Unicode 18.0 is out, with 13,007 new characters.
A few of my favorite additions:
• 323 Proto-Cuneiform numerical signs. People were pressing these into clay tablets in Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago. Now they have Unicode code points.
• 11,328 Small Seal characters. This historical Chinese script accounts for roughly 87% of the entire release.
• 72 historical mathematical symbols and 73 musical symbols. Old manuscripts and musical notation need digital representation too.
• Nine new emoji, including a pickle, a lighthouse, and a cracking face.
There’s something lovely about a text standard making room for both ancient accounting and whatever we’re going to do with a pickle emoji.
Disclosure: I’m the founder of SYMBL.cc. We’ve already updated our character table for Unicode 18.0, so you can browse the new additions there.