# Unicode Unicode is a standard for encoding text across multiple writing systems. MariaDB supports a number of [character sets](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/reference/data-types/string-data-types/character-sets) for storing Unicode data: | Character Set | Description | | ------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | `ucs2` | UCS-2, each character is represented by a 2-byte code with the most significant byte first. Fixed-length 16-bit encoding. | | `utf8` | `utf8` is an alias for `utf8mb3`, but this can changed to `ut8mb4` by changing the default value of the [old\_mode](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-management/variables-and-modes/server-system-variables#old_mode) system variable. | | `utf8mb3` | UTF-8 encoding using one to three bytes per character. Basic Latin letters, numbers and punctuation use one byte. European and Middle East letters mostly fit into 2 bytes. Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ideographs use 3-bytes. No supplementary characters are stored. Until [MariaDB 10.5](https://app.gitbook.com/s/aEnK0ZXmUbJzqQrTjFyb/community-server/old-releases/10.5/what-is-mariadb-105), this was an alias for utf8. From [MariaDB 10.6](https://app.gitbook.com/s/aEnK0ZXmUbJzqQrTjFyb/community-server/mariadb-10-6-series/what-is-mariadb-106), utf8 is by default an alias for utf8mb3, but this can changed to ut8mb4 by changing the default value of the [old\_mode](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-management/variables-and-modes/server-system-variables#old_mode) system variable. | | `utf8mb4` | UTF-8 encoding the same as `utf8mb3` but which stores supplementary characters in four bytes. | | `utf16` | UTF-16, same as `ucs2`, but stores supplementary characters in 32 bits. 16 or 32-bits. | | `utf32` | UTF-32, fixed-length 32-bit encoding. | Support for the UCA-14.0.0 collations was added in [MariaDB 10.10](https://app.gitbook.com/s/aEnK0ZXmUbJzqQrTjFyb/community-server/old-releases/10.10/what-is-mariadb-1010) ([MDEV-27009](https://jira.mariadb.org/browse/MDEV-27009)). Support for the MySQL 8.0 UCA-9-0-0 (utf8mb4\_0900\_...) collations will be added to [MariaDB 11.4.5](https://app.gitbook.com/s/aEnK0ZXmUbJzqQrTjFyb/community-server/mariadb-11-4-series/mariadb-11-4-5-release-notes). *This page is licensed: CC BY-SA / Gnu FDL* {% @marketo/form formId="4316" %}