The Unicode 9.0 core specification is now available in paperback book form with a new, original cover design. This edition consists of a pair of modestly priced print-on-demand volumes containing the complete text of the core specification of Version 9.0 of the Unicode Standard.

Each of the two volumes is a compact 6×9 inch US trade paperback size. The two volumes may be purchased separately or together, although they are intended as a set. The cost for the pair is US $16.75, plus postage and applicable taxes. Please visit the description page to order.

Note that these volumes do not include the Version 9.0 code charts, nor do they include the Version 9.0 Standard Annexes and Unicode Character Database, which are freely available on the Unicode website.

Purchase The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0 - Core Specification

The Unicode Consortium is pleased to announce the new design selected for the cover of the forthcoming print-on-demand publication of The Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. This is the first time the Unicode Consortium issued an open call for artists and designers to submit cover design proposals. All submitted designs were reviewed by an independent panel.


The selected artwork is an original design by Gabee Ayres, a student and teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania with a background in fine arts, design and logic. Of her design, Ms. Ayres says, “I wanted to create a cover that reflected the technology inherent in Unicode without looking impassive or unwelcoming.”

Two runner-up designs by Jiachen Hu and Laura von Husen were also selected. Jiachen Hu is a computer science student at the University of California, Berkeley. Laura von Husen earned a Master’s degree in graphic design and illustration, and currently lives in Hamburg, Germany.

Jiachen Hu:

Laura von Husen:

The core specification for Version 9.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available, containing significant updates and improvements, including descriptions for six new scripts, 72 new emoji characters, and 19 symbols for the new 4K TV standard.

In Version 9.0, the standard added precisely 7,500 characters. This version continues the Unicode Consortium’s firm commitment to support the full diversity of languages around the world by adding support for lesser-used writing systems of additional languages, including Osage, Nepal Bhasa, Fulani, and the Bravanese dialect of Swahili. Characters are also added to support the Warsh orthography for Arabic in West Africa and for the historic Tangut script of China.

All other components of Unicode 9.0 were released on June 21, 2016 to allow vendors to update their implementations of Unicode 9.0 as early as possible. Those components include the Unicode Standard Annexes, code charts, and the Unicode Character Database. The publication of the core specification completes the definitive documentation of the Unicode Standard, Version 9.0. A print-on-demand (POD) version for Unicode 9.0 is planned for later publication, with new cover art created by Gabee Ayres.

For more information, see Unicode 9.0.0.

Version 9.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available. Version 9.0 adds exactly 7,500 characters, for a total of 128,172 characters. These additions include six new scripts and 72 new emoji characters.

The new scripts and characters in Version 9.0 add support for lesser-used languages worldwide, including:

• Osage, a Native American language
• Nepal Bhasa, a language of Nepal
• Fulani and other African languages
• The Bravanese dialect of Swahili, used in Somalia
• The Warsh orthography for Arabic, used in North and West Africa
• Tangut, a major historic script of China

Important symbol additions include:

• 19 symbols for the new 4K TV standard
• 72 emoji characters such as the following

Smileys & people		ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING
		FACE PALM
Hand gestures		HAND WITH INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGERS CROSSED
Animals		BUTTERFLY
Food		AVOCADO
		SHALLOW PAN OF FOOD
Drink		CLINKING GLASSES
Travel		MOTOR SCOOTER
Sports		PERSON DOING CARTWHEEL

For the full list, see emoji additions for Unicode 9.0. For a detailed description of support for emoji characters by the Unicode Standard, see UTR #51, Unicode Emoji.

Three other important Unicode specifications have been updated for Version 9.0:

• UTS #10, Unicode Collation Algorithm — sorting Unicode text
• UTS #39, Unicode Security Mechanisms — reducing Unicode spoofing
• UTS #46, Unicode IDNA Compatibility Processing — compatible processing of non-ASCII URLs

Some of the changes in Version 9.0 and associated Unicode technical standards and reports may require modifications in implementations. For more information, see Unicode 9.0 Migration and the migration sections of UTS #10, UTS #39, UTS #46, and UTR #51. For full details on Version 9.0, see http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode9.0.0/

The Unicode Consortium’s Adopt-a-Character program is an opportunity to permanently adopt and dedicate an emoji, letter or any symbol on the keyboard. The new Unicode 9.0 emoji are now available for adoption, including (shrug), (face palm),(crossed fingers), (bacon), and 68 others. The funds help the consortium’s work of supporting the world’s languages in digital form.

We welcome sponsors of the new characters to join existing sponsors like Elastic in helping to further the work of the Unicode Consortium.

The emoji charts have also been updated with these new emoji, and with new images from Messenger, EmojiOne, EmojiXpress, and others. Soon after Unicode 9.0 is released, the other new Unicode 9.0 characters will be available for adoption.

Every programmer knows about Unicode. Most other people have no idea what it is, even though they use Unicode every day. Every character you type on your smartphone or laptop — and every character you read — is defined by the Unicode Consortium.

The awareness of the Unicode Consortium has grown recently, with the spread of emoji. But from the news articles, it’s easy to get the impression that emoji is the only thing we do. In reality, there are over 120,000 characters defined, and as you see below, only a small fraction of them are emoji.


For example, this June we’ll be adding 7,500 characters — and of those new characters, fewer than 1% of them are emoji. The majority of the characters are from 6 new scripts: some in modern use, and some historic.

CLDR is the other main project for the Unicode Consortium. It provides the building blocks for supporting a variety of different languages. We’ve just released CLDR v29, and are about to start data submission for v30. Especially if you are a native speaker of a “digitally disadvantaged” language, we encourage you to join the other contributors to CLDR to help with this effort.

