Tunnel emoji proposal

Is there a tunnel emoji?

No. Emoji 18.0, the latest version, has no tunnel. The picture on this page was drawn for a proposal to add one. It is not a character a phone can send, so there is nothing to copy and paste yet.

What emoji can stand in for a tunnel?

The closest is 🚇 metro, which most designs draw as a train coming out of a tunnel. It shows the train, not the tunnel, so it cannot say “light at the end of the tunnel” or “tunnel vision.” Search for “tunnel” in Unicode’s English emoji keywords and nothing comes up. 🕳️ hole and 🌉 bridge at night come next. Neither shows a passage with a far end.

When could there be a tunnel emoji?

Not before Unicode takes proposals again in 2027, and only if it accepts one. Unicode’s list shows no earlier tunnel proposal, so no decline holds it back.

Checked against Unicode’s emoji list on 11 November 2026. What each stand-in leaves out is under reasons Unicode could decline it.

Where the draft stands

This has not been sent to Unicode. Submissions for 2026 closed on 31 July 2026, and the guidelines say they reopen in 2027.

No tunnel is on Unicode’s list of past proposals, which starts in 2015 and leaves out proposals declined automatically. These are the nearest things on it.

A cave has been declined twice, the second time from the 2026 window. I do not know whether Unicode would count a tunnel with it. A cave is a natural opening. A tunnel is built, and it comes out the other side.

What it still needs

Unicode does not process a proposal that is incomplete. This one is missing:

• Screenshots of four of the five searches Unicode requires, each beside “elephant”: Google Search, Google Video Search, and Google Trends for web and for images. A person has to take them, in a private browser window. The fifth, the Ngram Viewer, is done.
• The proposal as a PDF is drafted in Unicode’s format. It is not complete until those screenshots are in it, and it has not been sent through Unicode’s form.
• Unicode’s Emoji Proposal Agreement and License, signed for the images.

Identification

Name

tunnel

Keywords

passage, underpass, underground, burrow, dig, through, escape, hope, focus, breakthrough

Category

Travel and Places, ground transport: beside 🛣️ motorway and 🛤️ railway track.

Images

Color and black and white, at 72 and 18 pixels, at the top of this page.

What it would say

Unicode asks first whether an emoji has “notable metaphorical references or symbolism.” Its example is 🦈 shark: the animal, and also a huckster, jumping the shark, and a loan shark. Unicode also asks whether an emoji “can be used well in sequences,” like 🗑️🔥 for garbage fire. Each sense below is one Merriam-Webster defines, with a sequence that says it.

Meaning	Merriam-Webster	With other emoji
A way through	tunnel: “a horizontal passageway through or under an obstruction”	🚗 driving through one
The end is in sight	light at the end of the tunnel: “a reason to believe that a bad situation will end soon or that a long and difficult job will be finished soon”	💡 light at the end of the tunnel
Seeing only one thing	tunnel vision: “extreme narrowness of viewpoint” and “single-minded concentration on one objective”	👀 tunnel vision
Working through	tunnel: “to make (one’s way) by or as if by making a tunnel”	⛏️ digging through
A wrist condition	carpal tunnel syndrome: “a condition caused by compression of a nerve where it passes through the wrist into the hand…” First known use: 1950.	✋ carpal tunnel
Testing in moving air	wind tunnel: “a tunnellike passage through which air is blown at a known velocity to investigate air flow around an object…” First known use: 1903.	🌬️ a wind tunnel
An amusement-park ride	tunnel of love: “a dark tunnel in an amusement park through which passengers are conveyed usually by boat”	❤️ the tunnel of love

Breaks new ground

Yes. In 8 of the 12 languages in the keyword check, Unicode’s emoji keywords give no emoji for the word. The one tunnel drawn in Unicode is the backdrop to 🚇 metro’s train.

Legible at small sizes

The images at the top are the test: an arch in a hillside, a road running in, and daylight at the far end.

Completes a set

Not claimed. Roads, rails, and bridges are not a fixed set that a tunnel would finish.

Compatibility

Not claimed. No other system’s tunnel symbol needs matching.

How often the word is used

These are the Google Books Ngram figures, each beside the word for elephant in the same language. The other four searches Unicode requires are not done.

The word runs at about twice the word for elephant in English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and French, and more than four times in German. The two figures of speech are a small part of that: together, under a tenth of “elephant” in English.

Reasons Unicode could decline it

Unicode lists five. The first is the one that matters here.

Search points the same way. CLDR, the keywords Unicode publishes for emoji search, gives no emoji for the word in 8 of these 12 languages. Where it gives one, the emoji shows a train.

Already representable

In part. Emojipedia describes 🚇 metro as “generally depicted as a forward-facing train traveling along tracks or rails and emerging from a tunnel.” But it answers to the word in 3 of 12 languages, and its train blocks the far end that both figures of speech need.

Overly specific

No. One plain tunnel mouth stands for road, rail, foot, and mine tunnels.

Open-ended

Somewhat. A tunnel is infrastructure, and a dam or a canal could ask next. What singles it out is its figures of speech.

Transient

No. “Tunnel” has held between 0.000918% and 0.00201% of English books every year since 1900.

Justified by other emoji

Not argued. Unicode counts “it has those, so it should have this” against a proposal.

The weak points: the idea is untested, so there is no decline to answer and no sign that Unicode wants it. A cave has been declined twice, and most designs of 🚇 metro already draw a tunnel. That is the objection a reviewer is most likely to raise, and the answer above rests on Unicode’s own keywords, not on the picture. In 🚇, the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.

How it was chosen

By screening. 209 object ideas were checked against Unicode’s list of past proposals, the emoji that already exist, and Google Books. Many of the obvious ones, among them stamp, tape, glue, stairs, and fence, were proposed between 2024 and 2026 and declined, which bars them for four years.

Tunnel had no earlier proposal, more use than the reference word in every language checked, and two figures of speech a dictionary defines. The whistle draft came first. A whistle has been declined before, and this idea has not.

Method

The figures are from the Google Books Ngram Viewer’s 2019 collections: each term’s share of what was printed in 2019, with no smoothing, read on 12 November 2026. Each term in the table links its query. A share is not a count of uses, and a phrase is measured against other phrases of its length, so the two figures of speech are rough beside a single word.

Emoji names and categories are from Unicode’s emoji-test.txt, version 18.0. Past proposals are from Unicode’s list, read on 11 November 2026. The dictionary entries were read on 12 November 2026. How vendors draw 🚇 metro is from Emojipedia’s entry, read the same day. The keywords are from CLDR 49’s annotation files, read on 12 November 2026. A language counts as giving an emoji when its word is in that emoji’s keywords or name. Italian’s other word for a tunnel, galleria, finds 🖼️ framed picture, as an art gallery.

Revised 12 November 2026. This page first said one design of 🚇 metro, Google’s, shows a tunnel. Emojipedia says most designs do, which makes it the main objection rather than a minor one.