Unicode 18 is released today. It is the standard that decides which character a computer knows how to show, and this version adds 13,007 characters at once, bringing the whole repertoire to 172,808.
Three writing systems enter for the first time: Proto-Cuneiform — its numerals only, not its words — Jurchen, in which the language of northern China was written a thousand years ago, and Chinese Small Seal script. New blocks come with them: a Bengali supplement, archaic cuneiform numerals, Jurchen radicals, a musical symbols supplement, and an extension to the arrows.
There is something here for anyone who writes Arabic. Unicode Annex 53, which governs how the marks above and below an Arabic letter are drawn, has been updated, and two marks — U+10EF4 and U+10EF6 — were added to its mark-combining data.
What reaches ordinary readers is nine new emoji: a cracking face, a leftwards thumb, a rightwards thumb, a monarch butterfly, a pickle, a lighthouse, a meteor, an eraser, and a net with a handle.
One distinction worth keeping. Unicode defines the character; the drawing on your screen is made by Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft, and they follow months later. Do not expect the pickle on your phone today.
The public beta review closed on 7 July 2026. The consortium has shipped a major version in the third quarter of every year since Unicode 14.
Photograph: proto-cuneiform tablets carrying numerals, at the Oriental Institute. By Daderot, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: the Unicode Consortium’s own pages for release 18.0.0, for the beta, and the emoji chart.
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