There will be no new emoji in 2021 because of the coronavirus – here's why

The annual release of new animated characters will be pushed back by one year

A look at the new emojis coming to phones in September 2020. Courtesy Emojipedia

Just when we thought the pandemic had affected every factor of our lives, another curveball has been thrown at us: there will be no new emoji next year. At all.

Why will there be no new emoji in 2021?

What's the coronavirus got to do with the tiny illustrations we use liberally across social media platforms, you ask?

Well, the Unicode Consortium, the non-profit group behind emoji standards and releases, has had to delay the new version of the Unicode Standard – which underpins all emojis – by six months, from March to September 2021.

That means there won't be enough time for them to develop new emoji.

What usually happens is that any new offerings are approved in January, before they're released on our devices in September. That happens to coincide with the announcement of new versions of iOS and Android operating systems.

But the Unicode Consortium relies heavily on volunteers.

Mark Davis, president of the Consortium, explained in a statement: “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 organisations that depend on the standard to push out our release date. This year we simply can’t commit to the same schedule we’ve adhered to in the past.”

So any new emoji characters that would have appeared on phones next year, will now be released in 2022.

That means the deadline for the submission of new character proposals to the Emoji Subcommittee has also been pushed back and they will be accepting those from June 15 until September 1, 2020.

What about the batch for 2020?

While many of us might mourn the loss of our new, increasingly more sophisticated characters, there is some good news. The emoji proposed for this year, including 117 new additions, will still be released in autumn.

What does that batch encompass? Everything from a beaver to a woolly mammoth and a green pepper to a pair of lungs.

Other notable additions include a worm, a cockroach, a toothbrush, some flatbread, and the Italian gesture of pinched fingers (with different skin-tone options). There are also more gender neutral images, following last year’s batch that focused on inclusivity.

It's a diverse bunch.