Who decides which emojis get added

The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit responsible for standardizing text across computing platforms, reviews and approves new emoji proposals. Anyone — an individual, a company, or an advocacy group — can submit a formal proposal arguing why a new emoji is needed.

What makes a proposal successful

Strong proposals typically demonstrate that the concept is distinct from existing emoji, has broad and lasting usefulness rather than being a fleeting trend, and fills a genuine gap — representing something widely used in language or culture that currently has no emoji equivalent.

How often new emoji arrive

New emoji sets are typically finalized once a year, after which phone and software makers gradually roll them out in their own updates — meaning a newly approved emoji might not appear on your device for several months after it's officially finalized.

Why some new emoji take a while to show up everywhere

Even after Unicode approves an emoji, each platform has to design its own version and ship it in an operating system update, which is why a brand-new emoji might display as a blank box on a device that hasn't updated yet.