118 new EMOJI coming this year – including gender-neutral families

The 118 new EMOJI coming this year – including a lime, a shaking head, and four new gender-neutral families

  • Emojipedia has revealed the draft emoji candidates up for approval 
  • New characters include a lime, shaking heads and a phoenix bird

From happy smiling faces to cheeky aubergines, emoji now form a staple part of many of our day-to-day messages.

Now, a report has revealed the 118 new characters that could launch in 2023 and 2024.

Experts from Emojipedia have revealed the draft emoji candidates up for approval by the Unicode Consortium this September.

The new characters include a lime, heads shaking vertically and horizontally, and a phoenix bird.

Users can also expect four new gender-neutral family emoji, represented via silhouettes (scroll down for the full list). 

Experts from Emojipedia have revealed the draft emoji candidates up for approval by the Unicode Consortium this September

READ MORE: Britain’s top 10 emoji ‘icks’ revealed – so are YOU guilty of using any of these icons? 

Emojipedia revealed the new emoji and created sample designs in a blog to celebrate World Emoji Day earlier this month.

Two new faces look set to be added, in the form of a horizontally-shaking head and a vertically-shaking head.

A phoenix, a lime, a brown mushroom, and a broken chain could also soon be coming to your smartphone.

Meanwhile, four gender-neutral families are included in Emojipedia’s designs, in the form of silhouettes. 

These are a family with two adults and a child, a family with one adult and two children, a family with one adult and one child, and a family with two adults and two children.

Aside from these characters, new directional versions of six different types of person emoji could be coming this year.

These are the person walking, person running, person kneeling, person with white cane, person in manual wheelchair and person in motorized wheelchair.

‘Selecting an orientation for a person, object, or symbol to be represented by an emoji is a necessity for emoji designs when they are seeking to best exemplify an emoji’s intended concept,’ Emojipedia explained in its blog.

Aside from these characters, new directional versions of six different types of person emoji could be coming this year. These are the person walking, person running, person kneeling, person with white cane, person in manual wheelchair and person in motorized wheelchair

‘This is especially true considering the diminutive size at which we view most emoji designs in our day-to-day lives.’

Taking into account the various skin tones available for these directional versions, this brings the total number of new emoji to 118. 

Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether these emoji will be in the final version of Emoji 15.1.

‘However, based on recent years, the final version is likely to mirror this draft list,’ Emojipedia added. 

‘This means that no new emojis will be added at this stage, though there is a slight chance that a draft emoji candidate is changed or removed ahead of September.’

In terms of timeline, Emojipedia predicts some platforms will launch these new emoji within a few months.  

‘Expect to see some companies come out with early emoji support in late 2023, and the majority of updates to take place in the first half of 2024,’ it added.

The 118 emoji we could see this year