New emojis in 2022-2023

Sunday marks World Emoji Day, which means we’ll see preliminary designs for the emojis that will eventually appear on iOS and Android. Although the design depends on the platform, Emojipedia has a draft list and sample images for Emoji 15.0. The Unicode Consortium has only 31 draft emoji this year, which will likely be rolled out in 2022 and 2023. While the emoji draft may change between now and the final version in September, most (if not all) will make it to the end. Among the contenders are a shaking face, a high-five and a wireless network.

The shaking face emoji will mostly be used for shock reactions, or it could become the official earthquake emoji. While people often use the smiley face with folded hands as a high-five sign, this year we will get an official emoji. The pushing hand to the right and left will act as a way of saying no to something or high-fiving when used together.

We’ll also finally get the wireless emoji. Surprisingly, there is no Wi-Fi emoji right now, so everyone had to use Antenna Bars emoji, which are designed to mimic a mobile signal. The Wireless emoji will save all Wi-Fi fans. If you’ve been waiting for the pink heart emoji, it looks like it’s coming this year, too.

Emoji 15 also includes new mammals, birds and even jellyfish emojis. This year we’ll see a moose, a donkey, a blackbird, a goose and a wing. Hyacinths, ginger and pea pods are also on the way.

Fans of Latin music will be pleased to know that maracas will appear as emoji on iOS and Android later this year. And if you play the flute, you’ll be happy to see the flute emoji.

Shaking Face, pushing hands and a Pink Heart . These are just some of the emojis that will be approved this September. In the run-up to World Emoji Day, Emojipedia created sample designs for each emoji candidate. Although some of them may not make the list, most of those submitted for approval are historically confirmed.

Other inclusions on the Emoji 15.0 draft list along with Shaking Face and Pink Heart are Blue Heart, Gray Heart, Donkey, Medusa, Hairbrush, and Khanda, the symbol of Sikh faith.

The image examples shown above are just one example of what these emojis might look like.

For the eighth year now, we’ve been providing sample emoji designs ahead of their official release on emoji keyboards.

Actual designs will differ from designs released by major vendors, and sample images may also be updated once Emoji 15.0 is released.

Also, since this is only a preliminary list of emojis, each emoji is subject to change until final approval in September 2022.

However, it’s worth noting that most of the emoji candidate drafts have been shortlisted over the past few years, including all of the emojis we announced from last year’s emoji 14.0 draft list ahead of World Emoji Day 2021.

Speaking of World Emoji Day, in case you missed it in the last few days:

๐Ÿ“ˆ We found that global emoji usage has never been higher
๐ŸŸข We partnered with WhatsApp as they expanded the emoji reaction feature by outlining the meaning of some popular emoji trends.

For more information about the Emoji 15.0 draft list, see the Unicode 15.0 draft release notes and the Emoji 15.0 beta page. The latter includes recommended keywords and offer documents. However, we have some of our own observations.

๐Ÿ” New draft emoji

While, again, the list is still a work in progress, we can make a few notes about emoji that could very well be coming to our emoji keyboards later this year.

First, Emoji 15.0 is likely to deliver the long-awaited emoji: the pink heart.

This has been one of the most talked about cases of missing emoji on the keyboard over the years, and the pink heart is among our own estimates of the most popular emoji queries since 2016.

We hear some of you asking, is there no pink heart already? Yes and no. In short, it will be a completely normal pink heart without additional decorations or features that are determined only by its color: ๐Ÿงก Orange Heart, ๐Ÿ’› Yellow Heart, ๐Ÿ’š Green Heart and ๐Ÿ’™ Blue Heart.

The second observation is that there are far fewer new emojis than in recent years.

The tentative list for Emoji 15.0 contains only 31 recommended emojis, while Emoji 14.0 2021 contained 112 recommendations, and Emoji 13.0 and Emoji 13.1 2020 contained 334 (117 and 217 respectively).

In fact, this is the smallest number of new emoji that Unicode has ever recommended.

Also, for the first time in this series of recommendations, there are no new people emojis.

However, this came after people’s emoji made up the majority of the last three emoji recommendation groups. And that’s not counting the various body parts and emoji gestures.

Emoji 12.1 2019 was exclusively human emoji: a series of zero-width merge sequences that added gender-neutral emoji variants of various professions and roles from 2016 Emoji 4.0 and hairstyles from 2018 Emoji 11.0, and expanded various ๐Ÿง‘โ€๐Ÿค โ€๐Ÿง‘ People Holding Hands emoji was first added to Emoji 12.0 earlier in the year.

Meanwhile, 2020’s Emoji 13.1, which added 212 different variations of existing people emoji – either gender-neutral variations or combinations that supported multiple skin tone variations of the ๐Ÿ’ Kiss and ๐Ÿ’‘ Couple with Heart emoji.

Some conclusions:

  • The new Donkey emoji will mean that the animal mascots of both major political parties in the United States of America will have emoji versions (joining the ๐Ÿ˜ Elephant emoji).
  • Pushing Hand Right and Pushing Hand Left need to have a lot of combinational power with other emojisโ€”and maybe even each otherโ€”to create a true high-five emoji.
  • The new Black Bird emoji combines ๐Ÿˆโ€โฌ› Black Cat and ๐Ÿปโ€โ„๏ธ Polar Bear as color variations of existing animal emojis, implemented using zero-width join sequences (ZWJ).
  • Itโ€™s funny that the code for the Moose emoji is โ€œFACEโ€ (U+1FACE). Whether they choose to show only its head, like our Sample Image, or display the full creature, remains to be seen.

๐Ÿ—“ Emoji Timeline

When will you get new emojis on your iPhone, Pixel or other devices and platforms? There are two parts to this:

  1. It remains to be confirmed which emojis will be in the final version of Emoji 15.0 – as we said above, this is still a draft list. However, judging by recent years, the final draft is likely to resemble this draft list. This means that no new emoji will be added at this stage, although there is a small chance that the draft emoji will be changed or removed before September.
  2. Emoji support release dates always vary by operating system, app, or device.

With those two things in mind, here is our estimated timeline for the approval and release of Emoji 15.0 among major emoji vendors.

Expect some companies to release early emoji support in late 2022, with most updates coming in the first half of 2023.

That’s when each vendor started supporting (or started previewing) last year’s Emoji 14.0 guidelines.

  • October 27, 2022: Google Noto Color Emoji via Android 12L beta (as of release for Android 12/12L, Gmail, YouTube, and other Google platforms)
  • February 16, 2023: Microsoft via Windows 11 Insider Beta (still in beta, release expected Fall 2022)
  • March 2023: Twitter, via Twemoji 14.0
  • March 2023: Apple via iOS 15.4.
  • April 19, 2023: WhatsApp, via 2.22.8.79
  • April 20, 2023: Facebook (including Messenger)
  • April 29: Noto Emoji font (initial launch)
  • July 5, 2023: Openmoji via Openmoji 14.0
  • July 9, 2023: Samsung via One UI 5.0 beta   (expected Fall 2022)
  • July 19, 2023: JoyPixels 7.0 release.

New emoji preview

The new emoji are derived from existing pre-candidates and emoticons that were previously added to the lists.ย But keep in mind๐Ÿ’ก, these emojis have the status of a draft, they can still change their appearance before the release.ย Let’s see ๐Ÿ‘€ what they might look like:

Search Emojis: