Unicode Consortium have announced that due to the coronavirus global outbreak, they have had to delay all of their releases by six months or more – meaning that there will be no new emojis released next year.
The news will come as a shock and a disappointment to texters who rely on emojis to express themselves electronically and of course to tech analysts who look at what new emojis say about the changes in our society.
Significant new additions like non-binary emojis, ethnically diverse emojis and ones which represent different cultures are important as they allow broader representation for so many different people.
At the beginning of this year, we were gifted 117 new emojis which included pinched fingers, gender-neutral emojis, various different food items and more.
A petition was also launched in 2019 to give Baby Yoda his own emoji but he missed out on the 2020 drop.
Perhaps hoping that Baby Yoda will be included in the 2022 release will give us something to look forward to.