Latest iOS 26.4 Beta Adds New Emoji Characters

Monday March 9, 2026 10:31 am PDT by Juli Clover

The fourth iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, and macOS Tahoe 26.4 betas that Apple provided to developers today introduce nine new emoji characters.

Trombone
Treasure Chest
Distorted Face
Hairy Creature (aka Bigfoot or Sasquatch)
Fight Cloud
Orca
Landslide

There are also new skin tone modifiers people wrestling and dancers with bunny ears, as well as a gender neutral option for the ballet dancer emoji.

The emoji characters are part of the Unicode 17 update that the Unicode Consortium previewed in fall 2025. It often takes Apple several months to implement new emoji characters because new art needs to be drawn for each one.

Updated emoji are often added to Apple devices in the spring, typically in .4 software updates.

Apple last added new emoji characters in iOS 18.4, introducing bags under eyes face, fingerprint, leafless tree, root vegetable, harp, shovel, and splatter.

Next year, in iOS 27, we could get a squinting face emoji, a monarch butterfly, left- and right-pointing thumb gestures, a pickle, a lighthouse, a meteor, an eraser, a net with a handle.

Related Roundups: iOS 26, iPadOS 26

Related Forum: iOS 26

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