Don’t expect to see new flags among your phone’s emojis anytime soon. The Unicode Consortium has issued a warning that it will “no longer accept proposals” for flag emoji regardless of category. The consortium said that these emojis can cause a lot of trouble.
The consortium noted that flag additions tended to “emphasize the exclusion of others”. For example, when the emoji team adds regional flags for one country, there is a lack of regional flags for other countries.
Usage also stands out as an important issue. Unicode said flags are “by far” the least used emoji and are not used very often in social media bios.
The consortium is also trying to limit the number of emoji it adds each year, and there’s no great reason to add flags that won’t be widely adopted.
Of course, this does not mean that you will never see a flag again. Flags are automatically suggested for any country with a Unicode region code (i.e. recognized by the United Nations). For now, however, the existing flags appear to remain stable unless there are significant political upheavals.
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