I wouldn't assume that.

QLatin1String latinStr("Adiós"); qDebug() << latinStr << newStr;

Gives:

"Adi\u00C3\u00B3s"

A workaround that you can try:

QString unicodeStr = "some Uniocode හාහාහා %1"; QString newStr = unicodeStr.arg(QString::fromUtf8(latinStr.data())); qDebug() << newStr;