New Emojis in 2026: Complete List with Meanings and Release Dates

New Emojis Coming in 2026

The emoji keyboard keeps growing, and 2026 is a busy year for it. Two Unicode releases are shaping what lands on your phone right now: Unicode 16.0, which finished rolling out across Apple, Google, and Samsung in late 2025 and early 2026, and Unicode 17.0, whose designs are arriving on platforms through the year. Below you will find what is actually new, what each addition means, and how to get the latest set on your device. You can also browse the live set on our newest emojis page.

Unicode 16.0: The Batch Now on Your Phone

Unicode 16.0 was a small, focused release of eight new emojis. Small does not mean unpopular. A few of these had been requested for years, and they filled real gaps. Here is the full list with meanings and the kind of message each one fits.

• 🫩 Face with Bags Under Eyes: exhaustion, burnout, or a rough night. It reads as "I am running on no sleep" and quickly became a favorite for tired-parent and late-shift posts.
• 🫆 Fingerprint: identity, privacy, security, and biometric logins. Handy for anything about accounts, passwords, or "this is uniquely me."
• 🫜 Root Vegetable: a turnip-style veg for cooking, gardening, and farmers-market content. It rounds out the food set nicely.
• 🪾 Leafless Tree: winter, dormancy, and a bare, stark mood. Popular for autumn-into-winter captions and moody aesthetic posts.
• 🎇 Harp: music, elegance, and calm. A useful pick for playlists, concerts, and anything peaceful. (Rendered as the dedicated harp glyph on updated devices.)
• 🪏 Shovel: digging, gardening, construction, and the slang "digging into" a topic. It also pairs well with treasure and mystery jokes.
• 🩵 Splatter: a paint or ink splash for art, creativity, and messy-fun energy. Great for craft and design accounts.
• 🇨🇶 Flag of Sark: the flag for Sark, a small Channel Island. A niche addition, but flags almost always get added when a territory qualifies.

If you want to see how these fit into the wider set, the emoji by Unicode version page groups every character by the release it shipped in, which is a quick way to check what is old and what is genuinely new.

Unicode 17.0: What Is Arriving Through 2026

Unicode 17.0 is the newer release, and its designs are being drawn and shipped by platforms across 2026. Unicode publishes the approved list first; then each vendor builds its own artwork, which is the step that finally puts a new emoji on your keyboard. The headline additions this cycle lean playful and expressive.

• Trombone: brass, marching bands, and the classic "sad trombone" joke after a fail. Expect it to spread fast in reaction posts.
• Treasure Chest: rewards, savings, loot, and gaming culture. It works for finance content and RPG chatter alike.
• Distorted Face: a warped, glitchy expression for disbelief, overwhelm, or a chaotic mood. It captures a very online feeling that older faces could not.
• Hairy Creature: a Bigfoot-style figure for cryptid jokes, hiking humor, and "touch grass" energy.
• Fight Cloud: the cartoon dust ball from a scuffle, for drama, comedic arguments, and "it's going down" captions.
• Apple Core: finished snacks, health, and the "an apple a day" idea, plus a bit of leftovers humor.
• Orca: killer whales, ocean content, and marine life. Wildlife and nature accounts have wanted this one for a while.
• Ballet Dancers: dance, performance, and grace, adding to the activities set.
• Landslide: geology, weather events, and news coverage, plus the "landslide victory" turn of phrase.

Names and exact glyphs can shift slightly between the approved list and the final shipping artwork, so treat the very newest additions as arriving in stages rather than all at once.

How Unicode Approval Actually Works

New emojis do not appear by magic. Anyone can submit a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit that maintains the text standard behind emoji. A proposal has to argue that the character is distinct, widely useful, and likely to be popular, with evidence like search data and existing demand. The Emoji Subcommittee reviews submissions, shortlists candidates, and forwards a draft set for approval in the next annual release.

Once a version like Unicode 16.0 or 17.0 is finalized, the character exists in the standard, but it still has no picture. Each platform, Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and others, then designs its own version. That is why the same emoji can look different across devices, a topic we cover in why emojis look different on iPhone vs Android. For the deeper backstory, see our history and evolution of emojis.

When Will New 2026 Emojis Be Available?

Rollout happens in a predictable rhythm. Apple usually ships new emojis in a fall iOS update, often in a point release after the main September launch. Google adds them to Android through the year, and Samsung follows with its own One UI updates. Because of that staggering, an emoji approved by Unicode can take several months to a year before it reaches every phone. If you send a brand new emoji to a friend on older software, they may just see an empty box until they update.

How to Get New Emojis

The fix for missing emojis is almost always a software update. Keep your device current and the new set appears on the keyboard automatically.

• iPhone: Settings, then General, then Software Update. Install the latest iOS point release.
• Android: Settings, then System, then System Update. Some phones also update emoji fonts through app-store components.
• Desktop: update Windows or macOS and your browser to the latest version.

If your device cannot update yet, you can still use any character by copying it. Our copy and paste emojis tool and the emoji keyword hub let you grab a fresh glyph and drop it anywhere, which sidesteps the wait entirely.

Emoji Trends Shaping 2026

Beyond the new additions, the way people use emoji keeps shifting. Face with Tears of Joy 😂 is still the most-used emoji worldwide, but the skull 💀 (meaning "I'm dead," as in something is hilarious) and 🥹 Face Holding Back Tears keep climbing, especially with younger users. Heart Hands 🫶 has become a standard sign-off for gratitude and support. You can see the current leaders on our most popular emojis of 2026 ranking and the numbers behind them on the emoji statistics page.

Faces in particular are worth watching, since expressive reactions drive most casual chat. We break down every recent facial addition in every new face emoji explained across Unicode 15, 16 and 17. And if you like pairing new emojis into short visual phrases, the best emoji combinations for texting guide is a good next stop.

Stay Updated

We track each platform release and add new characters to our database as soon as they ship, so this list stays current through the year. Bookmark the newest emojis page and check back after major iOS and Android updates to see which fresh glyphs your device now supports.

This list covers what has shipped. For what was approved next, Unicode finalised Emoji 18.0 on September 16, 2026 with nine new characters, and we break down each one plus the vendor timeline in the Emoji 18.0 guide. Be aware that none of them display correctly yet, which is normal and explained in why new emoji show as boxes.