Every year, the Unicode Consortium decides on new emoji characters that will appear on smartphones and other devices in the future, and this week, Unicode 17 emoji recommendations are released [PDF].
Eight new emojis have been proposed, including furry creatures (like Bigfoot), twisted faces, battle clouds, apple cores, killer whales, trombones, landslides, and treasure chests. Many existing emojis also have skin tone variations, such as a ballet dancer, a person with bunny ears, and a wrestling person.
The Unicode Consortium created a mockup of the emoji and shared the image Emoji Encyclopedia. It’s important to note that the Unicode Consortium only provides the underlying emoji codes, and when the Unicode 17 standard is finalized, Apple designers will create their own versions of each character in Apple style.
Unicode 17 will likely be approved sometime next fall, although it will take Apple time to implement the new characters. If Apple sticks to its typical emoji release schedule, we might see them around spring 2026.
In 2025, Apple will launch Unicode 16 characters, which will be approved in September 2024.
Apple last introduced new emojis in the iOS 17.4 update released in March 2024. ”), and shake the head horizontally (“No” shakes the head).
With iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2, Apple will debut Genmoji for devices that support Apple Intelligence. Genmoji are customizable versions of emojis that are generated based on user-supplied phrases. Genmoji behaves like emojis on Apple devices, but is not cross-platform and does not display like emoji characters on Android devices.
