Emojis have become a staple of electronic communication since their inception in the 1990s and people of all ages and on all continents love to use them. While their number keeps on growing every year due to new releases by the Unicode Consortium, the pictograms are increasingly vying for users’ attention as other forms of visual communication – think gifs, stickers and avatars – are experiencing their heyday.

With myriads of emojis released over the previous years, new batches have become smaller. A recently suggested update that would grow the number of emojis to almost 3,800 next year only contains eight new pictograms – the smallest release in more than 10 years. While 2022 had seen the release of 112 new emojis, that number was just 31 in 2023, while rising again to 118 in 2024 due to emojis that allow users to pick different skin colors or genders (which are counted individually) driving up the size of releases. The number of non-customizable emojis has, however, decreased with each release.

New 2025 icons would include the beetroot, the shovel and the flag of British Channel Island Sark – showing how emoji makers are seemingly running out of ideas (despite taking submissions from the public). The Unicode Consortium has recommended the emojis for release, but the final decision is still outstanding.

🔗 statista.com