In 2019 Emojipedia detailed a historic revelation: Docomo’s i-mode emojis from 20 years prior were not the first to exist. Now, in 2024, further digital excavations have led to the recreation of emoji designs that predate both Softbank’s 1997 emoji set and the ❤-enabled Pocket Bell pagers of 1995.

This recreation work was undertaken by games developer and blogger Matt Sephton following his discovery of a set of emoji-like symbols within a Sharp Zaurus PI-4000 he had purchased at the start of this year. 

Sharp Zaurus PI-4000 (1994) an early PDA. Has sketch memo option with a ton of stamps to create maps, and whilst editing text you've got handwriting recognition and a bunch of early emoji. pic.twitter.com/7Ejnm1AzcD

— matt sephton (@gingerbeardman) January 18, 2024

This device, released in Japan in June 1994, was a model of personal digital assistant (PDA): a handheld digital device also often called an “organizer” or “pocket PC” with a variety of different functions that varied by model and manufacturer. For example, the PI-4000 could send a fax, but the PI-5000 released several months later was the first Zaurus that could send an email). 

The nearly 200 emoji-like symbols found within the PI-4000, sized 12x12 pixels, were directly insertable within text and had many conceptual overlaps with the earliest emoji sets added to mobile phones by Softbank and Docomo several years later.

For example, this set contains representations of:

• people (e.g. 👩 Woman)
• smileys (e.g. 😄 Grinning Face with Smiling Eyes)
• foods (e.g. 🍚 Cooked Rice)
• household items (e.g.📺 Television)
• popular activities and games (e.g. 🎾 Tennis)
• transportation options (e.g. 🚘 Oncoming Automobile)
• weather (e.g. ⛅ Sun Behind Cloud)
• hearts (e.g. 💘 Heart with Arrow)
• animals and symbols representative of both the Chinese and Western Zodiac (e.g. 🦁 Lion, 🐍 Snake, ♊ Gemini )

This is a hugely significant find, as this set of designs predates the Softbank 1997 emoji set that was released within their SkyWalker DP-211SW mobile phone.

Additionally, they predate the Pocket Bell pagers produced by Docomo in 1995, which surged in popularity thanks to the ability to send a pixelated heart icon - a feature which is frequently cited as directly inspiring the creation of Docomo's 1999 emoji set.

Sharp's 1988 Emoji Set

Further research also located precursors to this set of emojis within other Sharp devices, with the earliest of these being found within the Sharp PA-8500 - an even earlier model of PDA devices that was released in October 1988.

This set of emoji designs, shown below, predates the set found within the Softbank SkyWalker DP-211SW mobile phone by just over 9 years (October 1998 vs November 1997).

The PA-8500's emoji set was smaller in number than those found within the PI-4000, but larger in size, being rendered in 16x16 instead of 12x12. Despite the size difference, the PA-8500's set was clearly the basis for the 1994 set found within the Zaurus PI-4000: all of the concepts appear to be replicated in a similar fashion.

It is also clearly the basis for an additional set of devices found within a different series of devices produced by Sharp in the early 1990s: Japanese language word processors often called “electronic typewriters” or wapro.

These devices were much larger than PDAs, and have more in common with modern laptops than smartphones or tablets.

Based on a discovered manual, several models of these devices produced by Sharp also featured a set of symbols replicating the designs of the 1988 PA-8500 emoji set.

It should be noted that the existence of these designs within wapro has been known for some time. They were, for example, noted by author Matt Alt in 2016 and researcher Christoph Päper in correspondence with Unicode a year later.

That being said, the research undertaken by Matt Sephton appears to be the first effort to discover and recreate emoji sets from PDA devices - research that also uncovered an additional emoji set from a non-Sharp PDA device.

NEC's 1990 Emoji Set

Outside of the Sharp set of devices, an additional emoji set was found within the PI-ET1 - the only PDA device produced by the Japanese electronics company NEC. Released in August 1990, this device contained its own unique set of 16x16 emoji designs.

As with the 1994 set within the Sharp Zaurus PI-4000, we see representations of people, smileys, foods, activities and games, transport, weather, and the two main Zodiac traditions.

Notably, this set also contains various buildings (e.g. 🏣 Japanese Post Office) and the blood type options (e.g. 🆎 AB Button (Blood Type)) which would also find their way into some of the earliest emoji sets produced by Softbank, Docomo, and au by KDDI.

Image Recovery

The emoji-like images from the Sharp and NEC devices can now be viewed on Emojipedia thanks to the efforts of Matt Sephton.

Matt himself drew the pixel-for-pixel reproductions of these character sets, referencing recovered user manuals, such as those provided for the Sharp PA-8500 set by collector Akuji on Reddit. Image captures of certain devices in action were also used for reference, such as the footage of the NEC PI-ET1 shared by Takahashi Suzuki on YouTube.

Definitely The Earliest Emoji Sets?

At this time, yes - it does appear that these various PDA and wapro devices developed by Sharp and NEC feature the earliest known sets of what we would today refer to as emojis.

The designs could be placed in line with text within the PDA devices' text editors. Additionally, they depict concepts and objects that directly overlap with the designs featured within Softbank's 1997 emoji set and Docomo's 1999 set famously designed by Shigetaka Kurita: people, smileys, foods, animals, etc.

That being said, it is entirely possible that even earlier sets could be recovered from other even older devices in the future - as we stated could well be the case when we added the 1997 Softbank emoj to Emojipedia back in 2019.

You might notice some weasel words in this article about SoftBank having the first emoji set, but we don't want to make the same mistake twice. While working to bring all the historical emoji sets to light, who knows what else will be discovered along the way.

For now, let's just say that this is the first emoji set that we're aware of, and we'll check back in should that change.

There were many other PDA and wapro devices created in the 1980s and 1990s by manufacturers other than Sharp and NEC - perhaps one of these contain an even earlier emoji set.

Notably, as part of his research, Matt Sephton notes the existence of a small number of emoji-like characters within the Sharp MZ-80K from 1979.

Should this small collection of pictographic symbols constitute an emoji set? Maybe - it's open to discussion, considering those basic smileys and arrows are found within our current emoji keyboards.

For the moment, we'll settle for confidently stating that the 1988 set found within Sharp's PA-8500 is the earliest known example of an emoji set that clearly reflects our contemporary emoji keyboards.

A Revised Emoji History Summary

Based on what we now know, here is a revised history of early emojis across various device types:

• October 1988: The Sharp PA-8500 PDA device is released in Japan, featuring over 100 emojis. This is currently the earliest known emoji set. At this time, Sharp was the market leader for PDA devices, followed by Casio.
• August 1990: NEC released their PI-ET1 PDA in Japan, featuring over 130 emojis. This device is claimed to have had limited success
• 1990 - 1994: Sharp released further PDA and wapro devices, including the WD-A521 and Zaurus PI-4000, which include an expanded version of their 1988 PA-8500 emoji set.
• 1995: Docomo dominated the Pocket Bell pager market in Japan, thanks largely to the popularity of the simple pixel heart design (❤) that was sendable on the device.
• November 1997: Softbank released their SkyWalker DP-211SW phone. The device contains 90 emoji designs and is the first mobile phone device to have an emoji set. However, the phone didn't sell well and the emojis weren't supported on any other Softbank device.
• January 1999: Docomo released their i-mode mobile internet service with the emoji set designed by Shigetaka Kurita. These emojis became incredibly popular, leading to the popular attribution that this set was the first emoji set in existence.
• November 2008: Apple introduces emoji support for iPhone users in Japan for compatibility with the Softbank emoji set of the time.
• October 2010: the Unicode Consortium first encodes emojis within the Unicode Standard via Unicode 6.0.

