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A glimpse of the next emoji generation: The emoji committee has unveiled nine new symbols, including a pickle, a lighthouse, and a shattering face. However, it will be some time before they appear on iPhones – and their release is not yet guaranteed.
Shortly before World Emoji Day on July 17th, the chair of the Unicode Consortium has offered an early glimpse at the upcoming emoji rollout. The announcement will feature nine new designs slated to be part of Emoji 18.0 – the annual expansion determined by the Unicode Consortium, which Apple then releases as its own drawings on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. As with the emoji rollout with iOS 26.4, there will be a considerable gap between the announcement and the final symbol appearing on the lock screen.
These nine designs are planned
Not all the new additions are completely new. Part of the work involves untangling existing symbols that have been inconsistently depicted over the years. The most prominent example is the comet ☄️: Originally conceived as a blue ball of ice traveling through space, it was redrawn as a glowing rock on some platforms. With the new meteor, this fiery rock will get its own symbol, while the comet will revert to its blue ice streak across all platforms.
Two further duplications are resolved according to the same pattern: next to the general butterfly depiction 🦋 a separate monarch butterfly appears, next to the cucumber 🥒 a separate pickle.
In addition, there are some truly new additions. These include a lighthouse, an eraser, a fishing net with a handle, and two hand signals with thumbs pointing left and right. The most striking new face is the cracked smiling face – a smile with fissures, expressing the gap between outward composure and inner tension. Together with the five skin tone variations for each of the two thumb signals, this results in 19 new sign positions.
From design to iPhone it takes
The symbols are explicitly not yet set in stone. They are draft candidates for Emoji 18.0, which Unicode will not vote on definitively until September 2026. Changes are possible until then – the possibility of a design not making the final cut is not purely theoretical: The repeatedly proposed Apple core emoji, a bitten apple core, was first removed from the Emoji 17.0 list and later also from the 18.0 draft.
Even after the final vote, the symbols don't appear on the iPhone immediately. Unicode only defines the meaning; each manufacturer designs the specific appearance themselves. Apple, therefore, creates its own glyphs and often uses its own products in the process - the headphone emoji shows AirPods Max, the laptop symbol a MacBook with the Apple logo. This design step takes time.
The current round illustrates the significant gap: The 163 symbols from Emoji 17.0, which Unicode approved in September 2025, didn't arrive on iPhones until iOS 26.4 in spring 2026. The next round is expected to follow the same pattern: After its release in autumn 2026, the nine new emojis are unlikely to appear via an iOS update before spring 2027.
Between Unicode decision and Apple drawing
Anyone who wants to design their own symbols beforehand doesn't need to rely on the official emoji list anyway: Genmoji allows you to create your own designs via description, which are not part of the Unicode standard, but can be sent as images in messages.
The nine new standard emojis are taking the usual route: first the Unicode decision in the fall, then Apple's own implementation, then the update. For iPhone users, this mainly means patience – the meteor and the pickle are still a long way off. (Image: Unicode)
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