What's New On World Emoji Day 2026 🌎🥳📅
Happy World Emoji Day 2026! Emojipedia's annual celebration of all things emoji is now in its twelfth year, and here's a quick rundown of what's been happening as part of this year's celebration! 🌎📅🥳
Happy World Emoji Day 2026! Emojipedia's annual celebration of all things emoji is now in its thirteenth year, and here's a quick rundown of what's been happening as part of this year's celebration! 🌎📅🥳
The 2026/2027 Emoji List Has Been Highlighted
Nineteen new emoji are currently under consideration for Emoji 18.0, which is slated for Unicode approval in September 2026.
The candidates include a cracking face, directional thumb sign gestures, a monarch butterfly (separate from the generic butterfly already in circulation), a pickle (distinct from cucumber), a lighthouse, a meteor (different from comet), an eraser for pencil marks, and a bug net. Barring any last-minute changes, this batch will push the total count of Unicode-recommended emoji to 3,972.
Public voting on which candidates people are most looking forward to using wrapped up earlier today, with the Cracking Face taking the top spot, followed by the Pickle and Meteor. The Monarch Butterfly and Lighthouse rounded out the top five.
The updated visual previews of what several of these emoji could look like on your screen, came courtesy of Unicode Emoji Subcommittee chair and Google emoji lead Jennifer Daniel, who published design samples on her own blog while also discussing why some of these emojis may seem quite farimilar.
Read the voting results and design showcase here.
The Word "Emoji" Is Older Than You May Think
The history of when emoji first entered use as a term is murkier than we thought. Here, we discuss how the term is documented in 1954, and then also how it has been found that it was used in a 1988 to explicitly labels a digital device's icon collection as "emoji".
The Seahorse Emoji WAS Real (But Not the One You Remember)
The internet insists a seahorse emoji exists somewhere. Countless posts, videos, and even AI chatbots claim to remember it. In reality, no seahorse has ever made it onto the standard emoji set, yet that Mandela effect has a genuine root cause hiding in emoji history.
Google Provided A BTS Look At Its Upcoming 3D Emoji Overhaul
Google marked World Emoji Day with a behind-the-scenes look at Noto 3D, a redesign of almost 4,000 emoji into three-dimensional models. Jennifer Daniel writes that the shift reflects how emoji use has grown more dramatic and hyperbolic over time (😭 overtaking 😂, 🤣 climbing the charts, 🥀 edging out 💔), and that the new designs aim to stay expressive and characterful rather than photorealistic.
The rollout also includes an AI-driven contrast tool to keep darker skin tone emoji visible in dark mode, and Google is open-sourcing the raw 3D model files for anyone to build with.
Emoji & Psychological Research: Introducing Team Emoji
Professor Linda K. Kaye of Edge Hill University introduces Team Emoji, an international research collective spanning the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Australia studying how we process emoji emotionally and sensorially, including whether emoji genuinely register as "emotional" stimuli and how generational gaps shape their interpretation.
WhatApp's Emoji Adventures: From Non-RGI Flags To Brand Partnerships
WhatsApp has a history of straying from the standard emoji set in ways few other platforms attempt. For this year's 2026 FIFA World Cup, that inclination took a branded turn: partnering with Adidas to redesign the ⚽ Soccer Ball emoji to match the official "Trionda" match ball. The piece traces that trajectory from non-standard flag experiments through to today's corporate tie-ins.
The Most Popular New Emoji of 2026 Is...
Last September's Emoji 17.0 approval brought 163 new candidates to the standard set. After nine months of rollout across vendors (Apple, Google, Samsung, WhatsApp, Discord, JoyPixels, and OpenMoji), usage patterns have become clear.
The Distorted Face led the pack, with Orca and Fight Cloud claiming the next spots. 🧑🩰 Ballet Dancer and Treasure Chest complete the top five.
This marks Distorted Face's second award in as many years, having also topped people's Most Anticipated rankings back in 2025.
The "Most 2026" Emoji Is...
Unlike the Most Popular New Emoji and Most Anticipated Emoji awards, which are drawn from Emojipedia's own usage data and draft-list voting, the Most "20xx" Emoji award is decided entirely by the public: followers on X, Bluesky, Threads Instagram Stories vote for the single emoji that they feel best sums up the year so far. It's the most free-form of the four awards, less about tracking a specific emoji release and more a kind of collective mood board for the year.
After several rounds of voting, this year's winner is Distorted Face, making it a double win for 2026 alongside its Most Popular New Emoji title.
The rest of the field included 🎷 Saxophone, 🚡 Aerial Tramway, 🫡 Saluting Face, ⚽ Soccer Ball, 🧨 Firecracker, 🥀 Wilting Flower, and our other finalist, the Face With Bags Under Eyes.
Lifetime Achievement Award: The 🔥 Fire Emoji
Few emoji have maintained their cultural relevance across as many contexts or for as long as the 🔥 Fire emoji. Currently sitting at number five on Emojipedia's popularity rankings (behind ❤️ Red Heart, ✅ Check Mark Button, ✨ Sparkles, and 😭 Loudly Crying Face), it earned this year's Lifetime Achievement Award.
👀 More on World Emoji Day
The more playful side of World Emoji Day isn't generally covered in detail here on Emojipedia. To see what's been happening, the best place is the #WorldEmojiDay hashtag on your social platform of choice.
Or check out the official World Emoji Day accounts:
- World Emoji Day on X (Twitter)
- World Emoji Awards on X (Twitter)
- World Emoji Day on Bluesky
- World Emoji Day on Threads
- World Emoji Day on Instagram
- World Emoji Day on Facebook
...and of course the websites: