Emojis in League of Legends: Every Way to Express Yourself in LoL

Want to use emojis in League of Legends? Hit Win + . on Windows or Ctrl + Cmd + Space on Mac while the chat box is active. That opens your OS emoji picker, because Riot never bothered putting one inside the client. Pick a face, press Enter, done. Works in lobbies, champ select, in-game, wherever you can type.

But typed faces are only part of it. There’s also Riot’s whole emote system with 1,300+ animated icons you flash above your champ’s head. And the OG expressions, joke, taunt, dance, laugh, those have been in the game since forever. I’m going to cover all three, plus some stuff like kaomoji and hidden details that other guides just skip. The LoL Wiki emote page has a full catalog if you want to browse every single one.

How to Type Emojis in LoL Chat

No emoji button in the League client. Riot just… didn’t add one. So your operating system does the heavy lifting. Here’s the setup per platform.

Windows (10 and 11)

1. Open any chat box, doesn’t matter if it’s the client or mid-game.
2. Press Win + . (Windows key + period) or Win + ; (semicolon works too). A little emoji window pops up right on screen.
3. Scroll around or type to search. Click the one you want and it lands in your message.
4. Send it.

Pressing the shortcut and nothing shows up? That means your Windows is too old. You need build 1803 or newer for the emoji picker to even exist. Go to Settings > Update and get current.

Mac

Press Control + Command + Space while your cursor is in a text field. The Character Viewer opens with the full emoji library. Same deal: click, insert, send. Macs with a Touch Bar also show a smiley face button that opens the emoji tray directly.

Linux

Linux players got it rough here. No emoji picker on most distros, period. So you go to emojipedia.org, find what you need, copy it, paste into League. Yeah it’s a pain. But that’s Linux life when it comes to emoji in LoL.

Copy-Paste Method (works everywhere)

Or forget shortcuts entirely. Just Google “emoji copy paste,” find the one you want on any website, and Ctrl + V it straight into League. I do this half the time because it’s faster than scrolling through the picker when I know exactly which face I need.

Where Do Emojis in League of Legends Actually Work?

Emojis don’t render the same everywhere in the League client. Some spots handle them well, others just show boxes. Here’s where emoji in LoL actually works and where it falls apart.

Chat Location	Emojis Supported?	Notes
Client friend chat	Yes	Best compatibility, most emojis render correctly
Champion select chat	Yes	Works well, good spot for pre-game hype
In-game team chat	Partial	Basic emojis work, some complex ones show as boxes
In-game all chat	Partial	Same rendering rules as team chat
Post-game lobby	Yes	Full emoji support, similar to client chat
Club/group chat	Yes	Standard client rendering

In-game chat is where it gets annoying. Riot’s font straight up can’t display every emoji. Half the time you send something and it shows up as a blank box on your teammates’ screens. The safe ones are 😀 😂 😭 💀 👍, the basic yellow faces everybody knows. Anything with skin tone modifiers or those multi-part compound emojis will probably just render as garbage.

Emotes vs Emojis in LoL: Two Different Systems

I see people mix these up constantly on Reddit. Typing a smiley in chat and flashing an emote above your champion are two separate features, and knowing the difference saves confusion when someone tells you to “use an emote” and you start pasting Unicode faces.

Chat emojis are Unicode text characters. They live in your typed messages. Nobody sees them unless they read chat. They cost nothing and come from your keyboard.

In-game emotes are Riot’s emote system. They pop up above your champion’s health bar for about 3 seconds, visible to every summoner, visible to everyone watching your character. You trigger them with the T key. Most cost 350 RP in the store, though you earn plenty for free through leveling, events, ranked splits, and Hextech crafting.

There’s one more thing nobody talks about: champion emoting. Every single champ has joke, taunt, dance, and laugh baked in. Hit Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+4 or type /joke, /taunt, /dance, /laugh in the text box. Some champs get a fifth option on Ctrl+5 that changes their model somehow, like Kai’Sa flipping her helmet.

Emojis in League of Legends: Emote Wheel Setup

This video walks through the emote setup and usage if you want to see it in action.

If you want the animated icons that float above your champion (the other kind of emoji in LoL expression), here is the full setup process.