Read More

• View all Sharp PA-8500 emojis (1988) mapped to Unicode codepoints
• View all NEC PI-ET1 emojis (1990) mapped to Unicode codepoints
• View all Sharp Zaurus PI-4000 emojis (1994) mapped to Unicode codepoints
• View all the 1997 Softbank emoji set mapped to Unicode codepoints
• Correcting the Record on the First Emoji Set

First launched just one day before World Emoji Day in 2019, the original Emoji Mashup Bot has not been operational for over a year. Today, Emojipedia has debuted a new feature for exploring the bot's popular mashups of the Twemoji emoji set while also adding support for the Microsoft 3D Fluent emoji set.

The designs above are some examples of emoji mashups created using the Twemoji emoji design set - the same design set that was used within the original Emoji Mashup Bot on which our new Emoji Mashup feature is based.

pic.twitter.com/dXD12uVNj9

— Emoji Mashup Bot 🫡 (@EmojiMashupBot) July 16, 2019

The developer of the original Emoji Mashup Bot, Louan Bengmah, had to cease the bot's operation in February 2023 following changes to the Twitter API.

To preserve this experience and ensure it could be found and enjoyed by as large an audience as possible, Bergmah consulted with Emojipedia in developing our new Emoji Mashup tool, which can now be accessed via Emojipedia.org/Emoji-Mashup.

In creating a new home for the original Emoji Mashup experience on Emojipedia, we are preserving an important part of emoji history that goes hand-in-hand with Unicode's annual emoji recommendations and each platform's provision of new and updated emoji designs.

Within the proven popularity of the original Emoji Mashup Bot on Twitter, it is quite possible we would not have Google's Emoji Kitchen feature or the upcoming Apple "Genmoji" A.I. feature due to debut in iOS 18.0 this coming September.

Wow Genmoji is going to be sooo much fun. I love this! #WWDC pic.twitter.com/d7i2IQp7nv

— iJustine (@ijustine) June 10, 2024

(Have yet to hear about "Genmoji"? Click here to read everything that we currently know about this upcoming feature.)

🔀 Using The Emoji Mashup Tool

To begin exploring our new Emoji Mashup feature, select two different emojis from the "Select emojis" grid or through the "Random" die icon in the top right corner of each combination slot.

When both combination slots feature an emoji, an emoji mashup design is generated which you can then copy to your device's clipboard or download directly to your device.

You can keep re-selecting different emojis for each of the populated slots to generate new combinations or select the "reverse" icon between the two ingredient emojis to reverse their position.

You can also select the "Reset" button to empty both combination slots and start the tool afresh.

However, as mentioned above, our new tool for browsing the classic Emoji Mashup designs also allows users to create mashups using the 3D Microsoft Fluent set. Examples of Fluent mashups are shown below.

You can toggle which emoji design set you are creating mashups from via the vendor dropdown menu to the top right of the "Select emojis" grid.

We are hopeful that, in the near future, we will be able to onboard not just additional emojis into the Twemoji and 3D Microsoft Fluent emoji sets, but also additional emoji vendors' designs.

Happy mashing 🔀

📖 Read More

• Apple iOS 18.0's "Genmoji" - what we know so far
• Overview of Google's Emoji Kitchen feature
• Emoji Kitchen beta magics back the Blobs 🪄
• Hands On With Google's New Emoji Mashup

A smiley face with bags under its eyes, a paint splatter, and a human fingerprint are among the new emoji concepts up for approval. Today, ahead of World Emoji Day 2024 (July 17), we here at Emojipedia have released our traditional sample designs for all the new emoji candidates.

The draft Emoji 16.0 list also includes a root vegetable, a leafless tree, a harp, a shovel, and the flag of Sark, one of the Channel Islands.

• 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes
• 🫆 Fingerprint
• 🫟 Splatter
• 🫜 Root Vegetable
• 🪾 Leafless Tree
• 🪉 Harp
• 🪏 Shovel
• 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark

Which of the new Emoji 16.0 emojis are you most looking forward to? You can vote for your favorite in the Most Anticipated Emoji category as part of the 2024 World Emoji Awards.

👑🗳️👀
It's time to crown your #MostAnticipatedEmoji!

Vote for the future emoji that you are most looking forward to using: https://t.co/j4GNXH6Ya5 pic.twitter.com/hfzHrPP1uN

— World Emoji Awards 🗳🌍🏆 (@EmojiAwards) July 15, 2024

This isn't a part of the approval process, just a fun way to gauge which draft emojis people are most keen to use. So get voting, and the winner will be revealed on World Emoji Day!

🧮 How many in total?

These eight new emoji concepts are the entire list of draft candidates for Emoji 16.0, which is expected to be approved on Tuesday 10 September 2024 alongside Unicode 16.0. Assuming all are approved, Emoji 16.0 will bring the total number of emojis recommended for general interchange (RGI) by Unicode to 3,790.

This makes Emoji 16.0 the shortest list of emoji draft candidates in history, with the next lowest number of recommendations being 31 for Emoji 15.0 in September 2022.

This reduction in new annual additionals to the emoji keyboard is intentional on the part of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. Speaking to the publication Quartz in 2022, the Subcommittee Chairperson Jennifer Daniel stated:

My hope is that it’s becoming more apparent to the public that we’re encoding fewer emoji year after year—less things that are theoretical

🏴 The flag for Sark?

Even those who follow emoji news closely may be slightly confused by the inclusion of the 🇨🇶 Flag for Sark in the Emoji 16.0 draft list.

This is because back in March 2022 Unicode announced that it would no longer be accepting proposals for "flag emoji of any category."

This policy remains in force, though at the time of this policy's announcement, Unicode did highlight how further national/regional flags could come into existence in that same blog post:

The Unicode Consortium isn’t in the business of determining what is a country and what isn’t. That’s when the Consortium chose ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 as the source for valid country designations. ISO 3166 is a widely-accepted standard, and this particular mechanism represents each country with 2 letters, such as “US” (For United States), “FR” (France), or “CN” (China).

Sark received an “exceptionally reserved” ISO 3166 code of CQ within ISO 3166-1, paving the way for it to receive its own emoji flag recommended for general interchange (RGI) without the need for a formal proposal.

In fact, this is the first time a new national/regional flag emoji has been added through this automatic recommendation mechanism since emoji flags were first formally approved in Emoji 1.0 back in 2015 (select flags had existed on Apple devices since 2008, but were not recommended by Unicode until 2015).

(What about the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland, and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Wales, you may ask? These nations don't have an ISO 3166 code, and yet they are included within the emoji keyboard through emoji tag sequences that were implemented based on an approved 2016 proposal)

🎨 Are these the final emoji designs?

