I love orcas, so I always felt a bit sad that while we had whale (🐋) and dolphin (🐬) emojis, there was no orca. Then recently, I came across news that the orca emoji would be introduced in iOS 26.4^[1]. Since emoji aren't an Apple-proprietary thing — they're defined by an international standard called Unicode — I knew this had to be a bigger story. So I dug in.

What I found was the story behind the new orca emoji 🫍: a nine-year campaign by people around the world pushing for its adoption into the Unicode standard.

Basic Info

This emoji was added as a new standalone code point^[2] — not expressed by combining existing emoji, but assigned its own unique code: U+1FACD.

2016–2017: Voices Rise Around the World

The orca emoji story begins well before any official proposal, and in multiple places at once.

In August 2016, Jökull Ingi Þorvaldsson from Iceland started an online petition on Change.org called "Make a Killer Whale Emoji," asking Apple to add an orca emoji^[4]. It gathered 39 signatures.

The following February (2017), Christoph Päper, a Unicode contributor from Germany, opened an issue titled "Orca emoji" on the GitHub Unicode proposals tracker (Crissov/unicode-proposals)^[3]. His point: we have whale (🐋) and dolphin (🐬) emoji — why not orca? The issue included a link to the Change.org petition above.

The voices were there. But voices alone don't create emoji. A formal proposal had to be submitted to the Unicode Consortium.

February 2019: A Third Person Steps Up

In 2019, a Spanish developer named Marcos Del Sol Vives turned these feelings into a formal proposal^[5].

On February 20th, Marcos submitted a proposal for the orca emoji to the Unicode Consortium's Emoji Subcommittee (ESC). He had no connection to Jökull in Iceland or Christoph in Germany — he was a third, independent voice.

Then in September 2020, Lukas Ewert in Germany (also independently) launched another Change.org petition, "Make Orcas an Emoji," collecting 356 signatures^[15].

People around the world, strangers to each other, were all asking for the same thing: an orca emoji.

Marcos's proposal followed the format Unicode requires and made a compelling case^[6].

Search Popularity Comparison

Using Bing search trends, Marcos showed that "orca" had roughly the same search popularity as "elephant." Elephants already have an emoji (🐘) — orcas don't. He quantified the gap.

No Existing Emoji Covers It

Unicode's proposal review includes an "exclusion factors" section, where proposers must argue why their submission shouldn't be excluded. Marcos addressed this directly^[6].

"Can't an existing emoji substitute?" — No. Orcas are commonly called "killer whales" but are scientifically members of the dolphin family, and they look quite different from whales. "Too specialized?" — Pufferfish, crickets, and swans already have emoji, so orca can't be considered too specialized. "Just a passing trend?" — Orcas have existed on Earth for about 11 million years, the proposal notes.

Sample Images

Following Unicode Consortium requirements, Marcos prepared sample images at 18×18 and 72×72 pixels, in both black-and-white and color.

2019–2023: The Gate Is Closed

From here, Marcos's proposal entered a long wait.

The proposal was sent in 2019. But the formal document number L2/24-249 wasn't registered in the Unicode document registry until 2024^[6]. There is no orca-related document anywhere in the 2019 Document Register^[7].

So what happened during those five years? Looking into it, what emerged wasn't simple neglect — it was a deliberate decision on Unicode's part.

The Iron Rule: Once Added, Never Removed

First, some background: Unicode has an absolute rule called the Stability Policy^[17].

Once a character is encoded, it will not be moved or removed.

This means that once a code point is assigned, it stays there as long as humanity uses this standard — forever. Mistakes cannot be undone. This is the foundation of Unicode's caution around adding emoji.

A Strategic Pause — Shifting to Quality Over Quantity

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed back the Unicode 14.0 release by six months^[2]. Then in autumn 2022, the UTC (Unicode Technical Committee) announced that Unicode 15.1 would be a limited release.

ESC chair Jennifer Daniel saw this as an opportunity. Her January 2023 blog post, "Breaking the Cycle"^[18], stated:

emoji categories are about to hit or have hit a level of saturation.

the ESC approves fewer and fewer emoji proposals every year.

The ESC used this pause to tackle longstanding issues: unifying skin tone variations, redesigning family emoji, and improving bidirectional text support. They also decided to temporarily delay the Unicode 17.0 submission window until April 2024^[18].

This wasn't a shutdown from neglect. It was a deliberate pause to redefine the emoji addition process itself.

Marcos's Proposal, Waiting at the Gate

There is no record of the orca emoji being rejected. It doesn't appear on Charlotte Buff's list of rejected emoji proposals^[10], nor in the official Unicode non-approval notice archive^[11].

Marcos's proposal wasn't denied. The gate was simply closed.

2024: The Gate Reopens

On April 2, 2024, submissions reopened with new guidelines^[8]. ESC chair Jennifer Daniel announced the reopening^[9].

When the gate opened, Marcos's proposal — waiting since 2019 — finally received its formal document number, L2/24-249^[6]. Later that year in November, the ESC proposed 164 new emoji candidates to the UTC, including the orca^[12]. Of those 164: 9 new code points and roughly 155 skin tone variations of existing emoji. One of the new code points — the Apple Core — was ultimately withdrawn, and the remaining 163 were approved as Emoji 17.0.

