How to Concatenate Strings in BigQuery
Last updated July 26, 2026 · By the SaturnSQL team
Use CONCAT(a, b, ...) to join strings, or the || operator between values. Both treat NULL as contagious: any NULL input makes the whole result NULL.
SELECT CONCAT(first_name, ' ', last_name) AS full_name
FROM users;The || operator
SELECT first_name || ' ' || last_name AS full_name
FROM users;Handling NULLs
If any part might be NULL, wrap it in COALESCE first, otherwise the whole concatenation disappears.
SELECT CONCAT(first_name, ' ', COALESCE(last_name, '')) AS full_name
FROM users;Run this in SaturnSQL
SaturnSQL is a browser-based SQL editor for teams: shared query library, schema-aware autocomplete, and scheduled exports to Google Sheets and Slack.
Try it free