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CSS At-rule

@charset

Structure

Specifies the character encoding of the stylesheet.

Syntax

@charset "UTF-8";

Example

@charset "UTF-8";

Common use cases

  • Ensuring correct encoding for non-ASCII characters
  • Required when using special characters in CSS strings
  • Avoiding encoding issues in older browsers

Practical developer insight

@charset must be the very first rule in the file — no spaces or comments before it. In modern projects with UTF-8 everywhere, it's rarely needed.

Related

@import@layer