---
title: "Character sets"
manual: "Frontend Localization Guide"
version: "14.3"
permalink: "https://docs.typo3.org/permalink/t3translate:character-sets@14.3"
source: "CharacterSets/Index.rst"
rendered: "2026-09-24T14:54:21+00:00"
---

# Character sets {#character-sets}

All TYPO3 websites use UTF-8 as their character set. Using UTF-8 means that you
have a consistent data storage and can store any glyph from any language without
worrying further about character sets.

## Database field lengths {#character-sets-database}

The TYPO3 Core is compatible with UTF-8.

However, you might face the problem that the database field lengths of some
extensions need to be extended. For example, each Chinese glyph takes three
bytes. So if a field is a `varchar(10)` and an author enters 10 Chinese
glyphs, only the first 3 glyphs will be stored (as they require 9 bytes). UTF-8
is tricky in this respect, as all ASCII characters only need 1 byte, while
European special characters usually need 2 and Asian character sets 3 bytes -
but some special characters can even need 5-6 bytes!

> [!NOTE]
> **See also**
>
> For more information on how to set up your database to use UTF-8, please
> read here:
>
> -   [MariaDB: Supported Character Sets and Collations](https://mariadb.com/kb/en/supported-character-sets-and-collations/)
> -   [MySQL: Unicode Support](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/charset-unicode.html)
> -   [PostgreSQL: Character Set Support](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/multibyte.html)