Unicode Proposals

This repository collects (draft) proposals for new emojis and other Unicode characters. The collection also contains templates, related sources, references and other helpful material related to the Unicode standard.

Emoji

Also see Charlotte Buff’s site for failed but published emoji proposals.

A new emoji can be made in three different ways:

If rather original, it may require the assignment of an individual codepoint, usually in the upper areas of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), U+1F9xy. This usually happens once a year with a new point release of the Unicode Technical Standard. The deadline for proposals for Unicode 12.0 to be released in early 2019 is set to 15 March 2018.
An existing character can be repurposed by adding the Emoji property once and using Variation Selector 16 ‘VS-16’ U+FE0F henceafter. These are not documented ditrectly in the Unicode Standard (TUS), but in Unicode Technical Standard #51 (UTS#51) The deadline for such proposals is usually later than the one for new codepoints. The release date of a new major version of UTS#51 is always synchronized with TUS, but there may be additional ones.
There are several types of canonic character sequences which can be registered. The most import type are multiple emojis forced to form a ligature by a Zero-Width Joiner (ZWJ) U+200D between components. Country flags use pairs of Regional Indicator Symbols and are added automatically if ISO 3166-1 changes, whereas their subdivisions are encoded with Tag Characters on a Waving Black Flag base using ISO 3166-2 codes. Additional Emoji Tag Sequences may be proposed.

Contribution

You can contribute to an existing issue (e.g. for animals, flags, emoticons or food) or raise a new one to wish for additional proposals. The thing most direly needed in emoji proposals are example graphics that ideally can be used freely (even commercially) and without strong attribution requirements.

Your help is always appreciated, but – for emojis – please read about the Unicode Proposal Process first. (Emojione has published a synopsis that’s probably easier and quicker to read.)

You could also take your ideas and contributions to Emoji Nation who have helped to push through the majority of recent successful emoji proposals.

Drafted and Submitted Proposals

See branches and pull requests for more work-in-progress items.

Older white papers

Similar discussions are now found in the repository issues on Github.