Bigfoot, Orca, and a Trombone, are among new emoji coming to iOS 26
To mark World Emoji Day, the consortium that decides on new emojis has unveiled a selection of which ones will be formally announced in September, and then come to devices starting at some point in iOS 26.
Every year, the Unicode Consortium considers proposals for new emoji, and those proposals go through various stages before being ratified in September. This year, the Consortium has once more unveiled some future emoji, but also taken the further step of confirming these will all be included in its next official version of the standard.
It's common for more than a hundred new emoji to be added at the conclusion of each year's deliberations, and it's likely that the same is true for 2025 into 2026. The Unicode Consortium, however, has announced only eight so far:
- Apple Core
- Ballet Dancers
- Bigfoot
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud
- Orca
- Treasure Chest
- Trombone
The Consortium says that these "new emoji have long standing symbolic meanings, are visually distinctive, and contain multitudes of expression." The formal release of the updated standard containing these emoji is expected on September 9, 2025.
It can then take some months for Apple and Google to adopt the new standard. For example, in March 2025, Apple added support to iOS 18.4 for emoji approved by the Consortium in 2024.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments