Question: utf8' is currently an alias for the character set utf8mb3?
Answer: utf8 is an alias for utf8mb3 ; the character limit is implicit, rather than explicit in the name. The utf8mb3 character set is deprecated and will be removed in a future MySQL release. Please use utf8mb4 instead. Although utf8 is currently an alias for utf8mb3 , at some point utf8 will become a reference to utf8mb4 .