The draft list of emoji recommendations for Emoji 18.0 may be revised this week, with one proposed emoji removed and another added in its place. The Unicode Emoji Standard & Research Working Group (ESR) is recommending that Face With Squinting Eyes be replaced by a Cracking Face emoji.
In the ESR report from late last year, a Face With Squinting Eyes emoji was included in the initial draft list of proposed additions for Emoji 18.0:
Above: the initial recommendation for the Face With Squinting Eyes emoji made in late 2025, as per the ESR Report for UTC #185 (2025Q4).
However, the ESR report due to be presented this week recommends a revision to that list, stating:
Nine new characters were recommended and approved as of UTC #185. We have since determined that one of these characters requires additional scrutiny before encoding and now recommend replacing it by changing the name of U+1FAEB FACE WITH SQUINTING EYES to CRACKING FACE.Above: the proposed new Cracking Face emoji, as per the ESR Report for UTC #186 (26Q1) .
You can read the proposal for the Cracking Face emoji here.
This change would make our 2026/2027 draft list of recommendations look as follows:
Above: Unicode’s updated sample images for a selection of the emojis proposed for Emoji 18.0, due to approval in September 2026.
If approved, this would mark the second consecutive year in which a draft emoji recommendation has been altered during the public review phase of the emoji creation process.
In 2024, the Apple Core emoji was removed from the Emoji 17.0 draft before final approval in September 2025 and later excluded again from the Emoji 18.0 draft list, effectively halting its progress toward encoding.
Above: emojis, including new additions in Unicode 17.0, as they previously appeared within Unicode’s draft documentation. Note the inclusion of the since-removed Apple Core.
While uncommon in recent years, such changes to the draft list of emoji recommendations have always been a possibility during the review process. As we ourselves stated earlier this year:
Between now and September 2026, Unicode will conduct several additional reviews of these draft emoji candidates, meaning that some proposals may not advance to final approval… There is also a chance, albeit a small one, that additional emojis could be added to the draft candidate list between now and approval of the final Emoji 18.0 list expected in September 2026.
Any change to the draft emoji list must be approved by Unicode’s primary decision-making body, the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC), which is due to meet this week.
👥 Who Will Decide On This Change?
The UTC is the primary decision-making body when it comes to the development and maintenance of the Unicode Standard, the universal character encoding system that our digital devices use to standardize how they can render different letters, numbers, glyphs, and other symbols.
This week will be the first meeting of the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) for 2026. The UTC meets quarterly, covering a variety of topics relevant to furthering the Unicode Standard, often over several days.
One topic that is tabled for each of these meetings is a discussion of the latest report from the Unicode Emoji Standard & Research Working Group (the ESR; also previously known as the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee).
These reports can, of course, include recommending new emojis for the next iteration of the Unicode Standard as well as subsequent changes to the ESR’s list of recommendations, as outlined above.
The reports can also include audits of current emoji design divergences, as well as usage research summaries and procedural reviews.
For example, in the same report recommending Cracking Face, the ESR also proposed shifting the emoji proposal submission window:
We are recommending changing the emoji proposal intake from an April to July window to a February to May window. This would ensure emoji recommendations can be made in the Q3 UTC meeting and finalized in the Q4 UTC meeting. No changes are planned for 2026. The earliest this change would happen is in 2027.
If this operations-focused recommendation from the ESR is accepted by the UTC this week, it would mean that the 2028/2029 draft list of new emojis would be first made public in July 2027, near World Emoji Day (July 17 every year).
It would also mean that the 2028/2029 draft list of emojis would be known prior to the final approval of the 2027/2028 draft list, which would be expected to occur in September 2027.
📝 Can I Propose an Emoji?
Yes: anyone can submit a proposal for a new emoji. Doing so is free, and detailed guidance on how to do so is available on the Unicode Consortium website.
While the proposal system is open to all, successful emoji submissions must meet a wide range of clearly defined criteria.
These criteria include demonstrating expected frequency of use, broad cultural relevance, distinctiveness from existing emojis, and compatibility with existing emoji concepts and naming conventions.
Proposals are reviewed in detail and compared against hundreds of others each cycle, meaning that only a small percentage are ultimately recommended for encoding.
The next window during which Unicode will be accepting proposals begins on April 2, 2026.
📋 Supporting Unicode
The Unicode Consortium is a small non-profit organization that is funded primarily through membership fees and donations.
One means through which Unicode obtains additional funding is their Adopt A Character program, through which either a person or an organization can be listed as a sponsor of an emoji or, indeed, any other character within Unicode.
In fact, more than 151,700 characters can be adopted.
Adopting a character helps the non-profit Unicode Consortium in its goal to support the world’s languages and, of course, continue to encode new emojis within the Unicode Standard.
