The educational landscape relies heavily on EFL instructors to shape students’ language learning journey, with emotional teaching aspects profoundly affecting motivation and academic involvement. This study delves into how EFL teachers’ emotioncy levels impact their motivation and academic engagement, referring to their ability to effectively handle emotions. Understanding how EFL teachers’ emotioncy level affects their motivation and academic engagement is crucial for optimizing teaching practices and student outcomes. Through empirical analysis and theoretical examination, this research investigates the relationship between EFL teachers’ emotioncy, motivation, and academic engagement. 596 EFL teachers filled out motivation, emotioncy, and engagement questionnaires. AMOS and SEM were employed to analyze the data. The results indicated that about 50 % of changes in teachers’ academic engagement can be explained by their emotioncy, and about 62 % of teachers’ motivation can be explained by their emotioncy. The findings contribute to enhancing teacher training programs and educational strategies aimed at promoting effective teaching practices and improving student engagement and performance. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.