There are plenty of reasons to look forward to iOS 26 — the debut of Apple’s new Liquid Glass design language, custom backgrounds for text conversations, and CarPlay upgrades — but we are here to give you eight more. This week, the Unicode Consortium unveiled the emoji that will arrive as part of the Unicode 17.0 release this fall. It is a fairly eclectic crew, featuring a treasure chest, an apple core, and even Bigfoot. Sadly, they won’t join your iPhone’s emoji keyboard on day one, but a future iOS 26 update will include all eight.
New emoji coming in iOS 26
First, let’s take a look at the standard versions of all eight emoji characters that are being added to the Unicode Standard in Unicode 17.0:
Here’s a full list of the official names of all the new emoji, in case you’re curious:
- Trombone
- Treasure Chest
- Distorted Face
- Apple Core
- Fight Cloud
- Ballet Dancers
- Hairy Creature
- Orca
Apple always creates its own variations of the emoji before rolling them out to its software. As a result, iPhone owners often have to wait a few months to get their hands on the new characters. The emoji that arrived in Unicode 16.0 didn’t hit iPhones until iOS 18.4 launched in March 2025. That was a full six months after Unicode 16.0 was released.
Thankfully, this is a much more entertaining set than what we got in Unicode 16.0. I’m not sure when or where I’ll use half of them, but I could see “Fight Cloud” becoming a mainstay in group chats with family members. And that “Distorted Face” sure is something.