No - the emoji designs shown above are not the final designs you should expect to see arrive on your digital devices from September 10 onwards.

To be clear, the Emojipedia Sample Images shown within the images are just one way in which these emojis might look. For now the ninth year in a row, these designs have been created by Emojipedia's Head of Emoji Design Joshua Jones.

Our Emojipedia Sample Images have intentionally been created in a glossy style directly inspired by the Apple emoji set.

Actual vendor designs will vary from those released by major vendors, though we have already been given some insight into how these emojis may appear on Android devices:

The designs above, which Unicode themselves provide as sample designs, are rendered in the Google Noto Color Emoji style.

This is not surprising, given the fact that the current Unicode Emoji Subcommittee chairperson, Jennifer Daniel, is also the head of emoji design at Google.

📋 What are "Draft Emojis"?

It must be noted once again that this is still only a draft list of new emoji recommendations.

They are not yet formally approved by Unicode and are therefore subject to change between now and their scheduled approval date of 10 September 2024.

However, while it is subject to change before its expected approval on September 10th, since 2017 all of the draft emoji candidates that have been publically listed have ended up being approved for use within the emoji keyboard.

For additional information about the Emoji 16.0 draft list, you can review the Unicode 16.0 draft release notes and Emoji 16.0 beta page. The latter includes recommended keywords and proposal documents.

🗓️ Emoji Release Timeline

So, when can you get these eight new emojis on your iPhone, Pixel, or other devices and platforms?

Based on the last few years, here's our estimated timeline for Emoji 16.0's approval and release across major emoji vendors:

• October 2024: Samsung will debut its support in a One UI update
• October / November 2024: Google will preview their designs via their Github, with their designs released progressively across their different platforms during Q4 2024 / Q1 2025.
• January / February 2025: WhatsApp will release their Emoji 16.0 for Android devices
• March / April 2025: Apple will release their Emoji 16.0 support via iOS 18.4
• Summer 2025: Facebook (including Messenger)
• Fall 2025: Microsoft via a major Windows 11 update

For reference, here's when each vendor began to support (or began to preview) 2023's Emoji 15.1 recommendations:

• 30 October 2023: Samsung, via One UI 6.0
• 17 November 2023: Google Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji Font
• 2 February 2024: WhatsApp for Android via their 2.24.2.76 update
• 27 March 2024: Facebook (including Messenger)

At the time of writing, Facebook has yet to debut support for Emoji 15.1, Microsoft designs are only available via beta updates, and the offshoot of Twemoji now being worked on by Discord designs has yet to be implemented despite the designs being previewed on GitHub.

Additionally, here's when those same vendors began to support 2022's Emoji 15.0 recommendations:

• 13 September 2022: Google Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji Font
• 24 October 2022: Samsung, via One UI 5.0
• 11 January 2023: WhatsApp, via 2.23.2.72
• 27 February 2023: Facebook (including Messenger)
• 27 March 2023: Apple, via iOS 16.4
• 13 June 2023: Twitter, via Twemoji 15.0
• 4 August 2023: Huawei, via HarmonyOS 4.0
• 31 October 2023: Microsoft, via Windows 11 23H2

Today, on World Emoji Day 2024, JoyPixels have released version 9.0 of their freemium emoji set. This new update contains support for Emoji 15.1, as well as a series of design changes including the majority of flag emojis.

All of the 118 new emojis featured in JoyPixels 9.0 were recommended in September 2023's Emoji 15.1 list.

These new emojis, shown above, can be categorized as follows:

• Six brand new emoji concepts:
  • 🙂‍↔️ Head Shaking Horizontally
  • 🙂‍↕️ Head Shaking Vertically
  • 🐦‍🔥 Phoenix
  • 🍋‍🟩 Lime
  • 🍄‍🟫 Brown Mushroom 
  • ⛓️‍💥 Broken Chain
• Four new non-gender-specifying family emojis:
  • 🧑‍🧑‍🧒 Family: Adult, Adult, Child
  • 🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Family: Adult, Child, Child
  • 🧑‍🧒 Family: Adult, Child
  • 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Family: Adult, Adult, Child, Child
• 108 new direction-specifying variations of six different previous-available people emojis:
  • 🚶‍➡️ Person Walking Facing Right
  • 🏃‍➡️ Person Running Facing Right
  • 🧎‍➡️ Person Kneeling Facing Right
  • 🧑‍🦯‍➡️ Person with White Cane Facing Right
  • 🧑‍🦽‍➡️ Person in Manual Wheelchair Facing Right
  • 🧑‍🦼‍➡️ Person in Motorized Wheelchair Facing Right

As well as these new emojis, JoyPixels 9.0 redesigns roughly 500 emojis, including a format change for all national flag emojis and most symbol emojis.

🆙 Changed

The 🤖 Robot is now more rounded with yellow eyes, red earpieces, and a single central antenna.

The 🕵️ Detective is now wearing sunglasses and a lighter-colored trenchcoat.

The 🧙 Mage now wear a neutral expression as well as a starless purple hat and robes.

🩻 X-Ray now focuses on the person's torso instead of their skull.

🦠 Microbe now resembles a bacteria instead of a virus, mirroring all other major vendors bar Apple.

🥫 Canned Food has lost the JoyPixel's logo in favor of a tomato on its label, now matching most major vendors' designs.

⏲️ Timer Clock has a new rounded design that is more in line with other vendors' designs.

🗾 Map of Japan now has a blue background representing the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean.

The 🏳️‍🌈 Rainbow Flag is now shown with a curved rectangular shape.

This curved rectangular flag format has also been applied to all of the national flag emojis in JoyPixels 9.0, as illustrated by the 🇺🇸 United States flag shown below.

Additionally, various symbol emojis have had their shape outline brought in line with the block color design used by most vendors.

The 🆕 New Button no longer has a 💥Collision-like background shape,

The ☮️ Peace Symbol is now against a purple block background.

📶 Release

JoyPixels 9.0 is available now. Like previous JoyPixels updates, it is available on a freemium basis, with licensing required for some but not all usage types.

Read more about the 9.0 release announcement and related licensing details on the JoyPixels website.

Happy World Emoji Day 2024! 📅🥳

📖 Read More

• Browse every JoyPixels emoji
• New in JoyPixels 9.0
• Changed in JoyPixels 9.0
• JoyPixels 8.0 Emoji Changelog
• JoyPixels 7.0 Emoji Changelog

Today, in celebration of our 11th annual World Emoji Day, we here at Emojipedia have launched a brand new section of our site: the Emoji Playground. Debuting with a selection of emoji quiz games alongside the classic Emoji Mashup Bot, the Playground will be our experience hub for an ever-expanding series of emoji-based games and image creation experiences.

✅ Emoji Quiz Games

The quiz experiences currently available in the Emoji Playground are as follows:

• Guess the Flag (🎌🎌🎌🔍🎮): A classic quiz game where you're asked to name the country or territory a particular emoji flag design is representative of.

• Older Or Newer (👶🧑🧓🔍🎮): Test yourself on Unicode's emoji recommendation history by correctly stating which emoji concepts were recommended before, after, or at the same time as one another.

