There will be no new emojis released in 2021. Blame the coronavirus.
The Unicode Consortium, which is the group that handles emoji releases, said Thursday that it will accept emoji character proposals for Emoji 14.0 from June 15 to Sept. 1, 2020. Any new emojis added to Emoji 14.0 will appear in 2022.
It normally takes about six months.
This will not affect the upcoming release of the release of emojis announced in March. That has 55 emojis including a black cat, beaver, transgender flag, nursing mom and a ninja. Those should be available this fall.
The Unicode Consortium also said it is delaying the release of Unicode Standard 14.0 due to COVID-19.
“Under the current circumstances we’ve heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment and decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organizations that depend on the standard to push out our release date,” Unicode Consortium President Mark Davis said in a blog post. “This year we simply can’t commit to the same schedule we’ve adhered to in the past.”
Friday is World Emoji Day.
