Discord supports the use of emoji via shortcodes, with the majority of emojis displayed as images from the Twemoji design set. Native emojis inserted are also converted to shortcodes and displayed with images where supported.

In December 2023, Discord introduced support for Emoji 15.0, implementing designs distinct from Twitter / X's Emoji 15.0 support release in June 2023.

This divergence was required to due the discontinuation of the official Twemoji project as an open-source resource in October 2022. The new Discord designs are drawn from former Twemoji designer Justine De Caires' Github offshoot of the official project, which remains open source and where Discord designers have also made contributions.

Discord's emoji support was previously limited to Emoji 3.0 (2016) until an update in November 2019 provided support for Emoji 12.0, via Twemoji 12.1.4. Collectively, this update brought support for the following new emojis to Discord for the first time:

• 📝 Emoji 4.0 (late 2016)
• 📝 Emoji 5.0 (2017)
• 📝 Emoji 11.0 (2018)
• 📝 Emoji 12.0 (2019)

In addition to regular emoji use, reactions are also available. This allows any emoji to be chosen as a response to a message. Reactions are tallied if multiple users apply the same emojis.