No objections were submitted during the Public Review Issue (PRI #515) for Emoji 17.0 candidates^[16].

September 9, 2025: Official Adoption

As part of Unicode 17.0 / Emoji 17.0, the orca emoji was officially approved^[2]. About nine years from the first online petition; about six and a half years from Marcos's proposal.

Marcos himself hasn't spoken publicly much about the details of this journey. His site orca.pet records the fact of the proposal and the fact of adoption — simply^[5].

The Emoji Approval Process: Open, but Careful

Unicode's emoji approval process is designed to be transparent^[13].

1. Submit a proposal: Anyone can submit an emoji proposal
2. ESC review: The Emoji Subcommittee evaluates proposals and decides whether to recommend them to the UTC
3. UTC deliberation: Discussed by the technical committee; meeting notes are published
4. Draft candidate list: Before final approval, a candidate list is published as a Public Review Issue (PRI), open for public feedback, which is also published^[16]
5. Official release: Released as a new version of the Unicode standard

All proposals are published as PDFs on unicode.org and available for anyone to read^[6].

Given that an assigned code point can never be removed, this caution has good reason. As the orca's case shows, years between proposal and adoption aren't unusual. But that's not negligence — it's a reflection of the weight of defining a standard that will be used, permanently, across the world.

Platform Support Status (as of March 2026)

Unicode defines the code point and meaning, but the visual design is left to each platform (Apple, Google, Samsung, etc.). That's why the same U+1FACD looks different on iPhone versus Android.

Display Test with Noto Color Emoji

This article loads Google's Noto Color Emoji font to test rendering of the new orca emoji.

🫍

Even if your browser or OS doesn't support Unicode 17.0 emoji yet, you should see it rendered via Noto Color Emoji. If you can see a large orca above, it's working.

Summary

• The orca emoji (🫍) was born from independent voices in Iceland, Germany, and Spain — and took nine years to make it into the Unicode standard
• Proposer Marcos Del Sol Vives built a case backed by search data and comparative arguments
• The five-year gap wasn't neglect — it was a deliberate pause for Unicode to confront emoji saturation and redefine the addition process
• Unicode's emoji approval process is transparent, but the Stability Policy demands care

Every emoji we casually use has a story behind it. And those stories are often less about triumph than about patience and a series of coincidences stacking up over time.

References

1. iPhone Mania, "iOS26.4で利用可能になる新絵文字のデザインが明らかに！ (Japanese)" March 10, 2026. https://iphone-mania.jp/ios-600850/
2. The Unicode Blog, "Unicode 17.0 Release Announcement," September 9, 2025. http://blog.unicode.org/2025/09/unicode-170-release-announcement.html
3. Crissov/unicode-proposals, "Issue #103: Orca emoji," GitHub, February 5, 2017. https://github.com/Crissov/unicode-proposals/issues/103
4. Jökull Ingi Þorvaldsson, "Make a Killer Whale Emoji," Change.org, August 2016. https://www.change.org/p/apple-make-a-killer-whale-emoji-in-apple-s-emoji-board
5. Marcos Del Sol Vives, "Orca emoji," orca.pet. https://orca.pet/emoji/
6. Marcos Del Sol Vives, "Proposal for Orca Emoji," Unicode Document L2/24-249, 2024. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2024/24249-orca-emoji.pdf
7. The Unicode Consortium, "UTC Document Register — 2019." https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/Register-2019.html
8. The Unicode Blog, "Emoji Submissions Intake Process Re-opening," March 2024. http://blog.unicode.org/2024/03/emoji-submissions-intake-process-re.html
9. Jennifer Daniel, "Emoji submissions re-opening," Substack. https://jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/emoji-submissions-re-opening-april
10. Charlotte Buff, "Rejected Emoji Proposals." https://charlottebuff.com/unicode/misc/rejected-emoji-proposals/
11. The Unicode Consortium, "Archive of Notices of Non-Approval." https://www.unicode.org/alloc/nonapprovals.html
12. Emojipedia Blog, "What's New In Unicode 17.0." https://blog.emojipedia.org/whats-new-in-unicode-17-0/
13. The Unicode Consortium, "Submitting Emoji Proposals." https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html
14. Emojipedia Blog, "Google Debuts Emoji 17.0 Support." https://blog.emojipedia.org/google-debuts-emoji-17-0-support/
15. Lukas Ewert, "Make Orcas an Emoji," Change.org, September 2020. https://www.change.org/p/apple-make-orcas-an-emoji
16. The Unicode Consortium, "PRI #515: Unicode Emoji 17.0 Alpha Repertoire." https://www.unicode.org/review/pri515/
17. The Unicode Consortium, "Unicode Character Encoding Stability Policies." https://www.unicode.org/policies/stability_policy.html
18. Jennifer Daniel, "Breaking the Cycle," The Unicode Blog, March 8, 2024 (originally published January 17, 2023). http://blog.unicode.org/2024/03/breaking-cycle.html

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This article was originally published in Japanese at archelon-inc.jp.