Equipping Your Wheel

1. Open the League client and go to Collection at the top.
2. Click the Emotes tab on the left.
3. Drag any emote into one of the nine wheel slots (center + eight surrounding).
4. Below the wheel, assign reaction slots for Start Game, First Blood, Ace, and Victory. These trigger automatically during those events.

You can also swap your loadout during champion select. Just click the panel at the bottom of the select screen.

Using Them Mid-Game

Hold T to open the wheel, then drag your mouse toward the one you want and release. Tapping T without holding triggers whatever sits in the center slot. Quick and clean.

A few things to know about the limits. You can fire off a maximum of 6 within any 10-second window. Taking champion damage interrupts the animation immediately and locks you out temporarily. You can only trigger 2 while dead, including reactions. So no, you cannot spam from the death screen.

Champion Mastery Crest

The mastery badge (that flashy crest showing your level on a specific champion) has its own keybind: Ctrl + 6. It counts toward the 6-per-10-seconds cap. In my experience, nothing tilts an opponent harder than flashing mastery 7 after a solo kill. Use responsibly.

How to Unlock Free Emojis in League of Legends

You do not need to buy anything from the store. There are plenty of free sources:

• Account leveling gives you “Legend” emotes at milestones starting at level 40, all the way up to level 500.
• Ranked splits reward up to two per split when you hit 500 Split Points. The design changes dynamically based on your current rank placement.
• Hextech crafting drops them from chests and capsules. There is roughly a 10% chance per chest.
• Event passes regularly include them as milestone rewards. Even the free track usually has a few.
• TFT passes include emotes that work in both TFT and League.
• Honor capsules occasionally drop exclusive ones for positive behavior.
• Twitch Prime capsules contain unique options you cannot get anywhere else.

The Thumbs Up is free on every account from the start. So even brand-new players have something to work with.

The Icons You’ll See in Every Match

1,300+ options sounds like a lot, and it is, but in practice you see the same 6 or 7 in every single game. Here’s what people actually run on their wheel:

Emote	Why Players Love It	How to Get It
Thumbs Up	Universal “nice play” signal, no toxicity	Free on all accounts
D’Pengu	The dabbing penguin, peak BM energy	Store (350 RP) or Hextech crafting
Clean / “Does This Look Infected?”	Classic post-outplay flex	Store or crafting
Draven Approves	Sarcastic approval, works in any situation	Hextech crafting only
Bee Happy	Passive-aggressive positivity	Event reward or crafting
Champion Mastery Crest	Flexing mastery level after kills	Earn mastery on any champion
Esports team emotes (T1, G2, etc.)	Rep your favorite team in-game	Store (350 RP, 30% goes to the team)

Riot started doing esports team emotes in 2024. T1, G2, Gen.G, every Tier 1 team in LCK, LPL, LEC, LTA, and LCP got their own custom one. 350 RP each and 30% of that goes to the actual team. Pretty cool if you want to rep your squad while BMing the enemy Yasuo.

How to Mute Opponent Expressions

Getting tilted by a Pengu dab after every death? You have two options.

Per-player muting: Press Tab during a match. Next to each player’s name, you’ll see small buttons for text, pings, and emotes. Click the emote button to silence that specific player.

Global muting: Go to Settings > Interface and check “Mute Enemy Emotes.” This disables all opponent animations for the entire match. You can also set this in the pre-game menu so it applies every game by default.

Honestly, if you’re the type who tilts from opponent BM, just mute them globally and forget they exist. Your LP will thank you.

Joke, Taunt, Dance, Laugh: The OG Expression System

Before Riot added the emote wheel, the only way to express yourself was through your champion’s built-in animations. These are the oldest form of emoji in LoL and they are honestly more fun than most players realize.

Command	Keybind	Chat Command	What It Does
Joke	Ctrl + 1	/joke or /j	Champion tells a joke or does a funny animation
Taunt	Ctrl + 2	/taunt or /t	Taunts nearby enemies with voice lines
Dance	Ctrl + 3	/dance or /d	Champion performs a unique dance
Laugh	Ctrl + 4	/laugh or /l	Laugh animation with sound, spammable
Toggle	Ctrl + 5	/toggle or /g	Toggles cosmetic features (not all champs have this)

Some skins do wild things with these commands. DJ Sona swaps between three music tracks with her toggle. Kai’Sa flips her visor on and off. Yone sheathes his spirit blade. Small stuff, but it actually makes you feel like you’re playing a different character.

