Spade suit emoji ♠️
♠️ is the spade suit: the black spade from playing cards, with ♣️ club, ♦️ diamond and ♥️ heart completing the deck.
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What the spade suit ♠️ emoji means
♠️ is the spade suit: the black spade from playing cards, with ♣️ club, ♦️ diamond and ♥️ heart completing the deck. They mean cards and gambling — poker, the ace of spades, Motörhead — and ♠️ carries slang meanings in some communities (including a racial one in certain dating contexts), so know your audience. All four are old text symbols that became emoji in 2010 with variation selectors, which is why ♠ without one shows as a plain glyph. The garden spade is shovel; the joker 🃏 joker.
Unicode name: spade suit · U+2660 U+FE0F · Emoji 0.6 (original set) · group: Activities.
How people use it
- Card games: poker, bridge, spades
- Ace of spades: luck, Motörhead
- Decoration: bios, black aesthetic
- Slang: community-specific meanings
Compare the options
| Emoji | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| spade suitU+2660 U+FE0F | Spades | |
| club suitU+2663 U+FE0F | Clubs | |
| diamond suitU+2666 U+FE0F | Diamonds | |
| heart suitU+2665 U+FE0F | Hearts | |
| jokerU+1F0CF | Joker card |
The queen of spades and other face cards
The queen of spades has specific roles in card games — most famously in Hearts, where it is a penalty card worth 13 points. There is no separate queen of spades emoji, so if you are chatting about a hand or referencing that card, pairing ♠️ with a queen emoji 👸 or writing “Q♠” makes the meaning clear.
The spade suit emoji can be used in a similar way for other face cards: the king of spades, jack of spades, or ace of spades can all be represented by ♠️ when the context is obvious. Because the standard emoji set does not include individual playing cards, the suit symbols are the standard way to talk about cards online.
Questions people ask
What does ♠️ mean?
The spade card suit — cards, gambling; in some communities, specific slang.
Why does ♠ look black and plain?
It is a text symbol; the emoji version needs the variation selector included on this page.
Is there a shovel emoji?
Yes, shovel (2024) — different from the ♠️ suit.
Is there a queen of spades emoji?
No, the standard emoji set does not include individual playing cards. The closest emoji is the spade suit symbol ♠️.
About this guide
Written and maintained by the Emoji Directory editorial team, without ads or sponsorship. Meanings describe how the emoji is commonly used in public posts and messages, not an official definition. Names, code points, versions, keywords and translations come from the Unicode Emoji 18.0 and CLDR data; shortcodes from the gemoji project. Last reviewed . Spotted a mistake or a new usage? Tell us, or read how the directory is made.
