In line with World Emoji Day, new inclusive emojis, including a pregnant guy, may be included in future software upgrades, according to Emojipedia.

“A saluting face, biting lip, coral and a low battery are among the emojis up for approval later in the year. These are currently draft candidates for the next emoji release versioned Emoji 14.0,” according to Emojipedia in a blog post released on July 15.

“Other inclusions on the draft list are consistent gender options for pregnancy and royalty, ‘heart hands’, and the ability to choose from 15 different handshake combinations,” they added.

In 2020, the Unicode Consortium announced version 14.0 would be delayed due to the pandemic. “Under the current circumstances, we’ve heard that our contributors have a lot on their plates at the moment and decided it was in the best interests of our volunteers and the organizations that depend on the standard to push out our release date,” Mark Davis, president of the consortium, said in a statement.

On World Emoji Day, July 17, they revealed the winners of the World Emoji Award 2021 on Twitter. The Most Popular New Emoji was voted as the Heart on Fire Emoji, while the Most Anticipated Emoji was Melting Face. The syringe is the most popular Emoji in 2021, while Loudly Crying Face was picked as the Lifetime Achievement Emoji.

That's a wrap on the #WorldEmojiAwards ? for another year! For 2021 we awarded:

? Most Popular New Emoji
? Most Anticipated Emoji
? Most 2021 Emoji
? Lifetime Achievement

Let's recap the results… pic.twitter.com/LbqHECZmql

— World Emoji Awards ??? (@EmojiAwards) July 18, 2021

Adobe also released their Global Emoji Trend Report 2021, in which they have revealed that “laugh out loud” is the world’s most popular emoji, followed by the “thumbs up” and “red heart” emojis.

The draft emoji list is subject to change until September 2021, when it will be finalized.

Some companies may offer early emoji compatibility later this year after the new emojis are completed, but the majority of upgrades will happen in early 2022.

Source: https://blog.emojipedia.org/new-emojis-in-2021-2022/, https://home.unicode.org/unicode-14-0-delayed-for-6-months/, https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/07/15/global-emoji-trend-report-2021.html#gs.8297kf