• Odd One Out (🦆🦆🪿🔍🎮): Find the one emoji design that doesn't match all the others shown within a grid display. Emoji designs are drawn from across different historic emoji design sets.

• Guess the Animal (🦁🐯🐻🔍🎮): a "Who's That Pokémon" inspired experience where you're asked to guess which animal emoji you're being shown based on silhouette designs from different emoji sets.

Each of these quiz experiences revolves around players racing against the clock to respond to emoji-based questions before the time expires.

The faster you provide the correct answer, the more points you'll be rewarded for that question - and after a total of 15 questions, you'll be given your total score and be informed if that score merited a position on our daily leaderboards.

• View the Guess The Flag daily leaderboard
• View the Older Or Newer daily leaderboard
• View the Odd One Out daily leaderboard
• View the Guess The Animal daily leaderboard

Our leaderboards also include "Last 7 Days" and "All Time" toggles, as well as easy access to the leaderboards of the other quiz games.

You're also able to share your "emojified" score by copying it to your clipboard via the "Share your score" button on the score screen.

🦁🐯🐻🔍🎮
⏱️0️⃣1️⃣:0️⃣1️⃣:0️⃣
✅1️⃣5️⃣
🌟1️⃣4️⃣8️⃣
https://emojipedia.org/emoji-playground/guess-the-animal

🎨 Emoji Image Creation

The classic Emoji Mashup Bot, which launched on Emojipedia early last month, is also featured among the experiences within the Emoji Playground.

You can read more about the Emoji Mashup Bot's history and its new home on Emojipedia here.

At the time of launch, the Emoji Mashup Bot is the sole emoji image creation tool within the Emoji Playground, but watch this space - there are plans for further emoji image creator tools to be added to the Playground in the very near future.

Got any idea for a type of emoji game experience or image creation tool for the Emoji Playground? Let us know via:

• Emojipedia on X (Twitter)
• Emojipedia on Threads
• Emojipedia on Bluesky
• Emojipedia on Mastodon
• Emojipedia on Instagram
• Emojipedia on Facebook

As part of World Emoji Day 2024 we here at Emojipedia have collaborated with the digital marketing platform Semrush's Academy and Gen Z copywriting agency Word Tonic to create the world's first Emoji Marketing Mini-Course. This course is a fun but informative guide on eliminating emoji-induced anxiety among digital marketers.

This course will guide you through the essentials of emojis in a marketing context, providing practical examples of when and where to use them effectively, and some fun facts to tie it all together.

This course is for anyone eager to add a fun twist to their marketing strategy using emojis. Whether you're new to marketing or a seasoned pro, you'll discover creative ways to boost engagement and communication.

The course also contains an Emoji Cheat Sheet for quick reference when crafting your digital marketing messages.

• View the Semrush Academy Emoji Marketing Mini-Course
• View the Semrush Academy Emoji Cheat Sheet

Happy World Emoji Day 2024! Emojipedia's annual celebration of all things emoji is now in its eleventh year, and here's a quick rundown of what's been happening as part of this year's celebration! 🌎📅🥳

🛝 Emojipedia's New Emoji Playground

To celebrate our 11th annual World Emoji Day, we here at Emojipedia have launched a brand new section of our site: the Emoji Playground.

Debuting with a selection of emoji quiz games alongside the classic Emoji Mashup Bot, the Playground will be our hub for emoji-based experiences going forward.

• Play the new Guess the Flag quiz game 🎌🎌🎌
• Play the new Older Or Newer quiz game 👶🧑🧓
• Play the new Odd One Out quiz game 🦆🦆🪿
• Play the new Guess the Animal quiz game 🦁🐯🐻
• Explore the classic Emoji Mashup Bot creation tool 🔀🔀🔀

💖 New Emojis for 2024-2025

Emoji 16.0 is due for approval on 10 September 2024 alongside Unicode 16.0, and there's no better time than World Emoji Day to look ahead to the final candidates and get a feel for what new emojis will likely be arriving on our phones in 2024-2025.

Emoji 16.0 is set to be approved in September. Ahead of #WorldEmojiDay 2024 (July 17), here’s every emoji in the final draft 👇https://t.co/S23SBWf9TX pic.twitter.com/XAlrrHIOlo

— Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) July 15, 2024

This is our ninth year releasing our Emojipedia Sample Designs ahead of Unicode's official recommendations later in the year. As always, these designs have been created by Emojipedia's Head of Emoji Design Joshua Jones.

• 👀 Emojipedia coverage of when to expect new emojis on your phone
• 🖼 Emojipedia's Sample Images for how these might look
• 📑 Unicode Draft Emoji Chart for more implementation details

☄️ Semrush x Emojipedia Emoji Marketing Minicourse

We here at Emojipedia have collaborated with the digital marketing platform Semrush's Academy and Gen Z copywriting agency Word Tonic to create the world's first Emoji Marketing Mini-Course.

The first 50 people who complete the course today on World Emoji Day 2024 and share their certificate online will receive a custom-designed emoji image commissioned by Semrush.

• View the Semrush Academy Emoji Marketing Mini-Course
• View the Semrush Academy Emoji Cheat Sheet

🦄 JoyPixel's 9.0 Debuts

JoyPixels have released version 9.0 of their freemium emoji set. This new update contains support for Emoji 15.1, as well as a series of design changes that include the majority of flag and symbol emojis

• 🦄 JoyPixels 9.0 Emoji Changelog
• 🆕 New in JoyPixels 9.0
• 🆙 Changed in JoyPixels 9.0

🏆 World Emoji Awards

The 2024 World Emoji Awards results are in, and here are all the winners!

• The Most Popular New Emoji from last year's Emoji 15.1 recommendations is the 🙂‍↔️ Head Shaking Horizontally.
  • The 🙂‍↕️ Head Shaking Vertically in second, and 🐦‍🔥 Phoenix in third. The 🍋‍🟩 Lime emoji came in 4th place, followed by the ⛓️‍💥 Broken Chain emoji in 5th.

• The Most Anticipated Emoji amongst the current draft candidates for Emoji 16.0 is the Face with Bags Under Eyes.
  • This new smiley won by a considerable distance, with the Splatter and the Shovel emojis being the second and third most anticipated upcoming additions to our emoji keyboards.

• Next, the ✨ Sparkles emoji has been awarded our annual Lifetime Achievement Award.
  • This has been awarded based on its enduring popularity (it has been amongst the world's top 10 most used emojis since June 2015) and its recent adoption as the go-to symbol to encapsulate the "magic" of many tech platform's innovative new A.I. features.

• Finally, The Most 2024 Emoji is the 🫠 Melting Face, beating out the 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears in the final round. 
  • This year's contest between 🫠 Melting Face and 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears was a re-run of the final of our Most 2022 Emoji Award. This is also the third year running that the 🫠 Melting Face has won this award after also beating the plain 🩷 Pink Heart emoji in 2023.

👀 More on World Emoji Day

The more playful side of World Emoji Day isn't generally covered in detail here on Emojipedia, but to see what's been happening the best place is the #WorldEmojiDay hashtag on your social platform of choice.

