What's New In Unicode 18.0

Today the latest list of new emoji recommendations has been approved by the Unicode Consortium, confirming new additions such as the Cracking Face, the Pickle, the Meteor, the Lighthouse, and the Eraser.

The release of version 18.0 of the Unicode Standard today, September 16 2026, formalizes what has until now been only a draft release of 19 new emojis via Emoji 18.0, as well as several thousand additional non-emoji characters.

🆕 New Emojis

The nine new emoji codepoints that have today been approved as part of Unicode 18.0 are as follows:

• 🫫 Cracking Face
• 🫹 Leftward Thumb Sign
• 🫺 Rightward Thumb Sign
• 🫌 Monarch Butterfly (as opposed to the non-specifying 🦋 Butterfly)
• 🫝 Pickle (as opposed to a 🥒 Cucumber)
• 🛙 Lighthouse
• 🪋 Meteor (as opposed to a ☄️ Comet)
• 🪌 Eraser, for removing pencil markings from paper
• 🪍 Net With Handle, like those used to catch bugs

When you include the skin tone modifier support for 🫹 Leftward Thumb Sign and 🫺 Rightward Thumb Sign, as is standard for gesture emojis, this means there are 19 new additions in Emoji 18.0, which has been approved alongside Unicode 18.0 today.

The distinction between Unicode 18.0 and Emoji 18.0 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.

This is the second year running where the draft list has shifted between its initial reveal and its formal approval.

Last year, the initial draft list for Emoji 17.0 briefly included a proposed Apple Core emoji that was ultimately withdrawn before release, and it remained absent from both Unicode 17.0 / Emoji 17.0 as well as today's Unicode 18.0 / Emoji 18.0.

This year, it was a Face With Squinting Eyes emoji that didn't make the cut. It appeared on the original preview list but was subsequently swapped out in favour of the now-approved 🫫 Cracking Face.

🤔 But I've Seen Some Of These Before?

If a few of today's new arrivals feel oddly familiar, you're not imagining it.

As Unicode's Jennifer Daniel explained on her Substack ahead of World Emoji Day 2026, several Emoji 18.0 additions exist because platforms have previously stretched an existing design to cover a concept it was never quite meant to hold, and this update unwinds some of that fudging.

Firstly, the 🫝 Pickle splits off from 🥒 Cucumber. While Apple, WhatsApp, and Huawei have always shown a sliced cucumber, other platforms like Samsung, Microsoft, and (up until very recently) Google have long drawn something closer to a pickle.

☄️ Comet has had a similar split. While many platforms debuted this emoji correctly as a blue ball of ice, many have since drifted toward a fiery red-hot rock similar to how Apple began to rendered this emoji in 2016.

Emoji 18.0 gives that fiery fellow its own home as 🪋 Meteor, letting ☄️ Comet settle back into a consistent icy blue.

Finally, 🫌 Monarch Butterfly does the same for 🦋 Butterfly, which has been drawn as either a Monarch or a blue Morpho depending on platform, effectively two different insects sharing one codepoint.

None of this removes any existing emoji or affects characters you've already sent, it just means designs should look more consistent once vendors implement these changes.

Of note, however: while Unicode is adding these specific new emoji characters and requesting that platforms make changes to their existing emojis' designs, technically Unicode isn't in charge of the designs.

While they can insist on best practice, it is ultimately down to each platform to render an emoji design of their choosing to represent each recommended concept, which is actually what led to these outlined instances of design divergence across 🥒 Cucumber, 🦋 Butterfly, ☄️ Comet in the first place.

🧮 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 18.0 includes a total of 13,007 new characters, of which 9 are the brand-new emoji codepoints discussed above.

This brings the total number of characters encoded within Unicode to 172,808.

As is implied by the numbers above, 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 18.0 release.

A total of 3 new scripts have been added in Unicode 18.0:

• Proto-Cuneiform (numerals)
• Jurchen
• Small Seal

As per Unicode's own release blog post:

The largest set of new characters is for the historical Seal (or “Small Seal”) script. This set of 11,328 ideographic characters has important cultural significance in China, dating back to the Qin Dynasty (around 200 BCE). Another new cultural heritage script from China is Jurchen, used in northeastern China during the Jin Dynasty.

Additionally, these new characters contain three new currency symbols:

• U+20C2 RUFIYAA SIGN
• U+20C3 UAE DIRHAM SIGN
• U+20C4 OMANI RIAL SIGN

Again, as per Unicode:

Each of these symbols was authorized for public use by the respective monetary authority over a year ago, but usage has been hindered by lack of a standardized encoding. With the release of Unicode 18.0, vendors are now able to implement support for these symbols.

🗓️ Emoji Release Schedule

The release of Unicode 18.0 and Emoji 18.0 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 2026, and the majority of updates to take place in the first half of 2027.

In fact, Google has already released support for Emoji 18.0 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 18.0 emojis appear across different devices and platforms:

• September 2026: Google previews its designs via its Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji font site pages (as has already happened)
• Q1 2027:
  • WhatsApp will release its Emoji 18.0 support for Android devices
  • Samsung will likely debut its support in a One UI update
  • Google will begin to progressively support Emoji 18.0 across its other platforms (e.g. Chromebook, YouTube), as well as Android devices
• March / April 2027: Apple will release its Emoji 18.0 support via an iOS 28 update
• Summer 2027: JoyPixels will provide support via a new update to their subscription-based design set
• Late Summer / Early Fall 2027: Microsoft via a major Windows 11 update

Vendors including Facebook, the offshot of Twemoji that Discord contributes to, Toss Face, and Openmoji have less predictable release schedules, but are also expected to provide support at some point throughout late 2026 into late 2027.

📋 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 156,933 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.