9 new emoji are drafted for Emoji 18.0, the emoji companion to this year's Unicode 18.0 release. Cracking Face topped Emojipedia's public vote, ahead of Pickle and Meteor. Here's what each candidate depicts, and exactly where it stands before final approval.
Alongside Unicode 18.0's script and symbol additions, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee published a draft slate of 9 new emoji for Emoji 18.0: Cracking Face, Leftwards Thumb Sign, Rightwards Thumb Sign, Monarch Butterfly, Pickle, Lighthouse, Meteor, Eraser, and Net with Handle. The two thumb-sign concepts also carry 10 skin-tone variants between them.
Emojipedia ran a public vote asking which candidates people were most looking forward to using. Cracking Face won on "hundreds and hundreds of votes," ahead of Pickle in second place and Meteor in third — Monarch Butterfly and Lighthouse rounded out the top five. Reaction on tech forums leaned hardest toward the pickle: one widely-shared comment on MacRumors joked "that pickle is going to break the internet." Others voiced fatigue with the pace of emoji expansion generally, questioning whether there will "ever [be] a day in which the Unicode consortium decide that we have too many emojis." Cracking Face and Pickle each have their own dedicated identity page — codepoint history, confusable neighbors, and full backstory — linked below and in the table.
A name alone can be misleading — several of these read as duplicates of emoji that already exist. Here's what each candidate depicts and what it's distinct from.
| Candidate | Depicts | Distinct from | Public vote |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cracking Face | A face mid-expression, cracking under strain or tension | Existing grimacing/strained-face emoji | #1 |
| Pickle | A whole pickle (gherkin) | 🍆 Eggplant, 🥒 Cucumber | #2 |
| Meteor | A streaking meteor / fireball | ☄️ Comet | #3 |
| Monarch Butterfly | A monarch butterfly specifically | 🦋 Butterfly (generic species) | #4 |
| Lighthouse | A coastal lighthouse | — | #5 |
| Leftwards Thumb Sign | A thumb pointing left, for directional gestures | 👍 Thumbs Up, 👎 Thumbs Down | Not in top 5 |
| Rightwards Thumb Sign | A thumb pointing right, for directional gestures | 👍 Thumbs Up, 👎 Thumbs Down | Not in top 5 |
| Eraser | A pencil eraser | — | Not in top 5 |
| Net with Handle | A bug/butterfly net | — | Not in top 5 |
Vote ranking reflects Emojipedia's public poll, not an official Unicode popularity metric — Unicode itself does not rank candidates. All nine remain drafts until Emoji 18.0's final approval, expected alongside Unicode 18.0 in September 2026.
This is the same standard-to-device gap our Unicode 17.0 new emoji rollout tracker already follows platform by platform — the difference here is that none of these nine have even cleared final approval yet, so there's nothing to roll out. Once Emoji 18.0 finalizes alongside the rest of Unicode 18.0, we'll build the same kind of tracker for this set.
Until then, a "why is this showing as a box?" question about any of these nine has a simple answer, covered in our why fonts show as boxes guide: no device can render a character that hasn't been approved into the standard yet. Once they do ship, they'll join the aesthetic combinations already covered in our emoji combos library.
Emoji 18.0 is expected to reach final approval in September 2026, alongside Unicode 18.0 itself. Apple's adoption is speculated for iOS 27, likely late 2026 or early 2027, with other platforms following on their own separate schedules — the current draft remains subject to change during Unicode's review process. We'll publish a platform-by-platform rollout tracker for this set once approval happens, the same way we did for Unicode 17.0's new emoji.
Copy-paste aesthetic emoji combinations across faces, food, nature, and more — no waiting for a new Unicode version required.
Browse Emoji Combos →Draft list and repertoire context per the Unicode Consortium's official beta review announcement and symbl.cc. Public vote results and candidate history per Emojipedia's "Most Anticipated Emoji of 2026" report and Emojipedia's draft emoji list. Community reaction and Apple rollout speculation per MacRumors.