The oldest BM trick in League: hold Ctrl + 4 and mash it while your lane opponent is trying to last-hit. Each press restarts the animation, so you get this nonstop looping laugh sound. Lux mains have been doing this to tilt people since Season 2 and it still works. Shoutout to the Lux players reading this, you know what you are.

Emojis in League of Legends: Etiquette Guide

Look, both systems exist so you can have fun with them. But there’s a line, and if you cross it your honor level takes the hit.

Throwing a 😀 or Thumbs Up after a teammate makes a sick play? Go for it. Spamming 💀 in all chat every time your jungler dies at scuttle? That’s how you catch a report.

Riot does track reports for unsportsmanlike behavior, and yeah, BM with emotes counts. The animated ones already cap at 6 per 10 seconds so you can’t go too crazy. But typed emojis in chat? No limit at all. So just… don’t be that guy who pastes 15 skull emojis after a lost teamfight.

If you play on a smurf account, be extra careful. New accounts are watched more closely for behavioral issues, and getting flagged early can land you in smurf queue or worse.

Emojis in League of Legends on Discord

Using emojis in League of Legends is not limited to the game client. There’s a whole world of fan-made League emojis floating around Discord. Emoji.gg alone has thousands of them, everything from champ portraits to rank badges to the classic Draven approval face. Just download, drag into your server settings, done.

Riot also dropped Poro sticker packs for social media ages ago. And the old Community Boards? Yeah those are dead now, but they used to have their own emote library. When Riot shut the boards down, a bunch of those designs got recycled into actual in-game emotes.

Anyone who hangs out on r/leagueoflegends or any League Discord already gets it. Custom reaction emojis ARE the conversation over there. Half the replies are just Pengu faces and Draven approvals stacked on top of each other.

Will Riot Ever Build a Native Chat Sticker Panel?

People have been asking Riot to add a native emoji in LoL panel for years. Imagine little Teemo faces or Baron icons you could type straight into chat, that would go hard. But Riot hasn’t said a word about it.

Makes sense when you think about it. They built the whole emote system in 2017 and it prints money at 350 RP per pop. Why would they give away free typed stickers that compete with that? They wouldn’t.

So yeah, Win + . is all we’ve got for emoji in LoL. It’s bare bones but it works when you want to drop a 🔥 or 😂 after a penta.

Emojis in League of Legends: Troubleshooting

Things break. Here’s the usual suspects.

Showing as empty boxes: League’s font can’t render that emoji. Use the yellow smiley faces from the “Smileys & Emotion” tab and you’re good. Flag emojis, brand new additions, and compound emojis with multiple modifiers are the ones that choke.

Picker not opening: Your Windows is too old. Build 1803 minimum. Below that, Win + . straight up doesn’t exist as a shortcut. Update through Settings > Windows Update.

Looking different for other players: That’s just how Unicode works, it’s not a League bug. Apple draws emojis one way, Windows another, Android another. Your 😊 and your teammate’s 😊 might look like two different faces.

Emotes not showing up: Open Settings > Interface and check that “Emote Bubble Display” is on. If you muted enemy emotes before, yours still fire normally but you won’t see anything coming from the other side.

Text Emoticons and Kaomoji: Old-School Emoji in LoL

Before the League client even supported emoji properly, people were typing old-school text faces in chat. And honestly? These still work better than actual emojis because they’re just plain keyboard characters. Zero rendering issues, zero boxes, works on every machine.

Here are the most popular ones I still see in ranked lobbies:

Emoticon	Meaning	When to Use It
🙂	Friendly smiley	After a nice play, casual lobby greeting
😀	Big grin	When something hilarious happens
😉	Wink	After stealing a kill from your ADC
xD	Laughing hard	Classic LoL staple, used since Season 1
:3	Cat face	When playing Yuumi or being cute
o/	Waving	Saying hi in champ select
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻	Table flip	When your team bans your hover
¯\_(ツ)_/¯	Shrug	When your jungler asks why you lost lane

The shrug and table flip are kaomoji (Japanese-style text faces). They work as emoji in LoL because they use standard Unicode characters that every font supports. No rendering issues, no empty boxes, guaranteed to display correctly on every OS. In my games, the table flip still gets more laughs than any 350 RP emote ever will.

