts (U+1F0B1--U+1F0BE)

Diamonds (U+1F0C1--U+1F0CE)

Clubs (U+1F0D1--U+1F0DE)

Trump Cards (Tarot Atouts)

The Playing Cards block also includes 22 trump cards (atouts) used in Tarot card games (the European trick-taking games, not divination). These occupy U+1F0E0--U+1F0F5:

These trump characters have limited font support and are primarily of interest to players of French Tarot and other European tarot card games.

Mahjong Tiles Block (U+1F000--U+1F02F)

Unicode 5.1 (2008) introduced the Mahjong Tiles block with 44 characters representing the standard tile set used in Mahjong:

Wind Tiles

Dragon Tiles

Number Tiles (Characters, Bamboos, Circles)

The block includes nine tiles each for the three numbered suits:

• Characters (U+1F007--U+1F00F): 🀇 🀈 🀉 🀊 🀋 🀌 🀍 🀎 🀏 (1--9 of Characters)
• Bamboos (U+1F010--U+1F018): 🀐 🀑 🀒 🀓 🀔 🀕 🀖 🀗 🀘 (1--9 of Bamboos)
• Circles (U+1F019--U+1F021): 🀙 🀚 🀛 🀜 🀝 🀞 🀟 🀠 🀡 (1--9 of Circles)

Flower and Season Tiles

The Mahjong tile 🀄 (Red Dragon) is one of the few Mahjong characters commonly supported as an emoji on modern platforms.

Working with Card Characters in Code

Python: Card Deck Generation

# Build a standard 52-card deck using Unicode playing card characters
SUITS = {
    "spades":   0x1F0A0,
    "hearts":   0x1F0B0,
    "diamonds": 0x1F0C0,
    "clubs":    0x1F0D0,
}

def deck():
    cards = []
    for suit, base in SUITS.items():
        for rank in range(1, 14):
            # Skip the knight (offset 12) for standard deck
            offset = rank if rank <= 11 else rank + 1
            cards.append(chr(base + offset))
    return cards

hand = deck()[:5]
print(" ".join(hand))
# Example: 🂡 🂢 🂣 🂤 🂥

JavaScript: Card Display

// Convert a card notation like "As" (Ace of spades) to Unicode
function cardToUnicode(rank, suit) {
    const suitBases = {
        spades: 0x1F0A0,
        hearts: 0x1F0B0,
        diamonds: 0x1F0C0,
        clubs: 0x1F0D0,
    };
    const offset = rank <= 11 ? rank : rank + 1;
    return String.fromCodePoint(suitBases[suit] + offset);
}

console.log(cardToUnicode(1, 'spades'));  // 🂡 Ace of Spades
console.log(cardToUnicode(13, 'hearts')); // 🂾 King of Hearts

HTML: Suit Symbols in Text

<p>The four suits: &#x2660; &#x2665; &#x2666; &#x2663;</p>
<p style="color:red">Red suits: &#x2665; &#x2666;</p>
<p>Black suits: &#x2660; &#x2663;</p>

Font Support Considerations

The suit symbols (♠♥♦♣) have near-universal font support. However, the individual card characters in the Playing Cards block (U+1F0A0--U+1F0FF) and Mahjong Tiles block (U+1F000--U+1F02F) have more limited support:

For web projects that need reliable card rendering, consider using a dedicated card font or rendering cards as styled HTML elements rather than relying on these Unicode characters.

Encoding Patterns

The Playing Cards block has a clean, predictable encoding structure:

This regularity makes it straightforward to compute card code points programmatically from rank and suit values.

Historical Notes

Playing card symbols have appeared in character sets since the early days of computing. The suit symbols ♠♥♦♣ were present in IBM Code Page 437 (the original IBM PC character set, 1981) at byte values 0x03--0x06. They were among the first graphic characters available on personal computers, and their presence in Unicode preserves a direct line from 1980s PC text modes to modern internationalized text.

The Mahjong tiles, by contrast, represent a different tradition. Mahjong originated in China during the Qing dynasty (19th century) and has become one of the world's most popular tile-based games. Their inclusion in Unicode reflects the standard's mission to encode all commonly used symbols regardless of cultural origin.