Unicode Emoji Versions, Complete Changelog

Unicode 12.0 was a landmark release for accessibility and disability representation, adding the guide dog 🦮, manual and motorised wheelchairs ♿🦽🦼, probing cane 🦯, and the Deaf Person 🧏, the most significant inclusivity update since skin-tone modifiers. It also introduced the first mixed-skin-tone couple sequences, allowing handshake and couple emoji to reflect two different skin tones.

Unicode 11.0 was a bumper release adding 157 new emoji, one of the largest single additions in the standard's history. Highlights include the now-ubiquitous smiling face with hearts 🥰, hot and cold faces 🥵🥶, partying face 🥳, cupcake 🧁, and a full set of superhero and villain emoji. The release also brought the first set of hair-style emoji (curly, red, white, and bald) as ZWJ sequences.

Unicode 9.0 introduced 72 new emoji including rolling on the floor laughing 🤣, avocado 🥑, bacon 🥓, shrimp 🍤, and the first LGBTQ+ pride flag sequences. This release also added gender-inclusive variants for several profession emoji, beginning the push towards equal representation that would accelerate in subsequent versions.

Unicode 8.0 was a historic update: it introduced the Fitzpatrick skin-tone modifier system (🏻🏼🏽🏾🏿), allowing all people emoji to be displayed in five different skin tones for the first time. This was the most significant inclusivity change in emoji history. The release also added the taco 🌮, burrito 🌯, and cheese wedge 🧀.

Unicode 7.0 was the single largest emoji release ever, adding 250 new characters in one go. It introduced iconic emoji including the unicorn 🦄, chipmunk 🐿️, zipper-mouth face 🤐, middle finger 🖕, and dozens of hand gestures, sport, and object emoji that are now everyday communication staples.

Unicode 6.1 added 13 new emoji, focusing on facial expressions including the smirking face 😏, unamused face 😒, and expressionless face 😑, subtle emotions that quickly became popular in everyday messaging for conveying sarcasm and mild irritation.

Unicode 6.0 was the foundational emoji release that made cross-platform emoji possible for the first time. Before this standard, emoji were carrier-specific and incompatible, a smiley sent from a Japanese phone would appear as a broken character on another network. Unicode 6.0 unified the original Japanese carrier sets (SoftBank, KDDI DoCoMo) into a single, platform-agnostic standard, creating the shared emoji language used by all devices today. Over 1,000 emoji were included, establishing the core vocabulary still in use.

Unicode 5.2 added a small set of characters that were later recognised as emoji, including some additional miscellaneous symbols and dingbats that carriers had adopted from the original Japanese sets.

Unicode 5.1 introduced a small number of characters later classified as emoji, primarily symbols used in the pre-smartphone Japanese mobile ecosystem before the Unicode standardisation in 6.0.

Unicode 4.1 added characters that Japanese mobile carriers were already using as pictographs, laying early groundwork for what would become the emoji standard five years later.

Unicode 4.0 introduced several characters that pre-dated the emoji concept but were later adopted into emoji sets, including some currency symbols and miscellaneous technical symbols.

Unicode 3.2 included a handful of characters that would eventually be classified as emoji, primarily geometric shapes and symbols from the Miscellaneous Symbols block.

Unicode 3.0, released in the same year Shigetaka Kurita created the first 176 emoji for NTT DoCoMo's i-mode platform, contains characters at the root of the emoji concept, basic symbols that pre-smartphone cultures were already using as picture-characters in digital communication.