Announcing The Unicode® Standard, Version 11.0

Version 11.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available, both the core specification and data files. Version 11.0 adds 684 characters, for a total of 137,374 characters. These additions include seven new scripts, for a total of 146 scripts, as well as 145 new emoji.

The new scripts and characters in Version 11.0 add support for lesser-used languages and unique written requirements worldwide, including:

• Georgian Mtavruli capital letters, newly added to support modern casing practices
• Hanifi Rohingya, used to write the modern Rohingya language in Southeast Asia
• Medefaidrin, used for modern liturgical purposes in Africa
• Mazahua, a Mesoamerican language recognized by law in Mexico
• Mayan numerals used in printed materials in Central America
• Historic Sanskrit, Gurmukhi, and the Buryats
• Five urgently needed CJK unified ideographs: three for chemical names and two for Japan's government administration

Popular symbol additions:

• Copyleft symbol
• Half stars for rating systems
• More astrological symbols
• Xiangqi Chinese chess symbols
• New emoji characters including:

For the full list of emoji characters, see emoji additions for Unicode 11.0, and Emoji Counts. For a detailed description of support for emoji characters by the Unicode Standard, see UTS #51, Unicode Emoji. Version 11.0 also includes other improvements for emoji handling:

• a mechanism to request the glyph direction for emoji
• descriptions of the four new emoji hair components
• descriptions of gender neutral emoji
• simplified statements of emoji-related rules for grapheme cluster boundaries and for word boundaries.

Three other important Unicode specifications have been updated for Version 11.0:

• UTS #10, Unicode Collation Algorithm — sorting Unicode text
• UTS #39, Unicode Security Mechanisms — reducing Unicode spoofing
• UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing — compatible processing of non-ASCII URLs

Unicode 11.0 includes a number of changes. Some of the Unicode Standard Annexes have modifications, often in coordination with changes to character properties. In particular, there are changes to:

• UAX #14, Unicode Linebreaking Algorithm
• UAX #29, Unicode Text Segmentation
• UAX #31, Unicode Identifier and Pattern Syntax

The Unicode Standard is the foundation for all modern software and communications around the world, including all modern operating systems, browsers, laptops, and smart phones—plus the Internet and Web (URLs, HTML, XML, CSS, JSON, etc.). The Unicode Standard, its associated standards, and data form the foundation for CLDR and ICU releases.

Adopt-a-Character

All the new characters including the new emoji are now available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

Unicode Emoji 11.0 characters now final for 2018

Emoji 11.0 data has been released, with 157 new emoji such as:

hot face	woozy face
woman, red haired: light skin tone	man, curly haired: dark skin tone
woman superhero	softball
mosquito	pirate flag
flats	lobster

The new Emoji 11.0 set is fixed and final, and includes the data needed for vendors to begin working on their emoji fonts and code ahead of the release of Unicode 11.0, scheduled for June 2018. The new emoji typically start showing up on mobile phones in August or September.

The man and woman emoji can now have various hair styles (red-haired, curly-haired, white-haired, and bald), and the new superhero and supervillain support genders and skin tones. The new leg and foot also support skin tones.

The new emoji are listed in Emoji Recently Added v11.0, with sample images. These images are just samples: vendors for mobile phones, PCs, and web platforms will typically use images that fit their overall emoji designs. In particular, the Emoji Ordering v11.0 chart shows how the new emoji sort compared to the others, with new emoji marked with rounded-rectangles. The other Emoji Charts for Version 11.0 have been updated to show the emoji.

The version number for this release of Unicode emoji is jumping from the previously-released Emoji 5.0 to Emoji 11.0 (instead of 6.0) — starting with this release, the version number for emoji is synchronized with the corresponding version number of the Unicode Standard.

To be considered for emoji 12.0, new emoji proposals must be submitted before the end of March 2018. This schedule is to align with the 2019 release of the Unicode Standard.

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The 157 new emoji will soon be available for adoption to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.