✨ New emojis
New characters arrive once a year. Here is what each release brought – from the most recent version back to the 719 emojis that started it all in 2010.
8 new emojis in Emoji 17.0
The Unicode Consortium signed them off in 2025. They only appear on a device once a system update ships the matching artwork – blank rectangles below mean the update has not arrived yet.
Every version
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Who decides which emojis exist
New emojis do not come from Apple or WhatsApp but from the Unicode Consortium – the same body that decides which written characters a computer can display. Anyone may submit a proposal; what gets accepted is what can be justified: expected usage, distinctiveness from existing characters, no company logos, no living people.
Unicode only defines the meaning and the code point, not the appearance. That is why the same emoji looks different on an iPhone than on a Samsung – and why it takes months after approval for characters to reach devices. Until then the system shows a blank rectangle in their place.
Since version 17.0 the emoji and Unicode releases share a number. Before that they diverged: Emoji 1.0 and 2.0 both belong to Unicode 8.0, Emoji 3.0 and 4.0 both to Unicode 9.0. That is why the list above names the matching Unicode release for every emoji version.