A face with bags under the eyes, a paint splatter and a human fingerprint are among the new emojis coming to smartphones starting this fall.
The new batch, officially called Emoji 16.0, also includes a tuber, a leafless tree, a harp, a shovel, and an unusual flag.
Like the flag of England, this new emoji features a white background covered with a red St. George’s Cross.
But the upper left corner (known as the “canton”) is shaded red and contains two yellow lions.
So do you know what land it officially represents?
The new emojis should arrive on devices in the fall, provided they are officially approved.
It is the flag of Sark, part of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, off the coast of Normandy, France.
Although Sark may seem like a random choice for the flag emoji, the island’s geographical neighbours (Jersey and Guernsey) already have their own.
Emojipedia, which is part of the Unicode Consortium, the central bank of all approved emoji, says these eight new emoji are preliminary candidates.
This means they will have to be officially approved in September before they start appearing on devices from October.
“Here at Emojipedia we’ve published our traditional sample designs for all of the new emoji candidates,” said Keith Broni, Editor-in-Chief of Emojipedia.
‘They are not yet formally approved by Unicode and are therefore subject to change between now and their scheduled approval date of September 10, 2024.’
The inclusion of Flag for Sark comes as a surprise because, as the Unicode Consortium admits, it halted the inclusion of any new flag emoji in March 2022.
Although Sark may seem like a random choice for the flag emoji, the island’s geographical neighbours Jersey and Guernsey already have their own emoji.
Sark is part of the Channel Islands in the English Channel, off the coast of Normandy, France.
At the time, Emojipedia cited the “transitory nature” of many pride flags and the “challenges of including some identities and excluding others.”
Broni now says: ‘This policy remains in place, although at the time of this policy announcement, Unicode highlighted how more national and regional flags could emerge.’
Tech giants like Samsung, Apple and Meta are applying stylized versions of the new emoji designs to their own operating systems.
In other words, these emojis will likely look slightly different when they are released to operating systems and apps.
But Emojipedia said it already “has some idea” of how these emojis might appear on Android devices.
If you have a Samsung device, you’ll probably receive them first, in October, as part of the Korean firm’s One UI update.
Google devices and apps will be next in line to receive them (starting in October or November), followed by Meta’s WhatsApp (January or February).
Actual vendor designs will vary from those published by major vendors, though Emojipedia has “already received some information” about how these emojis may appear on Android devices (pictured).
Assuming all eight emojis are approved, Emoji 16.0 will bring the total number of widely supported emojis across multiple platforms to 3,790.
Apple will roll them out to its apps starting in March or April as part of a later update to its upcoming iOS 18 operating system.
The last to arrive will be Facebook Meta (including Messenger) starting in the summer of next year, followed by Microsoft devices via a Windows 11 update (even in the fall of 2025).
With just eight emojis, this new collection in the approval process is the shortest list of candidates for an emoji draft in history.
The next lowest number of emoji recommendations (31) was Emoji 15.0 in September 2022.
Assuming all eight are approved, Emoji 16.0 will bring the total number of widely supported emojis across multiple platforms to 3,790.
‘Pregnant man’ included in the list of emojis 14.0
Two emojis — a “pregnant man” and a gender-neutral “pregnant person” — were among those included in the 14.0 list of approved emojis coming to devices in 2021 and 2022.
The pregnant man and the pregnant person acknowledge that “pregnancy is possible for some transgender men and nonbinary people,” said Emojipedia, a voting member of the Unicode Consortium.
Men get pregnant both in real life and in fiction, Emojipedia argued, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1994 film “Junior.”
The “pregnant man” and “pregnant person” emojis could also be used as “an ironic way to show a baby eating, a very full stomach caused by eating a large meal.”
Guidelines for using the term “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman”, published by the British Medical Association in 2017 in an attempt to recognise trans and non-binary people, were described at the time as an “insult to women”.
Jane Solomon, Emojipedia’s “senior emoji lexicographer,” described the new emoji in a blog entry titled ‘Why is there a pregnant man emoji?’
“The new pregnancy options can be used to represent trans men, non-binary people or women with short hair, though of course the use of these emojis is not limited to these groups,” she said.
‘Men can be pregnant. This applies to the real world (e.g. trans men) and to fictional universes (e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger in (the 1994 film) “Junior.
“People of any gender can be pregnant too. Now there are emojis to represent it.”
For now, Unicode is sticking with the more conventional “pregnant woman” emoji, which has been an emoji since 2016.
