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By Amanda Greenwood
Associate News Editor
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Apple has previewed a slate of new emojis, including Distorted Face, Ballet Dancer, Orca and Treasure Chest, which are expected to roll out to iPhone users with the public release of its next update, reports say.
Which New Emojis Is Apple Releasing?
The fourth beta of Apple’s iOS 26.4 previews a total of 163 new emoji designs, according to Emojipedia’s first-look report.
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Of these, 13 are new emoji concepts, while the remaining 150 are skin‑tone sequences or design variants for the existing "people wrestling" and "people with bunny ears" emojis.
Emojipedia said the new additions include:
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud
- Ballet Dancer
- Orca (also known as killer whale)
- Hairy Creature (inspired by Bigfoot)
- Trombone
- Landslide
- Treasure Chest
The new emoji additions align with the Unicode Emoji 17.0, the official global standard that defines a new batch of emojis approved by the Unicode Consortium in 2025. This specifies which emojis exist, what they represent, and how they should be encoded across devices and platforms so they will display consistently across iOS, Android, and other platforms as vendors adopt Unicode 17.0.
According to 9to5Mac, while Apple now allows users to generate custom "Genmoji" using Apple Intelligence, its AI platform, Unicode‑approved emojis remain important because they are widely supported across platforms.
Apple typically introduces new emoji sets in its spring software updates, several months after the Unicode Consortium finalizes each year’s list. Emojipedia noted that while technical support for Emoji 17.0 was added in an earlier iOS 26.4 beta, beta 4 is the first version to include Apple's actual emoji artwork, making it the clearest preview yet of what users can expect.
As with previous beta releases, Apple cautioned that emoji designs could still change before the final version of iOS 26.4 is released to the public. Based on past rollout patterns, the update is expected to reach users in late March or early April, though Apple has not announced an official release date.
Once released, the new emojis will automatically appear on iPhones and other Apple devices running iOS 26.4, expanding the platform’s emoji library.
What People Are Saying
The new emoji updates have caused a flurry of reaction on social media.
"I can already tell that "Distorted Face" is going to be my most-used emoji for 2026," wrote one enthused X user. "The treasure chest is a nice touch, too. Apple really keeps us on our toes with these!"
Others don’t seem as impressed. "They're really running out of ideas for what new emojis to add," wrote one X user.
"Apple really added a hairy creature and fight cloud before fixing half the bugs in iOS," wrote another.
Some have taken the news with something of an eye-roll emoji. "Absolutely fantastic news," wrote one user. "One of my current troubles in life has been finding myself in situations where I desperately needed to use a landslide emoji."
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