A new batch of emojis are coming to Apple products this spring with the new iOS 26.4 update, including one familiar — and controversial — face emoji.
Eight new emojis were approved by the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that decides which emojis come to your phone, in the summer of 2025, and now they’ll be added to devices and platforms.
The new emojis available with the new update include:
- Ballet Dancers
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud
- Hairy Creature
- Landslide
- Orca
- Trombone
- Treasure Chest
The “distorted face” emoji has caused quite a stir on social media, giving fans déjà vu to Apple’s controversial ad from 2024.
Many have made the connection to the iPad Pro Crush! ad, which received a ton of backlash at the time — and Apple even had to issue a public apology.
The ad depicts the crushing and flattening of things like musical instruments, paints, cameras, books, movies, sculptures — plus a little yellow face that looks just like the new distorted face emoji. The idea was to show that creative work could be done on an iPad as well, but it didn’t land well.
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, told Ad Age at the time.
“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Fans seem to be delighted by the idea of Apple making light of its past mistakes.
“I thought the new distorted emoji in 26.4 looked familiar…” one person wrote on X.
“Distorted Face is about to become the most used emoji overnight,” another declared.
“Close enough, welcome back iPad Pro Crush! ad,” someone quipped.
“Im 95% sure that this emoji actually only exists because of this ad,” a user wrote.
“I think we can all agree this is the best new emoji in iOS 26.4,” one said.
“Distorted face is about to put up legendary numbers in my texts,” another shared.
The new emojis are already available to those who take part in the Apple Beta Software Program, and they’ll be available widely with the iOS 26.4 update.
At the time of reporting, Apple has not announced an official release date for the update, but they did note that it is expected this spring.
Technically, users of Apple products can create their own emojis with Apple Intelligence’s Genmoji feature, but these new additions are part of the cross-platform emoji standard since they have approval from the Unicode Consortium.
Unicode Consortium maintains the Unicode Standard, the universal character encoding system that ensures text and emoji appear consistently across platforms and devices.
So with the update, people will be able to send and receive these new emojis across various platforms.
