The Unicode Blog

ICU4X 2.2 released!

2026-04-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

The ICU4X Technical Committee is happy to announce ICU4X 2.2, an update to our modular, portable, and secure i18n library.

ICU4X is Unicode's modern, lightweight, portable, and secure i18n library. Built from the ground up, its binary size and memory usage footprint is 50-90% smaller than ICU4C. It is memory-safe, written in Rust with interfaces into C++, JavaScript, Dart, TypeScript, Kotlin — with other languages in the timeline. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Google Pixel Watch, core Android, numerous Flutter apps, and more clients are already using ICU4X.

Important changes in ICU4X 2.2 include:

1. Latest i18n data: This release includes an update to CLDR 48.2 and support for TZDB 2026a.

2. New and improved icu_calendar: This release contains new APIs in icu_calendar, as well as some behavior changes in icu_calendar; see the migration notes on GitHub.

a. Datetime arithmetic: It is now possible to add and subtract dates.

b. More flexible date construction: Build dates from all kinds of constituent data: extended years, era years, ordinal months, month codes, etc., with support for different kinds of overflow handling.

c. Typed months: The new Month type replaces month codes in a type safe way.

d. Experimental third-party crate integration: We now support converting and formatting types from the jiff, chrono, and time crates. See icu_datetime::input::third_party. We’re not yet sure if these integrations should live in ICU4X, in the third party crates, or some adapter crate. We welcome your feedback!

e. Changes to Japanese and Hijri calendars: We no longer support pre-Meiji eras because CLDR removed them, and we now always use Umm al-Qura data for simulated Hijri. See the migration notes on GitHub for more details.

3. Experimental Kotlin Bindings: We now have Kotlin bindings for ICU4X (found under ffi/mvn), with the same set of supported APIs as our other cross-language bindings.

4. Experimental features:

a. Display names: Adds new internal data layout exposed via RegionDisplayName and ScriptDisplayName APIs. The old data layout, optimized for loading multiple names at once, is moved into the multi module. Please share feedback on our tracking issue.

b. Compact decimal formatter: Please share feedback in preparation for stabilization in a future release.

c. ML segmentation: Initial code for RAdaBoost word segmenter for Chinese and CNN word segmenter for Thai.

5. Better hour cycles: Adds support for Clock12 and Clock24 in datetime formatting.

See the GitHub release for more details.

Check out our quickstart tutorial, interactive demo, or C++, TypeScript, and Dart documentation.

As before, the Rust crate is available at crates.io, with documentation at docs.rs.

Please post any questions via GitHub Discussions.

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Unicode ICU 78.3 and CLDR 48.2 released

2026-03-31T16:02:00.000-07:00

Unicode® CLDR is the most widely used provider of locale data. It provides the essential building blocks that allow software to display dates, times, and currencies correctly in every language and region. Unicode® ICU provides widely used C/C++/Java internationalization (i18n) libraries and APIs.

We have just published new maintenance releases of ICU and CLDR, with some small but significant changes. To find out more and to download these releases, go to:

CLDR and ICU have each published a maintenance release in March instead of a major release. The next major releases, CLDR 49 and ICU 79, are planned for October and will include the data from the next CLDR general submission period, planned to start in early Q2 2026, as well as Unicode 18.

The following issues are fixed in the CLDR 48.2 and ICU 78.3 maintenance releases:

Several important locale data bug fixes including:

Group separator for number formatting was updated to ' in fr_CH for consistency with other Swiss locales.
Some fixes to date and time formats including: Hv available formats were updated to match behavior in CLDR 47. The previous change caused web compatibility issues related to current JS capabilities.
Fixes for Emoji annotations issues, such as collisions between emoji short names.
Updated abbreviated and narrow AM/PM for ko and ps for consistency with how the wide forms are localized.
Full list of changes are available in Δ48.2

ICU 78.3 includes the CLDR 48.2 changes
ICU also fixes a C++ code point iterator bug
Updates for timezone data 2026a

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UTS #18: More Unicode Properties in Regular Expressions

2026-03-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

Regular Expressions, or “Regex”, are the invisible workhorses of the digital world. Regex allows apps and computer systems to find, validate, and change text based on patterns rather than specific words. Unicode properties play a vital role in this. Rather than an application using a fixed list of characters like a-z, A-Z — and failing badly for all but English — Unicode properties take on the burden of supplying meaningful sets of characters, like letters, Greek characters, or Emoji. Properties can be combined, such as Greek letters with an expression like [\p{script=greek}&\p{letter}].