Or check out the official World Emoji Day accounts:

• World Emoji Day on X (Twitter)
• World Emoji Awards on X (Twitter)
• World Emoji Day on Instagram
• World Emoji Day on Facebook
• World Emoji Day on TikTok

...and of course the websites:

• World Emoji Day website
• World Emoji Awards website

The social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) has redesigned its 🔫 Water Pistol emoji to display as an actual firearm. This redesign diverges from the designs of all other major emoji vendors, inverting the cross-platform conversion of this emoji away from being a firearm between 2016 and 2018.

This update is available through X's web client, which still displays the Twemoji emoji design set. It began its rollout on July 18th, the day after World Emoji Day 2024.

update announcement 📢
on x dot com (the website), the gun emoji was returned back into its rightful form: an m1911

🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫 https://t.co/FlXJtOpU3H pic.twitter.com/cqd7KHcxUJ

— kache (@yacineMTB) July 18, 2024

In February 2023 the Twemoji set ceased to be used by Twitter / X on mobile devices, replaced by the device's native emoji designs. This means this update will not be seen on Android devices.

The Twitter / X app for iOS has always used the native emojis provided by Apple.

However, the X engineer responsible for the change, kache, has since stated that they will be "soon updating the rendering on mobile".

They also stated that this design is "not the final design (going to make it look more badass)".

As mentioned above, this change by X in effect reverts a cross-vendor design change for the 🔫 Water Pistol emoji (fka the 🔫 Pistol emoji) that was fully implemented in 2018 following a much-publicized design change by Apple in 2016.

This is the first update to the version of the original Twemoji emoji design set used by X since July last year, when the designs of the 😷 Face with Medical Mask, 🥺 Pleading Face, and 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears emojis were updated.

Additionally, since October 2022 a separate branch of Twemoji has been maintained on former Twemoji designer Justine De Caires' Github. This offshoot remains open source and has had contributions made by Discord designers.

The 🔫 Water Pistol emoji in this Discord-used Twemoji offshoot remains as the design originally implemented on Twitter in 2018.

📖 Read More

• All Major Vendors Commit to Gun Redesign (April 2018)
• Google Updates Gun Emoji (April 2018)
• Apple And The Gun Emoji (August 2016)

Today the latest emoji list will be released by the Unicode Consortium, with additions including a harp, a shovel, a splatter symbol, and a face with bags under its eyes.

The release of version 16.0 of the Unicode Standard today, 10 September, formalizes what has until now been only a draft release of new emojis and several thousand additional non-emoji characters.

✨🎉✨ Unicode Version 16.0 has been released! ✨🧨✨ Bringing the total number of characters to 154,998! ✨🍾✨ Find more information here → https://t.co/7sxDI0mnrC #Unicode16 pic.twitter.com/qBpciXUbTi

— The Unicode Consortium (@unicode) September 10, 2024

🆕 New Emojis

No changes have been made to the draft emoji list since we here at Emojipedia previewed the Emoji 16.0 draft list on July 17, aka World Emoji Day.

This means eight new emojis will begin to appear across our various digital devices over the next few months and throughout 2025.

These emojis are:

• 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes
• 🫆 Fingerprint
• 🫟 Splatter
• 🫜 Root Vegetable
• 🪾 Leafless Tree
• 🪉 Harp
• 🪏 Shovel
• 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark

All of these new emojis bar the 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark are included within both Unicode 16.0 and Emoji 16.0.

The distinction between Unicode 16.0 and Emoji 16.0 is that the latter includes sequences where two or more code points can be combined to display a single emoji, while the former only includes the list of standalone emoji codepoints.

The 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark is included in Emoji 16.0 but not Unicode 16.0 because it is a flag sequence combining the existing characters of 🇨 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter C and 🇶 Regional Indicator Symbol Letter Q. 

Draft Emoji 16.0 Design: Flag for Sark #WorldEmojiDay https://t.co/nu56RWIgiV pic.twitter.com/Ovlci7EKCp

— Emojipedia (@Emojipedia) July 16, 2024

Additionally, the 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark has been recommended in spite of the fact that Unicode had previously announced that it would no longer be accepting proposals for "flag emoji of any category" back in March of 2022.

Despite the recommendation of 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark in Emoji 16.0, this policy remains in force.

At the time of this policy's announcement, Unicode did highlight how further national/regional flags could come into existence:

The Unicode Consortium isn’t in the business of determining what is a country and what isn’t. That’s when the Consortium chose ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 as the source for valid country designations. ISO 3166 is a widely-accepted standard, and this particular mechanism represents each country with 2 letters, such as “US” (For United States), “FR” (France), or “CN” (China).

Sark received an “exceptionally reserved” ISO 3166 code of CQ within ISO 3166-1, paving the way for it to receive its own emoji flag recommended for general interchange (RGI) without the need for a formal proposal.

With the formal recommendation of Emoji 16.0 today, there are now a total of 3,790 emojis recommended by Unicode for general interchange across our digital devices.

It also means our World Emoji Awards 2024 Most Anticipated emoji - the 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes - will officially be making its way to our devices over the next year or so.

Browse Unicode 16.0 on Emojipedia or see the Unicode 16.0.0 release notes provided by the Unicode Consortium.

🧮 New Characters?

The Unicode Consortium is the non-profit standards body responsible for the Unicode Standard. Voting members include Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Unicode 16.0 includes a total of 5,185 new characters, of which 7 are brand-new emoji code points discussed above.

This brings the total number of characters encoded within Unicode to 154,998.

Unicode 16.0 adds 5185 characters, for a total of 154,998 characters. The new additions include seven new scripts.

As is evident by the numbers above, the majority of the new characters within Unicode 16.0 are not emojis.

In fact, the vast majority of characters in the Unicode Standard are not emojis, but other digital characters and symbols.

Emoji updates are of course given priority here at Emojipedia, but it's worth taking a moment to also highlight the other new characters approved in today's Unicode 16.0 release.

Among the 5,185 new characters in Unicode Version 16.0 are those for the newly-supported #Garay, #GurungKhema, #KiratRai, #OlOnal, #Sunuwar, #Todhri, and #TuluTigalari scripts → https://t.co/7sxDI0lPC4 #Unicode16 pic.twitter.com/Np32P0nzGg

— The Unicode Consortium (@unicode) September 4, 2024

The seven new scripts in question are:

• Garay (a modern-use script from West Africa),
• Gurung Khema, Kirat Rai, Ol Onal, and Sunuwar (four scripts from Northeast India and Nepal)
• Todhri (a historic script used for Albanian) and
• Tulu-Tigalari (a historic script from Southwest India)

There are also 3,995 additional Egyptian Hieroglyphs, some of which are shown below.

This update includes over 700 symbols from legacy computing environments, including some early video game systems. Several are these are shown below.

Lastly, Unicode 16.0 also provides Japanese “Moji Jōhō Kiban” source references for over 36,000 existing CJK Unified Ideographs.

Although Unicode Version 16.0 does not include any new CJK Unified Ideographs, Japanese “Moji Jōhō Kiban” source references have been added to over 36,000 existing CJK Unified Ideographs → https://t.co/7sxDI0lPC4 #文字情報基盤 #Unicode16 pic.twitter.com/KwRZJznJSf

— The Unicode Consortium (@unicode) September 9, 2024

Now that the code points for Unicode 16.0 are stable, these remain in place forever.

