The distorted face was voted the most anticipated new emoji, but it’s okay to be wrong.
Zachary McAuliffe Editor
Zach began writing for CNET in November 2021 after writing for five years for a broadcast news station in his hometown of Cincinnati. You can usually find him reading and drinking coffee or watching a TV series with his wife and their dog.
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If you are a fan of emoticonprepare to face a handful of killers new emoji coming to your iPhone in the coming weeks, featuring objectively the best new emoji: an orca. Apple released the fourth iOS 26.4 beta to developers on Monday, and this brings eight new emoji to the iPhone of developers.
The eight new emoji are:
- Orca
- Landslide
- Trombone
- Fight the cloud
- Distorted face
- Ballet dancers
- Treasure Chest
- Hairy creature (Sasquatch)
The Unicode Consortium is responsible for creating emoji and approved these new emoji in September as part of Unicode 17.0.
“These new emoji have long-standing symbolic meanings, are visually distinctive, and contain a multitude of expressions,” the Unicode Consortium wrote in July 2025.
Although developers can now access these emoji with iOS 26.4 dev beta 4, you will likely be able to access these emoji in the coming weeks when Apple releases the update to the general public. Apple introduced the face with bags under the eyes () emoji and others on iPhones upon release iOS 18.4 on March 31, 2025.
While we don’t know when Apple will release iOS 26.4 to the general public, I would expect the company to release the update around late March or early April.
Until then, you can learn more about what could be included in iOS 26.4recently proposed emoji you might see on your device in the future and how to decipher each emoji.
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