160+ New Emoji Are Coming, Including Bigfoot, Distorted Face, and Apple Core

The Unicode Consortium is already hard at work on the next batch of emoji, but don’t get too excited just yet. It may be a while before you see these new characters, which include an apple core, orca, and hairy creature, on your devices.

Unicode 17.0, with its Emoji 17.0 update, isn’t expected to be finalized until September 2025, but nine new emoji candidates have already been drafted. Those are:

Apple Core: A compostable icon for food waste or garbage.
Ballet Dancer: A new gender-neutral character celebrating the art of dance, grace, and self-expression.
Distorted Face: Reflecting feelings of vulnerability, panic, or surprise.

Fight Cloud: A playful emoji representing brawls or disagreements.
Hairy Creature: Inspired by mythical beings like the yeti or bigfoot.
Landslide: Symbolizing natural disasters or geological events.

Orca: Representing marine life and conservation themes.
Treasure Chest: Representing valuables, wealth, or pirate lore.
Trombone: A musical addition for fans of brass instruments.

Emoji 17.0 is also proposing five skin-tone variations for the new Ballet Dancer (for a total of six options), as well as 150 new skin-tone variations for the existing People Wrestling (🤼) and People with Bunny Ears (👯) emoji. That brings the total so far to 164 proposed emoji for Emoji 17.0. This number may fluctuate as more draft candidates become available.

If history is any indicator, it’ll take at least six months from the Unicode 17.0 release date before these emoji start showing up on popular operating systems. Here’s when you’re likely to see them:

iOS, iPadOS, macOS: Apple typically rolls out new emoji in its spring updates, so expect Emoji 17.0 characters to arrive with iOS 19.4, iPadOS 19.4, and macOS 16.4 in or around March 2026.
Android: Google will likely include Unicode 17.0 emoji in Android 17. The stable release of Android 17 is expected sometime in mid-2026, but you may see these emoji appear earlier during the Android 17 developer preview and/or public beta program.
Samsung devices: Considering Samsung’s inclusion of Emoji 16.0 in One UI 7.0 (see below), we can expect Emoji 17.0 support to begin rolling out with One UI 8.0 in early 2026 when the Samsung Galaxy S26 phones are released. You may also see the emoji appear earlier in One UI 8.0’s betas.
Windows: Microsoft often adds emoji support in major Windows updates. A likely candidate would be a mid-2026 update to Windows 11 or its successor.
Web services and apps: Platforms like Gmail, ChromeOS, and YouTube will probably adopt Unicode 17.0 emoji shortly after Google implements them in Android. Signal and Telegram use Apple’s emoji images, so they would be released shortly after Apple’s March 2026 release. WhatsApp typically releases new emoji more quickly, so you may see an update in WhatsApp before most services.

As of Jan. 31, 2025, we’re still waiting for the Unicode 16.0 emoji to be added to all our devices.

Apple is expected to introduce them in iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4, likely in March 2025. Samsung will release them with the new Galaxy S25 phones on Feb. 7, 2025, and the new emoji will roll out over the following months to older devices. Google currently has them in the Android 16 beta, released on Jan. 23, 2025. For more details about Unicode 16.0 and what’s included, check out our full breakdown of the Emoji 16.0 release.