What's New In Unicode 17.0
Today Unicode has officially confirmed the new emojis that will be finding their way to our emoji keyboards over the next year or so.
Today, the latest emoji list will be released by the Unicode Consortium, confirming new additions such as a distorted face, ballet dancers, an orca, and a "Bigfoot"-esque hairy creature.
The release of version 17.0 of the Unicode Standard today, 9 September 2025, formalizes what has until now been only a draft release of 163 new emojis and several thousand additional non-emoji characters.
🆕 New Emojis
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article stated that Unicode 17.0 included a new Apple Core emoji. In fact, the character was withdrawn at the last minute and does not appear in either Unicode 17.0 or Emoji 17.0. Unicode’s own release blog post still refers to “eight new emoji characters,” reflecting the last-minute nature of its removal.
For the first time in several years, a change has been made to the draft emoji list since we here at Emojipedia first previewed the Emoji 17.0 list late last year.
The initial draft list contained eight draft candidates for new emoji codepoints, but the proposed Apple Core emoji has ultimately not been included in Unicode 17.0 or Emoji 17.0.
The seven new emoji codepoints that have successfully been approved from the draft list are as follows:
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud, as seen in cartoons and comic books
- Orca, also known as a killer whale
- Hairy Creature, inspired by various global "Big Foot"-esque cryptids
- Trombone
- Landslide
- Treasure Chest
@emojipediaofficial this new emoji release is full of gems... and we don't just mean the treasure chest emoji 🆕😯💎👀 #emojis #emojinews #technews #internet #internettrends #internetculture #memes #language #communication #texting #trending #popculture #digitalculture ♬ original sound - Emojipedia
Additionally, today's release of Emoji 17.0 alongside Unicode 17.0 also includes support for a gender-neutral ballet dancer (with support for skin tone modifiers), as well as a series of skin tone sequences for the existing 👯 People With Bunny Ears and 🤼 People Wrestling.
The distinction between Unicode 17.0 and Emoji 17.0 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.
Therefore, the 🧑🩰 Ballet Dancer is included in Emoji 17.0 but not Unicode 17.0 because it is a sequence combining the existing characters of 🧑 Person and 🩰 Ballet Shoes.
With the formal recommendation of Emoji 17.0 today, there are now a total of 3,953 emojis recommended by Unicode for general interchange across our digital devices.
Browse Unicode 17.0 on Emojipedia or see the Unicode 17.0.0 release notes provided by the Unicode.
🧮 New Non-Emoji Characters?
The Unicode Consortium is the non-profit standards body responsible for the Unicode Standard. Voting members include Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
Unicode 17.0 includes a total of 4,802 new characters, of which 7 are the brand-new emoji codepoints discussed above.
This brings the total number of characters encoded within Unicode to 159,800.
As is evident by the numbers above, the majority of the new characters within Unicode 17.0 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 17.0 release.
A total of 4 new scripts have been added in Unicode 17.0:
As per the Unicode blog post:
"The following four new scripts increase the total number of supported scripts in the Unicode Standard to 172:
- Beria Erfe is a modern-use script used by Zaghawa communities in central Africa.
- Tolong Siki is a modern-use script used by Kurukh communities in northeast India.
- Tai Yo is the traditional script of Tai Yo communities in northern Vietnam.
- Sidetic is an historic script used in ancient Anatolia."
Now that the code points for Unicode 17.0 are stable, these remain in place forever.
🗓️ Emoji Release Schedule
The release of Unicode 17.0 and Emoji 17.0 does not mean users can immediately access or use any new emoji from this list.
Expect to see some companies come out with early emoji support in late 2025, and the majority of updates to take place in the first half of 2026.
In fact, Google has already released support for Emoji 17.0 within both its Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji font site pages.
Based on last year's release schedule, here is our estimate for when you can expect to see Emoji 17.0 emojis appear across different devices and platforms:
- September 2025: Google previews its designs via its Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji font site pages (as has already happened)
- January / February 2026: WhatsApp will release its Emoji 17.0 support for Android devices
- Early 2026: Samsung will likely debut its support in a One UI update
- Early 2026: Google will begin to progressively support Emoji 16.0 across their different platforms (e.g. Chromebook, YouTube)
- March 2026: Google will provide support for Android devices
- March / April 2026: Apple will release its Emoji 17.0 support via an iOS 26 update
- Summer 2026: Facebook, including Messenger
- Summer / Fall 2026: Microsoft via a major Windows 11 update
📋 Support Unicode
The Unicode Consortium is a small non-profit organization that 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.