🗓️ Emoji Release Schedule

The release of Unicode 16.0 and Emoji 16.0sponsors does not mean users can immediately access or use any new emoji from this list.

What today's release from the Unicode Consortium does indicate is when major vendors such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, or Samsung can implement these new emojis in their software.

Expect to see some companies come out with early emoji support in late 2024, and the majority of updates to take place in the first half of 2025.

In fact, Google has already previewed its support for Emoji 16.0 within both their Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji font site pages. Read more about that here.

Based on last year's release schedule, here is our estimate for when you can expect to see Emoji 16.0 emojis appear across different devices and platforms:

• September 2024: Google previews its designs via its Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji font site pages.
• October 2024: Samsung will likely debut its support in a One UI update
• January / February 2025: WhatsApp will release their Emoji 16.0 for Android devices
• Early 2025: Google will begin to progressively support Emoji 16.0 across their different platforms (e.g. Chromebook, YouTube)
• March 2025: Google will provide support for Android devices
• March / April 2025: Apple will release their Emoji 16.0 support via iOS 18.4
• Summer 2025: Facebook, including Messenger (though support for Emoji 15.1 has yet to be provided)
• Summer / Fall 2025: Microsoft via a major Windows 11

📋 Support Unicode

The Unicode Consortium is a small non-profit organization, which is funded primarily through membership fees and donations.

One means through which Unicode obtains additional funding is their Adopt A Character program, through which either a person or an organization can be listed as a sponsor of an emoji or, indeed, any other character within Unicode.

In fact, more than 151,700 characters can be adopted.

Adopting a character helps the non-profit Unicode Consortium in its goal to support the world’s languages and of course, continue to encode new emojis within the Unicode Standard.

All sponsors are acknowledged in Sponsors of Adopted Characters and Unicode's public Twitter feed and will receive a custom digital badge for their character.

Google has officially unveiled its full-color designs for today's Emoji 16.0 recommendations, which include a face with bags under its eyes, a paint splatter, and a human fingerprint.

There are a total of eight new emojis in today's Google release:

• 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes
• 🫆 Fingerprint
• 🫟 Splatter
• 🫜 Root Vegetable
• 🪾 Leafless Tree
• 🪉 Harp
• 🪏 Shovel
• 🇨🇶 Flag: Sark

These new emojis have been uploaded to the Noto Color Emoji's Google Fonts page.

They have yet to be uploaded to Google's Noto Color Emoji Github page or their Gstatic servers, though they are expected to do so in the near future.

This release coincides with today's formal approval of Unicode's Emoji 16.0 recommendations, from which all these new emojis are drawn.

Today's emoji update is expected to be released progressively across different Google platforms such as Chrome OS, Gmail, YouTube, and various Android devices throughout 2025. As per Google's press release on World Emoji Day 2025:

These new emoji will be available as a web font in both color and monochrome this September, on Android phones by March 2025 and in your favorite Google products in early 2025.

Today Google has also released support for Emoji 16.0 within Noto Color Emoji's minimalistic companion font - Noto Emoji.

💻 Release

As discussed above, these new emoji designs for Emoji 16.0 have been released via Google's Noto Color Emoji font page, meaning they are likely considered final and almost certainly not undergo further revisions before release.

These new emojis are expected to be released progressively across different Google platforms such as Chrome OS, Gmail, YouTube, and various Android devices throughout 2025.

Once again, as per Google's press release on World Emoji Day 2025:

These new emoji will be available as a web font in both color and monochrome this September, on Android phones by March 2025 and in your favorite Google products in early 2025.

In the meantime, you can download the font files for both Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji via their respective Google Fonts pages.

Earlier today Apple released their first developer beta for iOS 18.2, giving registered users their first hands-on experience with their new Genmoji image generation tool.

First announced as part of a selection of AI-based “Apple Intelligence” features in June, the Genmoji feature allows users to generate emoji-like stickers through text prompts entered directly into their Apple keyboards.

[Editor's Note: we use the term "emoji-like stickers" for Genmojis here due to the technical differences between Genmojis and Unicode's standardized emoji set that are discussed later in this article.]

Users signed up for the Apple Developer Beta Program can now download the first beta for iOS 18.2. However, to access the new Genmoji feature iOS 18.2 must be used on an iPhone 15 Pro, an iPhone 15 Pro Max, or an iPhone 16.

🎨 How To Make Genmojis in iOS 18.2 (Beta)

Access to the Genmoji tool has been added directly to Apple's default emoji keyboard in iOS 18.2.

Once the emoji keyboard has been opened, to the right of the emoji search bar (which now contains the text "Describe an Emoji" instead of "Search Emoji") is a multi-colored smiley face icon with a plus (+) symbol over it.

Selecting this icon will open the Genmoji creation screen, from which you can describe your desired emoji image via a description field placed above your iPhone's keyboard.

Once you have entered several words into the description field, your emoji sticker image will begin to generate with a Siri-like sphere icon acting as the loading screen.

There is an alternative route to begin the generation process.

If you enter a description of an emoji into the emoji keyboard's search bar and it does not yield any results, you will be presented with a "Create New Emoji" option.

Selecting this button once it appears begins the generation process based on the description you added within the search field. Selecting the smiley icon, which receives additional highlighting when the "Create New Emoji" button appears will also start the generation process.

Load times can vary, but they tend to be within the 3-6 second range for the initial generation.

If you aren't satisfied with the generation initially created, you can begin to swipe through different alternative generations based on the same prompt that the tool.

Some of these may notably differ from the initial generation, as shown below.

You can also create a Genmoji based on your contacts' associated picture - this option will appear when you type in a contact's name within the Genmoji description field.

This will then begin to create Genmojis inspired by the selected person's appearance.

Using this feature, at least one X/Twitter user has been able to create Genmoji images of different public figures and TV characters.

Additionally, you can use one of Apple's emoji people designs as a base, with the option of changing their gender presentation and skin tones.

If the description of the Genmoji is complex, you may end up getting a result that doesn't fully reflect your description.

Note that a particularly complex description will yield a "No Results - Trying describing something different to create a new emoji" error message, effectively asking you to simplify your request.

The same error message appears if you attempt to generate a Genmoji based on select NSFW or offensive descriptions: in these cases, you will see the message "No Results - Trying describing something different to create a new emoji".

The same message will also appear if you attempt to generate an image based on copyrighted materials, while a different "Try another description" error will appear if you misspell a prompt.

We tested copyrighted examples such as "Mickey Mouse", "Pikachu", "Harry Potter", "Rubix cube" - all of which received the "No Results" message.

However, this was not always the case.

For example, "McDonald's" generated hamburgers, while "Twitter" generated a button version of the former logo of the platform now known as X.

📤 Sending Your Created Genmoji

Once the Genmoji image has been generated, you have several options.

If you are happy with the image you have created and wish to use it within the app from which you accessed the Genmoji feature, you can select the "Add" option at the top right of the screen to add the Genmoji creation directly to your message.

Note, however, that underneath each generated image Apple states that "Some descriptions may create unexpected results".

