Is Sark set to join the emoji fun?

Thursday 22 February 2024

Could a Sark emoji be added to our keyboards? The island has recently got one step closer to getting its own flag icon.

The Sark flag has been given the green light by the Unicode Consortium – a major step in getting the emoji approved for keyboards.

Sark recently received its own two-letter country code, CQ, which made it possible to put forward an emoji for the island's flag.

As a result, Unicode's Emoji Subcommittee recommended it to be added to the next batch of emojis which will come in when Unicode 16.0 is released.

This update should be released in September 2024.

Pictured: Both Jersey and Guernsey already have emoji flags. 

The other emojis that have been approved for the September release cover a range of circumstances: a face with bags under the eyes, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a radish, a harp, a shovel, and a splatter of colour.

All of these designs are now open for early review before designs, codes, and names are locked down.

How are emojis approved?

Ideas and designs for emojis have a long road ahead of them between their inception and the moment they are downloaded to phones and apps.

Anyone can put forward an idea for a new emoji to the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that claims to work towards making all languages and alphabets usable on all phones and computers by creating and controlling the Unicode Standard.

This provides a number for each character used in text – including a variety of alphabets as well as emojis.

Unicode's Technical Committee meets four times a year, when it makes any decisions on new emojis. The ones they approve have to be visually distinct, well used, and new.

After being approved by Unicode, emojis go to an online public review, and only after a lengthy approval and review process can they then be added to our keyboards.