This is how my connection is set: Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url + dbName + \"?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf-8\", userName, password
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url + dbName + \"?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf-8\", userName, password
You need to set utf8mb4 in meta html and also in your server alter tabel and set collation to utf8mb4