Gender-neutral Santa: More than 100 new emojis to get more inclusive

Unicode Consortium, the body for official emojis, has revealed the final list of emojis rolling out in 2020. A total of 117 new emojis are set to make way on your smartphones, with the highlights being gender-neutral Santa, transgender flag, and more gender-inclusive emoji options.

As a part of the Emoji 13.0, these 117 news emojis will be added to the already-available emojis. The new list includes 62 new emojis and 55 new gender and skin-tone variants. “Welcome additions include an emoji showing People Hugging which shows a greater sense of empathy than the previous excited-looking Hugging Face, a pinched finger gesture which is commonly referred to simply as "Italian Hand Gesture,” the blog post read.

Another highlight addition is the transgender flag, which has been co-sponsored by Google and Microsoft. Notably, five of the new emojis were sponsored by Google. The search-engine giant also contributed in other emojis like a person in veil and person in a tuxedo.

Emoji 13.0 also includes a gender-inclusive alternative to Santa Claus and Mrs Claus, named Mx Claus. The body believes that such gender-inclusive additions are a part of the “ongoing effort to make a more consistent set of gender options across the board.”