Which organization’s Emoji Subcommittee evaluates emoji proposals?

The Unicode Consortium’s Emoji Subcommittee evaluates emoji proposals.

The Emoji Subcommittee operates within the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization responsible for developing and maintaining the Unicode Standard. It reviews proposals, considers evidence of expected usage and distinctiveness, and helps recommend which concepts should be encoded as emoji. Final decisions are made through Unicode’s established technical processes rather than by a single phone manufacturer.

Submitting an emoji idea does not guarantee approval. Proposals are assessed against selection factors such as compatibility, expected frequency of use, and whether the proposed symbol can be distinguished from existing emoji. The committee also works on emoji properties and sequences, including gender and skin-tone variants. The World Wide Web Consortium and ISO are important standards bodies, but they do not run the emoji proposal process.