Apple could be adding a few new emojis to the iPhone with its upcoming iOS update, if a new report is to be believed. As per Emojipedia, the Unicode Consortium has published a list of draft emojis which could come with the iOS 27 update next year.
Reportedly, the Unicode Emoji Standard & Research Working Group has proposed nine new emoji concepts along with 10 additional skin tone modifiers.
The emojis that have been proposed include:
- A smiley face with squinting eyes
- A leftward thumb gesture
- A rightward thumb gesture
- A monarch butterfly
- A pickle
- A lighthouse
- A meteor
- An eraser, for removing pencil markings from paper
- A net with a handle
All these new emojis are currently draft candidates for Unicode Emoji 18.0, after which companies like Apple and Google will design their own versions of the emojis and add them to their upcoming software updates.
However, Apple has so far not implemented Unicode Emoji 17.0, which includes emojis like Shovel, Fingerprint and Beet, among others. These emojis are expected to debut with the company’s iOS 26.4 update around March or April.
If this timeline is followed, the new emojis proposed under Unicode Emoji 18.0 could potentially arrive around March with the iOS 27.4 update. Apple’s next big software update is expected to be unveiled at the company’s WWDC 26 event later in the year, while the final version usually rolls out alongside the latest iPhone launches in September. Meanwhile, the iPhone 17e, which could launch in the next couple of months, is expected to ship with iOS 26 out of the box.
With so many emojis already available on the keyboard, the annual additions no longer feel as significant as they once did. That said, Apple has also given users the option to design their own emojis using the Genmoji feature, which debuted as part of the company’s AI feature suite, dubbed Apple Intelligence, with iOS 18. These features, however, are currently limited to newer iPhone models, starting with the iPhone 15 Pro, that support Apple Intelligence.
As for iOS 27, not much is known so far. However, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman had predicted last year that the update would be a Snow Leopard-style release, taking inspiration from Mac OS X Snow Leopard launched in 2009. Much like that update, the focus is said to be on subtle improvements and quality control rather than a long list of new features.
