Tasleem Gierdien19 November 2024 | 8:22

9 new emojis pending for 2025 (including a bulging smiley face and Bigfoot)

These nine new emojis must still pass an approval process.

9 new emojis pending for 2025 (including a bulging smiley face and Bigfoot)

Clarence Ford speaks to Barbara Friedman (Digital Content Editor for Primedia Plus) about trending online stories. 

(Skip to 4:41 for this one.)

Bless the emoji - always there when words fail us; to add some gees, shade or sass, we love to use them. 

And we'll have some updates and new emojis hitting smartphones in 2025.

Unicode and Emojipedia announced the latest draft emoji list for 2025/2026 which includes a total of 164 updated emojis with nine new ones:

  • distorted face with huge bug-like eyes, flushed cheeks, raised eyebrows
  • hairy creature which appears to have been inspired by Bigfoot 
  • fight cloud
  • ballet dancer
  • apple core
  • an orca (killer whale) 
  • trombone
  • landslide 
  • treasure chest.

Which might look like:

However, it could be a while before we finally get them on our smartphones. 

Emojipedia explained: "Unicode 17.0 and Emoji 17.0 are expected to be approved in September 2025, so we'll have to wait a while before they are officially recommended.

"Between now and September 2025 there will be several further considerations made by Unicode regarding these draft emojis.

"This means that some of these proposed emojis may not be brought forward for final approval."

"People on social media are just commenting about their excitement about the new characters," concludes Friedman.

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the interview.