diff --git a/public/typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration.php b/public/typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration.php
index 82a170c6..f8926232 100644
--- a/public/typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration.php
+++ b/public/typo3conf/AdditionalConfiguration.php
@@ -90,6 +90,14 @@ $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['caching']['cacheConfigurations']['rootline']
 // by the CDN, so stop generating them. mod_deflate still compresses direct origin hits.
 $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['FE']['compressionLevel'] = 0;
 
+// utf8 in MySQL/MariaDB is utf8mb3 (max. 3 bytes) and rejects 4-byte characters like emoji.
+// Set here because LocalConfiguration.php is a Deployer shared file and not deployed from the repo.
+$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default']['charset'] = 'utf8mb4';
+$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['DB']['Connections']['Default']['tableoptions'] = [
+    'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
+    'collate' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
+];
+
 // suppress php deprecation warnings flooding typo3 logs
 $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['errorHandlerErrors'] =
     $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SYS']['errorHandlerErrors'] & ~E_DEPRECATED & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED;