New emoji for 2020: bubble tea, gender-neutral Santa and Italian pinched fingers among many to be added to phone lexicon

The Unicode Consortium has approved the chart for Emoji 13.0 for 2020, to be released by various platforms soon

Gender-neutral people in tuxedos and veils, transgender icons, and ‘Mx. Santa’ reflect changing gender-specific roles in society

Reading Time:3 minutes

This year’s upcoming emoji to be added to smartphones will include bubble tea, gender-neutral people in tuxedos and veils, and the Italian hand gesture. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:00pm, 6 Feb 2020Updated: 6:00pm, 6 Feb 2020

Emoji, the newest universal language, is becoming gender-inclusive and open to various cultures. The last two decades have seen the rise of this new type of global language. Yet, there were stereotypical issues which are slowly changing now.

Curious to know what are all the new emoji of 2020? Read on.

Unicode Consortium has approved the chart for Emoji 13.0 for 2020, to be released by various platforms soon.

This inclusivity changing the gender-specific roles in society will help parents develop gender acceptability among children. Imagine kids growing up seeing emoji of a man bottle-feeding a baby or a woman wearing a tuxedo or a very gender-neutral Santa.

Emoji of a person feeding a baby. Photo: Emojipedia

What are all the new emojis depicting?

When the whole world shows awareness about diversity, it is no surprise that emoji will do so too. When Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita designed the first emoji, he had no idea that it would turn into a big industry one day. What started as a few characters to depict weather, traffic, technology and phases of the moon has grown into a complete visual dialect.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x