How to use PUBG emotes during a match

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The emote controls are quite unclear in PUBG so here’s what to do to express yourself

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds emote wheel header image
(Image credit: PUBG Corporation)

Not sure how PUBG emotes work? The controls and key bindings for PUBG are pretty complicated and it doesn’t help that the ones for using emotes and the emote wheel aren’t particularly clear. You might want to use an emote to taunt an enemy, communicate with your teammates, or celebrate a chicken dinner, so it’s pretty handy to know how to make use of them. Here’s how you can use PUBG emotes during a battle royale match, and which emotes all players can use.

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How PUBG emotes work

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds emote wheel in-game

(Image credit: PUBG Corporation)

If you express yourself through the power of emotes in PUBG, you need to hold both bumpers on your controller at the same time to bring up the emote wheel – that’s LB and RB on an Xbox controller and L1 and R1 on a PlayStation controller. PC players will need to press the key directly under the Esc key to bring up the emote wheel – this key varies between keyboard layouts with UK layouts using [`] and US layouts using [~].

With the emote wheel on-screen, you can then use your controller’s right stick or PC mouse to select an emote. There are two pages to the emote wheel, so you can choose from eight on one page and another eight on the second page. Use left and right on the D-Pad of your controller to switch pages on the emote wheel. Each emote on the wheel is numbered too, so PC players can also select an emote by pressing the corresponding number key. 

All PUBG players have access to 21 default emotes, although only 16 can be equipped to the emote wheel at once, so you can customize your wheel slots a bit to get a good selection. These emotes are:

  • Celebrate
  • Thanks
  • Surrender
  • Hello
  • Affirmative
  • You’re done
  • Rage
  • Laugh
  • Clap
  • Provoke
  • Negative
  • Go
  • Come here
  • Shrug
  • Jealous
  • Kick
  • Cry
  • Cower
  • Stop!
  • Impatient
  • Thumbs up

How to change your emotes in PUBG

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds emote wheel customisation menu

(Image credit: PUBG Corporation)

To change your emotes, head to the ‘Customize’ menu on the main lobby screen and then go across to the ‘Emotes & Sprays’ tab. You’ll be able to see a grid of all the emotes you own, as well as your current emote wheel configuration. To change an emote, select the one you want to add to the wheel and then choose a slot on your emote wheel. This will replace whatever is in that slot already. If you really wanted, you could slot the same emote multiple times.

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Will Sawyer
Will Sawyer
Guides Editor, GamesRadar+

Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.