The Most Popular New Emoji of 2026 Is...
This week (July 17) marks our thirteenth annual World Emoji Day! To begin the celebrations, the team here at Emojipedia have analyzed which of the emojis approved in 2025 are the most popular new additions.
This week (July 17) marks our thirteenth annual World Emoji Day! To begin the celebrations, the team here at Emojipedia have analyzed which of the emojis approved in 2025 are the most popular new additions.
A total of 163 new emojis were approved by Unicode on September 9 2025 as part of Emoji 17.0:
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud, as seen in cartoons and comic books
- 🧑🩰 Ballet Dancer (with full skin tone support)
- Orca, also known as a "killer whale"
- Hairy Creature, inspired by various global "Big Foot"-esque cryptids
- Trombone
- Landslide, represented as a series of rocks falling down a cliff
- Treasure Chest
- 75 additions skin tone combination options for the 🤼 People Wrestling emojis
- 75 additions skin tone combination options for the 👯 People With Bunny Ears emojis
Since being officially approved last year, support for these new emojis has been implemented by the following noteworthy vendors:
- Apple via iOS 26.4 in March 2026
- Google via Android 16 QPR3 in March 2026, though they were first made available via their font files in September 2025
- Samsung via One UI 8.5 in March 2026
- WhatsApp for Android in March 2026
- Discord (via its offshoot of the original Twemoji set), though they have yet to appear in-platform
- JoyPixels via their 11.0 release in June 2026
- OpenMoji in April 2026
Most Popular New Emoji Award 2026
Based on Emojipedia's own site data that powers the Emojitracker as of its revival ahead of last year's World Emoji Day, the most popular of these new emojis are as follows:
- 🥇 1st place: Distorted Face
- 🥈 2nd place: Orca
- 🥉 3rd place: Fight Cloud
- Runner up (4th): 🧑🩰 Ballet Dancer
- Runner up (5th): Treasure Chest
This means that the Distorted Face emoji is the 2026 winner of the Most Popular New Emoji Award as part of the 2026 World Emoji Awards.
This is the Distorted Face emoji’s second award, having won the Most Anticipated Emoji Award in 2025.
Most Anticipated Emoji Award 2026
Today's award is just the first of four award announcements for World Emoji Day 2026.
We have three further awards to announce, with one of these being the Most Anticipated Emoji Award based on the current draft list for Emoji 18.0.
This isn't part of the approval process: it's 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 (July 17).
As of January 2026, the Emoji 18.0 draft list contains 19 new emoji recommendations that break down as follows:
- A cracking face
- A leftward thumb sign gesture (with skin tone modifier support)
- A rightward thumb sign gesture (with skin tone modifier support)
- A monarch butterfly (as opposed to the non-specifying 🦋 Butterfly)
- A pickle (as opposed to a 🥒 Cucumber)
- A lighthouse
- A meteor (as opposed to a ☄️ Comet)
- An eraser, for removing pencil markings from paper
- A net with a handle, like those used to catch bugs
Assuming all are approved, Emoji 18.0 will bring the total number of emojis recommended for general interchange (RGI) by Unicode to 3,972.
You can read more about the World Emoji Awards on WorldEmojiAwards.com.
Read More
- The 2026/2027 Emoji List Could Change This Week (January 2026)
- Draft Emoji List for 2026/2027 (January 2026)
- What's New On World Emoji Day 2025 🌎🥳📅 (July 2025)
- Emojitracker Is Back (July 2025)
- The Most Popular New Emoji of 2025 Is... (July 2025)