There might not be new emojis in 2021: We owe that to Coronavirus

Due to COVID-19, the Unicode Consortium has decided to postpone the release of version 14.0 of the Unicode Standard. The UC released has shifted the date from March to September of 2021. This delay will also impact specifications and data, such as new emojis.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Mark Davis, President of the Consortium released his statement. “Under the current circumstances, we’ve heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment. We have decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organizations that depend on the standard to push out our release date.” He said, “This year we simply can’t commit to the same schedule we’ve adhered to in the past.”

🗓Due to COVID-19, the @Unicode Consortium has decided to postpone the release of version 14.0 of the Unicode Standard by 6 months https://t.co/llADJpBJkk pic.twitter.com/81uBRrB9LX

— Emojipedia 📙 (@Emojipedia) April 8, 2020

Emoji historian and head of Emojipedia Jeremy Burge tweeted that while no new emoji had officially been slated for 14.0, provisional candidates included crow, cooking pot and finger heart. On the plus side, the consortium is giving the public extra time to submit new emoji ideas to Unicode 14.0. The deadline to get proposals has been extended from June to September 2020.

"The Emoji Subcommittee will be accepting new emoji character proposals for Emoji 14.0 from June 15, 2020, until September 1, 2020. Any new emoji characters incorporated into Emoji 14.0 would appear on phones and other devices in 2022," said the blog.

However, the consortium said it is “considering” whether it is possible to release emoji sequences instead. These are small variants of the 13.0 pack rather than completely new ones.

🤏 Possible there will be a minor emoji release for 2021, comprised only of emoji sequences: Emoji 13.1

📜 Both Emoji 4.0 (2016) & Emoji 12.1 (2019) were sequence-only updates, but these were in years that also had a major update https://t.co/bKp6SuBJg1 https://t.co/hemyShJ1TI

— Jeremy Burge (@jeremyburge) April 8, 2020

A total of 117 new emoji will be coming to phones later this year as part of Unicode's 13.0 standard. They already gained approval in January.