This explanatory note is intended to excuse any visual oddities or deviations from the provided description - outcomes that will be familiar to any user of other AI image generator tools.

Given this possible variability in output, you can also provide feedback on a given Genmoji image via thumbs-up and thumbs-down icons placed underneath.

Finally, an ellipsis (...) icon opens an options menu that allows you to copy the image to your iPhone's clipboard, share it to another app, or save it to your keyboard's saved stickers without having to use it in text.

If you select "Add", you will be taken back to the Messages app and the Genmoji will have been added to your text input field.

If you attempt to send the Genmoji through a platform that has yet to support embedding the Genmoji image in line with text, it will attempt to send the Genmoji as a sticker and may require some slight processing time.

An example of this from WhatsApp for iOS is shown below.

The Genmoji will also be added to your Recent Emojis section of your emoji keyboard for swift access, and will also appear if you search using the same description used to create the Genmoji image.

If you had already begun to type a message before opening the Genmoji feature, the Genmoji sticker will be added in line with the text that had already been added to your input field.

This functionality emulates how the standardized set of Unicode emojis operate, though it is only available within supported platforms.

If you have yet to enter any text, the Genmoji will be added as a large sticker image, which can be sent on its own or have text added before or after it to reduce its size to match that of other text.

You can also send up to three Genmojis in a row and have them appear in line without the blue text message bubble surrounding them, as with other stickers within Messages since the launch of iOS 18.0.

While Genmojis can only be generated by users of eligible iPhone devices, iPhone users using recent iOS versions can receive them.

Additionally, once a Genmoji has been sent, the recipient can also save that Genmoji to their own devices, regardless of whether they have access to Genmoji via iOS 18.2 or not.

🤔 Are Genmojis Actually Emojis?

In short, no. From a technical perspective, Genmojis differ considerably from the standardized emojis that have been a core feature of various devices' keyboards for over a decade.

Our traditional emojis are drawn from recommendations made by the text encoding and standardization organization Unicode: they adhere to a text-based standard of codepoints and sequences, with their colorful designs implemented through our devices' font systems.

You can learn more about Unicode here, or by watching the video below.

Genmojis are not based on any standardized text-based encoding or font system. Instead, they are images with an emoji-like aesthetic generated based on users' descriptions being fed into an AI art model managed by Apple.

As such, they aren't emojis but stickers - just like Apple's previously released Animoji and Memoji features.

However, a recent update to how Apple platforms can handle sticker images within text will almost certainly blur the line between stickers and Unicode's standardized emojis. In fact, this is the intended outcome of this update.

This update was the introduction of the NSAdaptiveImageGlyph API within iOS 18.0 back in September of this year.

This update allowed Apple platforms to place sticker images, including Apple's long-standing Animoji and Memoji as well as the new Genmoji, directly in line with text within supported platforms such as their Messages, Notes, and Mail apps.

Before the launch of iOS 18.0, Apple provided instructions to third-party app developers on how they can enable the NSAdaptiveImageGlyph API within their own apps' rich text content blocks.

It is expected further Apple-based platforms will support this new type of data object in the future, likely leading to a further blurring of the lines between Unicode-based emojis and emoji-like stickers amongst end users.

With the release of Genmoji and the NSAdaptiveImageGlyph API, users can now place a Genmoji sticker alongside a Memoji and an Animoji, all within a single text message.

One must assume that if this emoji-like sticker-embedding experience proves popular within Apple devices, other OS systems such as Android and Windows will follow suit with their own NSAdaptiveImageGlyph-like API for similar image-within-text embedding.

🛜 Release

Genmoji images can be created using iOS 18.2 beta 1, which is now available to developers. The feature is expected to be released to the general public with the official launch of iOS 18.2 by the end of 2024.

However, Apple Intelligence features, including Genmoji, will only be accessible on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPhone 16 models. This restriction applies to both the iOS 18.2 betas and the upcoming official release.

Genmoji and other Apple Intelligence features are also currently not available in the European Union (EU) countries or China, even on eligible devices with iOS 18.2 beta 1 installed.

Since this is beta software, the Genmoji feature may change before the official release of iOS 18.2.

Unicode has revealed which new emojis could be finding their way to our standard emoji keyboards late next year. These possible new emojis include a distorted smiley face, an orca, a treasure chest, several ballet dancers, and a Big Foot-inspired "hairy creature".

The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (now known more formally as the Emoji Standard & Research Working Group) proposed a total of 164 new emojis to the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) earlier this month.

Within published documentation, the Emoji Subcommittee has provided a sample design for nine brand-new emoji concepts from this proposed list — these designs are shown above and the proposed emojis' names are listed below.

• A distorted face, for which the sample design has been taken from the Emoji Kitchen
• A "fight cloud" symbol, as seen in cartoons and comic books
• A ballet dancer (shown above with the dark skin tone modifier)
• An apple core
• An orca, also known as a "killer whale"
• A "hairy creature" inspired by various global "Big Foot"-esque cryptids
• A trombone
• A landslide
• A treasure chest

These designs have been provided in a Google Noto Color Emoji style provided by Google's Jennifer Daniel or by members of their emoji design team. Daniel has also been the chairperson of Unicode's Emoji Subcommittee since 2020.

The ballet dancer emoji will also support all five standard skin tone modifier sequence options. However, it is not presently proposed to have 👨 Man and 👩 Woman gender variations of this emoji.

The remaining 150 new emojis currently proposed for Emoji 17.0 are various skin tone sequences for the existing 👯 People With Bunny Ears and 🤼 People Wrestling emojis.

The proposed skin tone support for these emojis will include both single skin tone support (where both people in the emoji's design share the same skin tone) and multiple skin tone support (where each person is displayed with a different skin tone).

Despite Unicode not recommending skin tone support for 👯 People With Bunny Ears and 🤼 People Wrestling prior to this Emoji 17.0 provisional list, some vendors have previously implemented support for a number of these sequences.

Samsung, Facebook, and WhatsApp currently support single skin tone variations for at least some of these proposed emojis.

Microsoft and Twitter (now X) also previously supported a subset of these same single skin tone sequences, but have since removed them from their emoji design sets.

If these 150 new sequences were to be approved in September of next year, it would mean the 👯 People With Bunny Ears and 🤼 People Wrestling would join the 🤝 Handshake emoji and various 💏 Kiss, 💑 Couple With Heart, and 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People Holding Hands emojis in supporting two different skin tone options.

⏳ When will I get these new emojis?

The 164 proposed emojis are currently all draft emoji candidates for Emoji 17.0. Both Unicode 17.0 and Emoji 17.0 are still in draft and are therefore subject to change.

Unicode 17.0 and Emoji 17.0 are expected to be approved in September 2025, so we'll have to wait a while before they are officially recommended.

Between now and September 2025 there will be several further considerations made by Unicode regarding these draft emoji candidates.

This means that some of these proposed emojis may not be brought forward for final approval.

There's also a chance that additional proposed emojis will be added to the draft candidate list, or that some of the compositions of the proposed emoji sequences will be revised.

However, since 2017 all of the draft emoji candidates that have been publicly listed have ended up being approved for use within our emoji keyboards without any being removed from the list.

Therefore all 164 proposed emojis are likely to appear on our emoji keyboards following the formal approval of Emoji 17.0.