This specification has an update for now covering over 100 different properties. The following are the most important changes, with others found in the modification section.

Section 2.7 Full Properties lists the full set of properties recommended for support. This version adds: IDS_Unary_Operator, NFKC_Simple_Casefold, ID_Compat_Math_Start, ID_Compat_Math_Continue, Indic_Conjunct_Break, and RGI_Emoji_Qualification

Special rules called “matching rules” are used when looking up properties and their values by name. This version recommends the matching rules from Section 5.9 Matching Rules of UAX #44.

By expanding and refining property support in UTS #18, this update strengthens the foundation for global text processing.

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From Central Bank to Code Point: A Roadmap for Currency Symbol Implementation

2026-02-26T10:13:00.000-08:00

In the past year, several new currency symbols have been proposed for encoding in the Unicode Standard:

February 2025: The Saudi Central Bank announced the creation of a new symbol for the Saudi riyal.
March 2025: The Central Bank of the U.A.E. announced creation of a new symbol for the UAE Dirham (cf. Dirham Currency Symbol Guideline).
May 2025: A proposal was submitted to encode the symbol for the Maldivian Rufiyaa. (The symbol was created by the Maldives Monetary Authority in 2022.)
November 2025: The Central Bank of Oman announced the creation of a new symbol for the Omani Rial.

The Saudi riyal sign was proposed for encoding just barely in time for it to be included in version 17.0 of the Unicode Standard, released in September 2025. Proposals for the other currency symbols were submitted too late for version 17.0, so the symbols will be encoded in version 18.0, which will be released in September 2026.

Recent currency symbol trend

Distinct currency symbols are not essential for local or international financial transactions, and most currencies are denoted with their written name or an abbreviation; e.g. “kr” for krone. However, in recent years, since the creation of the euro currency and its distinct symbol, several monetary authorities have created distinct symbols to denote their currency. A currency symbol could potentially be created only for private use of the monetary authoring — printing on bills or embossing on coins. Usually, however, currency symbols are intended for public use: to appear on shop signs, online retail sites, or anywhere that currency amounts are presented.

Such public usage leads to a need for the symbol to be encoded in the Unicode Standard and supported in commercial software and services. Standardization of a new character and subsequent support by vendors takes time: typically, at least one year, and often longer. All too often, however, monetary authorities announce creation of a new currency symbol anticipating immediate public adoption, then later discover there will be an unavoidable delay before the new symbol is widely supported in products and services.

For a contrast with another recent currency development, Bulgaria transitioned from their local lev currency to the euro in January 2026, but the transition was formally decided and announced in July 2025, several months before the change went into effect. This allowed several months for vendors to prepare for the change.

Implementing support for the new currency symbols

Vendor support for a new currency symbol can involve many different things, such as the following:

Updates to fonts
Updates to software keyboard layouts or new designs for physical keyboards
Updating locale data and programming interfaces for formatting currency values
Updating software used for generation of financial statements and reports
Updates to applications, online services or devices for commercial transactions

However, all of these require development time, and development can only begin after the new symbol is encoded in the Unicode Standard. People wishing to start using a new currency symbol in applications and services should anticipate that, from the time the symbol is proposed for encoding, it could take many months or even years before vendors have distributed product updates.

Because there is unavoidable delay from when a new currency symbol is proposed to when it can be supported by vendors, monetary authorities are strongly encouraged to engage with the Unicode Consortium at least one year in advance of when a new currency symbol is expected to go into public usage.

Note regarding support on devices

For many devices, including some mobile phones, many vendors do not routinely provide updates, or discontinue providing updates on older devices. For this reason, users should not be surprised if a new currency symbol is not supported natively on a device years after the symbol was introduced. Applications or online services accessed on those devices can have a different update policy however, so experience using such devices could reflect partial support.

