The distorted face emoji is the perfect way to sum up 2026 so far — and it's coming to your iPhone in iOS 26.4

Apple just rolled out the iOS 26.4 beta, and one of the most exciting things are new emoji. These come after the Unicode Consortium voted to bring the new emoji to iOS, Android, Windows, and more last year.

Whether you find the full list of emoji useful will depend on what you and your friends talk about, but one that stands out as a perfect encapsulation of 2026 so far is the distorted face.

Other keywords used by the Unicode Consortium to describe the Distorted Face emoji include anxiety, bloated, panic, shocked, surprised and vulnerable. There's a PDF document explaining the proposed use case of the new face. Here's the key takeaway:

"Implies expanding by introduction of air or something insubstantial and suggests a vulnerability to sudden collapse. Naturally, this is a comical trope and impossible to do in real life, unless you happen to be a pufferfish."

Example uses of the new face include showing surprise, someone with an inflated ego, and being scared, which more or less describe where things are in the world right now.

But at least, the Consortum said, "The proposed 'inflatable face' provides a significant advance in coverage to depict simultaneous, complex feelings by filling a significant gap in existing emoji expression."

Here's the full list of new emoji added in iOS 26.4 (and that will be added to other platforms in the future):

• Ballet Dancers
• Distorted Face
• Fight Cloud
• Hairy Creature
• Landslide
• Orca
• Trombone
• Treasure Chest

Aside from the new designs, there are new skin tone options for People Wrestling and People With Bunny Ears emojis. Between the new designs and updated skin tones, there's a total of 163 new emoji designs added, giving you plenty of new ways to communicate thoughts and feelings with your friends.

And if you want to see even more new emoji, you can see the new ones coming in iOS 27 from the folks at Emojipedia.

Of course, there's Genmoji in iOS, so you can make most faces and designs on your own, but with the new options being cross-platform, you can send them to friends on Android and other platforms.

Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds.

More from Tom's Guide

• I use the 'Rabbit' prompt for multiplying my ideas — and it's a game changer
• ChatGPT-5.4 is OpenAI’s fastest model yet — 7 prompts that show what it can really do
• I can text Claude like a personal assistant now — this iPhone shortcut made it possible