🗓️ So, September 2025?

Not quite.

Once a set of draft emojis has been recommended by Unicode, it is the responsibility of the various emoji vendors (e.g. Apple, Google, Samsung) to implement their own designs for each of the new-approved emoji concepts.

This means that approved emojis can take many months to appear within the emoji keyboards of iPhone and Android devices even after being approved by Unicode.

This year's Emoji 16.0 recommendations are testament to this – though they were approved on September 10 this year, they have yet to be implemented directly within any of our standard emoji keyboards.

They are presently only available within the font files for Google's Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji design sets.

🗓️ How many emojis in total?

If all 164 of these provisional emoji candidates are approved in September 2025 with no further additions being made to the list, Emoji 17.0 will bring the total number of Unicode-recommended emojis to 3,954.

However, by the time these emoji candidates may arrive on our standard emoji keyboards, we could be in quite a different emoji ecosystem from where we are at present.

By September 2025, Apple's generative AI Genmoji feature will have been available for nearly 10 months, albeit only for those with eligible devices.

At the time of writing, the Genmoji feature is only in beta but is expected to be released in early December as part of iOS 18.2. You can learn more about how the Genmoji feature works with our hands-on article here.

Additionally, there are rumors that Samsung's One UI 7.1 will include its own AI emoji sticker generation tool.

One UI 7.1 is expected to be made available at some stage during 2025, with its release possibly occurring before new emoji recommendations are made by Unicode in September.

While the generations created by Genmoji and One UI 7.1 will not be emojis in the traditional sense, new image-management APIs like Apple's NSAdaptiveImageGlyph could effectively make this distinction moot for end users within their primary messaging apps.

Therefore while the number of Unicode-recommended emojis available on our emoji keyboards may be 3,954 by September 2025, the number of distinct emoji-like images being used in line with text across different messaging apps could well be to the magnitude of multiple millions.

We'll have to wait and see what the impact of features like Genmoji will be on the wider emoji ecosystem.

But in the meantime, what we can say for a fact is that new Unicode emojis have been proposed for September 2025, and we could well see all of these 164 additions arrive on default emoji keyboards in late 2025 and throughout 2026.

📖 Read More

• Hands-On With Apple's Genmoji AI Emoji Generator in Beta
• Google Debuts Emoji 16.0 Support
• What's New In Unicode 16.0
• New Emojis In 2024-2025
• Emoji Directionality on the 2023 Emoji Candidate List

It’s that time of year when many of us gobble up some Thanksgiving grub and express our gratitude for the abundance in our lives. Saying thanks in the right way is a subtle art form for which words don’t always do justice, but luckily the emoji library is brimming with options for showing how grateful we are.

🙏 Hand Gestures & People Emojis

Emojis representing common hand gestures are among the most popular ways to say thank you.

From the 👍Thumbs Up to the 👌OK Hand to the 🙌 Raising Hands, the repertoire of gesture emojis is full of informal, commonplace signals of gratitude.

Though for absolute clarity on positive intention across generations and cultures, we do recommend the 🙌 Raising Hands: the biggest gesture with the most universally understood celebratory connotation.

The 👏Clapping Hands is an applause-worthy choice for saying “bravo” to a job well done and a favor much appreciated, and the millennial incarnation of the 🫶Heart Hands gesture adds a cute and tender touch to a thank you message to a bestie or other loved one. 

The 🙏 Folded Hands with its handful of interpretations can work to express gratitude in multiple ways. For those who use it to represent hands in prayer, it can convey sending thanks to the heavens, and it’s also a gesture of gratitude in Japanese culture.

Even the 🙏 Folded Hands' oft-cited but highly scarce rare alternate use case as a high-five can be used to acknowledge the generosity of a homie who just did you a solid. 

The 🙇 Person Bowing variations are another deeply respectful way to show your appreciation, often used to express a profound sense of thanks or recognition of someone’s effort or generosity.

😊 Smiley Emojis

Accompanied by the right message or in the right context, a classic smiling face or its various iterations can be the perfect choice to say thank you.

Many people opt for the warmth radiating from any of the smiling face emojis, like the 🥰Smiling Face with Hearts, the simple and timeless ☺️ Smiling Face, or the angelic 😇Smiling Face with Halo.

Adding the 😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes or the 🤩 Star-Struck emoji can bring extra enthusiasm to your gratitude, perfect for saying thanks when you’re awestruck by someone’s generosity or kindness.

With similar levels of intensity, the 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears can convey a sense of grateful emotional overwhelm.

Additionally, the 🤗Smiling Face with Open Hands is a substitute for a hug when you can’t share a real-life embrace, even if in its frequent interpretation as a "jazz hands" emoji. If you want to emphasize a hug, though, there's always the 🫂 People Hugging.

💖 Heart Emojis

Nothing says “thank you” quite like a heart emoji. With multiple colors and variations to add some personalization, the choices are plentiful. 

The classic ❤️Red Heart is a tried-and-true, all-encompassing "thank you" stand-in that’s not just romantic - its global popularity and use as a default "emoji reaction" on social media has made it appropriate for showing platonic appreciation.

Someone got you tickets to see Charli XCX perform in concert? A Brat-colored 💚Green Heart Emoji might hit the right note. A 💗Growing Heart expresses a gratitude that just won’t stop ballooning, and a ❤️‍🔥Heart on Fire can be a blazing, passionate expression of thanks.

Combining colorful hearts is also popular, and placing the 🧡 Orange Heart with the 🤎 Brown Heart captures the predominant colors of the Thanksgiving holiday season. Speaking of which...

🦃 Thanksgiving Emojis

Of course, the classic cornucopia of Thanksgiving emojis is a no-brainer for expressing gratitude, given their association with the American holiday. 

There’s the obvious 🦃 Turkey, which typically sees a spike in usage around mid- to late November.

But other options to capture the spirit of bounty celebrated on Thanksgiving include the 🌽 Ear of Corn, the 🥧 Pie, the 🍴Fork and Knife, and the 🥂Clinking Glasses.

🐐 Goat Emoji

There are few better ways to let someone know they’ve made a difference in your life than showering them with esteem—namely, bestowing the title of the GOAT, or Greatest of All Time.

The 🐐 Goat Emoji is the go-to choice for many to heap praise on those who deserve it, not just reserved for pro athletes revered by millions. 

🔥 Fire Emoji

The 🔥Fire Emoji is a flaming hot reaction with versatile uses, not least of which is as a symbol of high-energy appreciation for someone’s words or actions. 

Just be careful about being too eager to reply to your crush's story with this one - yes, you, we're talking to you 🫵

Do you use any other emojis to express thanks to your friends, family, and colleagues, on Thanksgiving or throughout the year? Let us know via X, Threads, Bluesky, or Mastodon.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate! 🦃🧡🤎

📖 Read More

• Thanksgiving Emojis Get Gobbled Up [2021]
• Emojiology: 🤗 Hugging Face
• Emojiology: 🙏 Folded Hands
• Emojiology: 🥰 Smiling Face With Hearts
• Emojiology: 🔥 Fire
• Emojiology: 😍 Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes
• Happy Thanksgiving [2016]