Recommendations for implementation of Unicode 18.0 currency symbols

The following three new currency symbols have been approved for encoding in Unicode version 18.0, which will be published in September 2026:

U+20C2 RUFIYAA SIGN
U+20C3 UAE DIRHAM SIGN
U+20C4 OMANI RIAL SIGN

Complete details for these characters are included in the Unicode 18.0 Alpha preview release. The technical details — character names, code points, property data — are unlikely to change before Unicode 18.0 is released, but these details are not completely stable until the Unicode Technical Committee has made the final technical decisions for Unicode 18.0. For this reason, vendors can choose to start working on implementations once the Alpha preview is available, but vendors should not distribute product updates until after Unicode version 18.0 is released in September 2026.

Extending support with CLDR

Many implementations use Unicode CLDR data for currency formatting, so incorporating the new symbols is an important step for widespread support. A CLDR release will follow not long after release of Unicode version 18.0, and will contain the new currency symbols for applicable currencies and locales.

However, the symbols will initially be listed as “alternative” symbols for the respective currencies. The reason for a symbol being an alternative, rather than the default, is to avoid the symbol being displayed in contexts in which available fonts might not yet support the new symbol, causing users to see a missing glyph for their currency; e.g.,

instead of

Later, when there is confidence that the symbols are more widely supported in platforms and fonts, a future CLDR version can update details to list the new currency symbol as the default, rather than as an alternative.

Working together to support local monetary authorities

When monetary authorities introduce a new symbol for their currency, it marks a significant milestone for financial and commercial activity in their domain. The Unicode Consortium is honored to work with monetary authorities, and would like to help make the launch of a new symbol as smooth as possible. With that in mind, we invite monetary authorities planning creation of a new currency symbol to engage with us well in advance of a planned launch.

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UTS #58: Making URLs Readable for Humans: From %E0%A4%AE… to महात्मा

2026-02-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

People around the world need to use their writing systems in URLs. This is important: in writing their native languages, the majority of humanity uses characters outside of A-Z, and they expect those characters to also work seamlessly.

Browsers and other programs generally handle Unicode in domain names well. But not all browsers and other programs do a good job with domain names, and many make the rest of the URL unreadable. For example, consider the common practice of providing user handles such as the following two:

x.com/rihanna

www.youtube.com/@핑크퐁

The first of these works well in practice — because it is all ASCII. Copying from the address bar and pasting into text provides a readable result. However in the second example, in many browsers and other programs, copying the address bar gives an unreadable string:

www.youtube.com/@핑크

⇩

youtube.com/@%ED%95%91%ED%81%AC%ED%90%81

The names also expand in size and turn into very long, unreadable strings, such as:

hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/महात्मा_गांधी

⇩

hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AE%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A7%E0%A5%80

The other side of the coin is making sure that when programs add links to URLs in a predictable way, linkifying the entire URL, and without extending the link to include sentence punctuation. For example, many programs don’t add links properly to:

… see

https://example.com/αβγ/δεζ?θικ#λμν.

A commonly used email program, for example, stops midway through:

… see

https://example.com/αβγ/δεζ?θικ#λμν.

Others may include the sentence period, question mark, surrounding parenthesis, etc.:

… see

https://example.com/αβγ/δεζ?θικ#λμν.

Users often insert spaces to prevent this. It should be automatic:

… see

https://example.com/αβγ/δεζ?θικ#λμν.

The new UTS #58: Unicode Link Detection and Formatting: URLs and Email Addresses specifies how to format and linkify URLs and email addresses in readable, predictable, user-friendly ways. The data files cover all of the 159,000+ characters in Unicode.

We encourage implementers to adopt this specification for a consistent experience for users worldwide.

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Unicode 18.0 Alpha review

2026-02-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

Unicode 18.0 Alpha Review Opens for Feedback

By: Peter Constable, Chair of the Unicode Technical Committee

The repertoire for Unicode Version 18.0 is now open for early review and comment. During alpha review, the repertoire is reasonably mature and stable but is not yet completely locked down. Discussion regarding whether certain characters should be removed from the repertoire for publication is welcome. Character names and code point assignments are reasonably firm, but suggestions for improvement may still be considered.

For the alpha review, preliminary data files are also available, with data covering existing and new character repertoire. In addition, a draft for the core specification is available, with new block descriptions for some of the newly-added blocks and scripts.

The primary focus for the alpha review should be on the new character repertoire. This early review is provided so that reviewers may consider the repertoire and data file issues prior to the start of beta review (currently scheduled to start in May 2026). Once beta review begins, the repertoire, code points, and character names will all be locked down, and no longer be subject to changes.