The Unicode Consortium is a volunteer-driven 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Some people may work on emoji, while others work on ancient scripts, or Chinese ideographs. Others work on the language support in CLDR, or other projects.

The Unicode Consortium is inviting artists and designers to submit cover design proposals for Version 9.0 of The Unicode Standard. This is the first time Unicode is extending this invitation.

The cover design would appear on the Unicode Standard 9.0 web page, in the print-on-demand publication, and in associated promotional literature on the Unicode website. The chosen artist will receive full credit in the colophon of the publication, and wherever else the design appears, and receive $700. The two runner-up artists will receive $150 apiece.

Everyone in the world uses Unicode every time they read or type any character on any laptop, tablet, or smart phone. This is the opportunity to be on the cover of the standard for those characters.

Please see the announcement web page for requirements and more details.

Mountain View, CA, USA – The Unicode® Consortium today announced the start of the beta review for the forthcoming Unicode 9.0.0, which is scheduled for release in June, 2016. All beta feedback must be submitted by May 2, 2016.

Unicode is the foundation for all modern software and communications around the world, including all modern operating systems, browsers, laptops, and smart phones – plus the Internet and Web (URLs, HTML, XML, CSS, JSON, etc.). Thus it is important to ensure a smooth transition to each new version of the Unicode Standard.

Unicode 9.0.0 comprises several additions and changes which require careful migration in implementations. These include asymmetric case mappings, numerous variation sequences, new fractional numeric values, and changes to property values, especially East_Asian_Width values. The line breaking and text segmentation algorithms handle character sequences that represent emoji as indivisible units via the addition of new property values and rules. Implementers need to modify code and check assumptions for all affected processes to support these additions and changes.

The new character repertoire includes 74 emoji symbols, 19 symbols used in Japanese TV broadcasting, and multiple additions to existing scripts. There are six new scripts, of which three are in modern use (Adlam, Osage, and Newa) and three are historic (Bhaiksuki, Marchen, and Tangut). Adlam and Osage have case pairs and require data updates for casing functions. Tangut is a large ideographic script whose addition incurred changes to the Unicode Collation Algorithm (used as the basis for sorting text in all languages).

Please review the documentation, adjust your code, test the data files, and report errors and other issues to the Unicode Consortium by May 2, 2016. Feedback instructions are on the beta page.

See http://unicode.org/versions/beta-9.0.0.html for more information about testing the 9.0.0 beta.

See http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode9.0.0/ for the current draft summary of Unicode 9.0.0.

About the Unicode Consortium

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard and related globalization standards. The membership of the consortium represents a broad spectrum of corporations and organizations, many in the computer and information processing industry. Members include: Adobe, Apple, Emoji One, EmojiXpress, Facebook, Google, Government of Bangladesh, Government of India, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, Sultanate of Oman MARA, Oracle, SAP, Tamil Virtual University, The University of California (Berkeley), Yahoo!, plus well over a hundred Associate, Liaison, and Individual members. For more information, please contact the Unicode Consortium http://www.unicode.org/contacts.html.

The Unicode Consortium has accepted 7 new emoji characters as candidates for Unicode 9.0, scheduled for release in mid-2016. This makes a total of 74 emoji candidates. These join thousands of non-emoji candidate characters for Unicode 9.0.

At this point, the characters for Unicode 9.0 are candidates—not yet finalized—so some may be removed from the candidate list, and others may be added. Names, images, and code points may also change, so these candidates are not yet ready for use in production systems. The additions of emoji characters to Unicode are based on the emoji selection factors. Other prospective emoji characters are still being assessed and could be approved as candidates in the future.

There is also a new version of UTR #51, Unicode Emoji, which provides design guidelines and data for improving emoji interoperability across platforms, and gives background information about emoji symbols. Aside from general clarifications in the text, several annexes are moved to separate pages to allow for faster updates, the level distinction among emoji is removed, and certain characters no longer allow for emoji modifiers for skin-tone. These changes are also reflected in new machine-readable emoji data files for implementations.

The emoji charts have also been updated. These include a full listing of emoji characters (with images from various vendors), the default ordering of emoji, annotations, when various emoji were added to Unicode, and more.

The Unicode Consortium has accepted 38 emoji characters as candidates for Unicode 9.0, scheduled for release in mid-2016. At this point, these emoji are candidates—not yet finalized—so some may be removed from the candidate list, and others may be added. Names, images, and code points may also change, so these candidates are not yet ready for use in production systems.

These emoji have been accepted as candidates for Unicode 9.0 for a variety of reasons. They may be needed for compatibility with emoji characters in existing systems. For example, the FACE WITH COWBOY HAT was accepted for compatibility with the emoji used in Yahoo Messenger. Some are chosen based on expected high frequency of use or because they are highly popular requests from online communities. Others fill gaps in the existing set of Unicode emoji, as by completing a gender pair.

Many other prospective emoji characters are still being assessed and could be approved in the future. For more information about selection criteria, see Selection Factors in UTR #51, Unicode Emoji.

The images shown below are draft black and white versions for the Unicode 9.0 charts. Once the emoji candidates have been finalized, vendors that support emoji will provide colorful and better-designed displays for each of these. For example, the emoji for shrug might appear as shown on the right.

Some of these new emoji would take the new emoji modifiers as discussed in Diversity. Some emoji may also get annotations to help guide design and usage. For example, the cucumber emoji could also be used to represent a pickle.