A slice of watermelon, showing its rich pink flesh, black seeds, and green rind.

Notably used to reference the flag of Palestine, as the fruit’s colors correspond to those of the flag.

May be used in reference to the Chinese slang term “eating melon” (吃瓜), meaning to watch gossip, drama, or controversy unfold as a bystander, without direct involvement, similar to how 🍿 Popcorn may be used. The Chinese social platforms Sina Weibo and WeChat also include an emoji shortcode depicting a smiley eating watermelon.

This emoji can also be considered racist in some contexts, particularly when used to disparage, insult, and abuse people with dark skin, especially Black people.

Watermelon was approved as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.