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New Emojis Can't Come Soon Enough

by April Siese

Dozens of emojis could be coming to your smartphone or tablet next year. The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit group whose efforts have helped transform computer code into fonts and characters, released a list of 67 emoji candidates on Friday. Contenders range from symbols we've all been waiting for like "avocado" and "shrug" to major surprises like "wilted flower" and "fencer." Eligible members of the United Consortium will cast their votes on which characters will be adopted in May 2016. When will new emojis come out? It won't be much longer.

Though even more symbols could be added to the list of candidates in November, all approved emojis will be released in June 2016 — just one month after gaining approval. Those additional nominees, to be added to the list of candidates next month, would come from the emoji subcommittee. The subcommittee's primary purpose is to draft proposals that further the use and innovation of emojis as well as suggest new characters altogether. They're the ones taking your recommendations and potentially running with them. In total, the Unicode Consortium's membership spans 18 voting members from some of the largest tech companies in the world including Google and Apple, both of whom have one employee each that chair the emoji subcommittee.

Many of the proposed new emojis act as counterparts to characters that have already been released. In addition to a Santa Claus there might finally be a "mother Christmas" or Mrs. Claus, and the dancing woman emoji might get a male partner to boogie with. The 67 proposed emojis span a total of 11 categories, including "food" and "food items."

Culinary arts clearly factor heavily into nominations. A Mediterranean/Middle Eastern counterpart to the long awaited taco emoji might finally join your list of most used characters come June 2016. The "stuffed flatbread," also known as the kebab, gyro, falafel, or shawarma stands as the candidate with one of the longest notes attached to it, which may be an indication of how likely it will be adopted given its diverse usage. Sadly, there is still no proposed burrito emoji.

In addition to new emojis coming to a screen near you in June 2016, the roll-out will be part of the unveiling of Unicode 9. The previous version of Unicode was released on June 17 of this year while Unicode 7 was released on June 16, 2014. This may indicate that new emojis could be coming in the middle of June, though an exact release date has yet to be set.