Friday, September 18, 2020

Emoji 13.1 — Now final, to be widely available in 2021

Emoji 13.1 is now final with 217 new emoji sequences! Of these, 210 are skin tone variants; the other seven new emoji are:

Most of the skin tone variants are for the multi-person emoji groupings couples with heart and couples kissing.
This minor release was created to add new emoji before 2022. The Unicode Consortium is a volunteer organization and we would be completely without new emoji in 2021 if it weren’t for the dedication of many volunteers who make this possible. Thank you! ✨

The new emoji are listed in Emoji Recently Added v13.1. The images provided on that page are just samples: vendors for mobile phones, PCs, and web platforms create their own images.

New emoji in this release should begin appearing on devices in the coming months. These new emoji will also be available for adoption. Donations for adoptions help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

For implementers:
  1. There are no new atomic characters. Instead, each emoji is a sequence of existing characters.
  2. UTS #51 and associated data files have been updated for Emoji 13.1.
  3. CLDR v38 alpha has also been updated for Emoji 13.1. This includes names, search keywords, and sort orderings for the new emoji, available for over 80 languages. It is scheduled for release at the end of October.

Over 140,000 characters are available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages

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