It’s emoji refresh season
(Image credit: Unicode)
- New emoji proposals have been put forward for 2025
- Unicode and developers will continue to refine the designs
- Fresh icons include Bigfoot and a “distorted face”
Yes, there is an official organization in charge of emojis, called the Unicode Consortium – and it’s just put forward its annual proposal for the new graphics we might be seeing on thebest iPhonesandbest Android phones in the next year or two.
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There are plenty of interesting additionsin the list(viaEmojipedia). We’ve got a bulging, slightly overwhelmed smiley (“distorted face”, above) that we can imagine getting used a lot on social media; there’s also a Bigfoot-inspired one called “hairy creature” (above right).
For the times when your friends or family are scrapping in a digital space – perfect for group chats, then – we have “fight cloud” (above left), which looks like the usual cartoon depiction of a brawl, with everything hidden with smoke and stars.
On the fighting theme, another proposed emoji features two people wrestling (see below). For nature lovers, a new emoji called “orca” would add to the number of marine-themed emojis you’ve got to pick from.
Emoji approval
（Above: Unicode’s sample images for a selection of the emojis proposed for Emoji 17.0, due to approval in September 2025.
Image from: Emojipedia）
（Above: how single skin tone support for the various 👯 People With Bunny Ears and 🤼 People Wrestling emojis appears within Samsung’s One UI 6.1.1.Image from: Emojipedia）
（Above: a selection of different 🧑🤝🧑 People Holding Hands emojis with single and multple skin tone support, shown in the Noto Color Emoji style.Image from: Emojipedia）
（Above: the NSAdaptiveImageGlyph API in iOS 18 allows emoji sticker images to be placed alongside one another as if they were Unicode-recommended emoji characters.Image from: Emojipedia）
Rounding out the Unicode 17.0 proposals we’ve got anapplecore, a trombone, a treasure chest, and a depiction of a landslide – so if you’re about to be hit by falling rocks and don’t have time to type out a full message, you can send an emoji instead.
There are actually 164 new emojis in the proposal, but we’ve covered the main icons – all of the others are skin tone variations on the ones mentioned above (in case you want wrestlers with two different skin tones, for example).
The procedure this year is the same as it is every year: the Unicode Consortium will continue to consult on these graphics and tweak their designs, before final approval on the official new emojis is given in September 2025.
After that, it’s down to Apple,Google, and everyone else (fromMicrosoftto Meta) to do their own takes on these emojis and add them to their various software platforms. In the meantime, you’ll need to rely on a sticker or GIF for “distorted face”.