Hidden Emojis in League of Legends Details

A few things about the emoji and emote system that I have not seen covered anywhere else:

Reaction slots are underrated. Most players never touch the Start Game, First Blood, Ace, and Victory slots below the main wheel. But these fire automatically. Setting a funny First Blood reaction means you get free expression without pressing any buttons mid-fight.

The mastery crest counts toward the spam limit. If you flash mastery (Ctrl + 6) twice and then try to use a wheel emote, you only have 4 left in that 10-second window. People forget this and wonder why their emotes stop working.

Dead players get only 2. You can trigger a maximum of 2 emotes while dead, including automatic reactions. So if your Victory reaction fires and your Ace reaction fires, you are locked out until you respawn.

Damage cancels the animation. If you take any champion damage while an emote is showing, it gets interrupted instantly. This is why you only see them used after kills, not during fights. Trying to BM mid-duel is a fast way to lose focus and die.

You can rebind the T key. Go to Settings > Hotkeys > Communication and change the default bind. Some players move it to a mouse side button so they can trigger it without taking a finger off QWER.

What Changed for Emojis in League of Legends in 2026

Riot Games shipped a few updates in early 2026 that affect how emoji in LoL and emotes work. The client got a minor font update around Patch 26.03 that improved Unicode rendering, so more emojis display correctly now than they did in 2025. A handful of compound emojis that used to show as boxes now render properly in the client (though in-game rendering is still hit or miss).

On the emote side, Season 2026 brought a new set of ranked split emotes that change dynamically based on your placement. The design is cleaner than previous seasons. Riot also confirmed that Worlds 2026 will take place in North America, which usually means a fresh batch of event emotes tied to the tournament.

For players who use emoji in LoL as part of their ranked grind communication, the biggest practical change is that the emote spam limit now interacts with your honor level. Higher honor levels reportedly get a slightly longer cooldown window before the cap kicks in, though Riot has not confirmed exact numbers.

FAQ

How do you type emojis in League of Legends chat?

Press Win + . on Windows or Ctrl + Cmd + Space on Mac while your cursor is in the text box. This opens your operating system’s picker. Select any symbol and it inserts directly into your message. That is the only way because Riot has no built-in panel.

What is the difference between emojis and emotes in LoL?

Emojis are typed text characters that appear in messages (😀, 💀, 👍). Emotes are emotes from Riot’s cosmetic system that display above your champion’s head when you press T. They serve different purposes and come from different sources.

How do you use emotes in League of Legends?

Hold T to open the wheel, drag your mouse toward the emote you want, and release. Set up your loadout in Collection > Emotes. The center slot fires when you tap T quickly. You can assign up to nine on the wheel plus four automatic reaction slots.

Can you get banned for using emojis or emotes in LoL?

Not for using them normally. Spamming them in a harassing way can be reported as unsportsmanlike conduct though. Riot caps in-game emotes at six per ten seconds to prevent abuse. Typed symbols in chat have no hard limit, but toxic patterns still risk reports.

How many emotes are in League of Legends?

Over 1,300 as of 2026. You can buy them for 350 RP each, earn them from events, ranked splits, account leveling, Hextech crafting, and Twitch Prime drops. The Thumbs Up emote is free on every account.

Do emojis work in the in-game chat during a match?

Most basic ones work fine. Some complex or newer Unicode characters may not render correctly and appear as empty squares. The client and post-game lobby have better compatibility than the in-game text box.

How do you mute emotes from other players?

Press Tab and click the emote button next to any player to mute them individually. For a blanket solution when emoji in LoL expressions annoy you, go to Settings > Interface and enable “Mute Enemy Emotes.” This blocks all opponent expressions by default every game.

If you’re thinking about starting fresh on a new account to practice without the ranked anxiety, check out our LoL smurf accounts page. And if you want to understand how your hidden rating actually works before you start your climb, the MMR checker tool is worth a look.

For more League guides, including how the ranked system works and what prio in League means, we have you covered on the blog.

Last updated: April 2026