Notable changes

The planned repertoire for Unicode 18.0 adds 13,048 new characters, which would bring the total number of characters to 172,849 characters.

The additions include four new scripts:

Small Seal (“Seal”): This comprises the largest portion of the new characters, with 11,328 ideographs. Seal is an important precursor to modern Han ideographs (aka, “CJK”), and has important cultural significance in China and for Chinese speakers throughout the world.
Chisoi: A modern script used in eastern India.
Jurchen: A historic ideographic script that was used in northeastern China during the Jin and Ming dynasties.
Proto-cuneiform—in this version, just numeric signs (other characters have been proposed for a future version).

Other additions include nine new emoji characters, 72 historical mathematical symbols, 323 Cuneiform numeric signs, and three new currency symbols for modern currencies:

Maldivian Rufiyaa
Omani Rial
UAE Dirham

Feedback for the alpha review should be reported under PRI #536 using the Unicode contact form by March 31, 2026.

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Highlights from UTC Meeting #186

2026-02-03T19:06:31.236-08:00

By: Peter Constable, Chair of the Unicode Technical Committee

The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) met January 21 – 23 in Sunnyvale, CA. Thanks to Unicode member organization, Google, for hosting. Here are some highlights.

Progress on Unicode 18.0

Version 18.0 of the Unicode Standard is being prepared for publication in September of this year. At meetings 184 and 185, UTC had approved 12,995 characters for encoding in version 18.0. At this meeting, some additional characters were approved for this version. One of these new characters is the Omani rial sign, a currency symbol recently created by the Omani Central Bank. Other additions include 51 mathematical symbols and 10 standardized variation sequences proposed by the PHILIUMM Project.

UTC authorized the Unicode 18.0 Alpha preview release, which will be available February 10 for public review.

Future additions

A typical step in the process for encoding new characters is provisional assignment of code points for characters that UTC has deemed eligible for encoding. This allows working groups to begin development of content — property data, code charts, text for the core spec — for a future version. At this meeting, code points were provisionally assigned for several characters including three new scripts: Leke script, used in SE Asia; and Mwangwego and Shaaldaa scripts, used in Eastern Africa.

New UTS on links

UTC approved a new Unicode Technical Standard, UTS #58 Unicode Link Detection and Serialization. This standard includes character data, and this first version includes data for characters in Unicode 17.0. Starting with Unicode 18.0, this will become a synchronized standard, with a new version released together with each new version of the Unicode Standard.

New joint working group for orthographic sequences

At UTC #185, the Government of India proposed that Unicode develop specifications for orthographically valid cluster sequences for Hindi and other language orthographies. (See L2/26-061.) Such work would overlap the scopes of both the Unicode Technical Committee and the CLDR Technical Committee: Specs would deal with character sequences in a manner similar UAX #29, Unicode Text Segmentation, which is maintained by UTC; but each document would be for the orthography of a specific language, which puts this in the scope of CLDR-TC.

After UTC #185, Unicode leaders discussed options and proposed formation of a joint working group (JWG) between CLDR-TC and UTC. (See L2/26-045.) At this UTC meeting, this JWG was approved by UTC. It was similarly approved by CLDR-TC at one of their recent meetings. This new JWG will get organized and begin working during the next quarter.

Metadata embedded in “plain” text

It recently came to light that another organization has developed a specification to embed AI-related metadata into “unstructured” (i.e., “plain”) text. (See L2/26-042.) This has been motivated by the EU AI Act (AIA), which goes into enforcement in August of this year. Article 50 of the AIA obligates vendors to “mark” AI-generated content with machine-readable metadata so that content can be detectable as being artificially generated. This requirement applies to text content as well as other content types. However, Article 50 doesn’t specify what would count as “marking” of text, neither does it distinguish between different text formats: does it apply to generated source code? SMS messages? file names? But C2PA has taken a conservative approach, anticipating that the EU might enforce the requirement on any AI-generated text.

Unfortunately, the scheme added to the C2PA specification embeds sequences of Unicode variation selector characters in a manner that does not conform to the Unicode Standard.

UTC discussed this situation together with a representative from C2PA. On the one hand, it brought to light that the text of the Unicode Standard wasn’t sufficiently clear about conformance requirements in relation to variation sequences. But UTC was clear that this scheme is non-conformant. Other concerns were mentioned, including that it is a contradiction of terms to say that “unstructured” text can contain metadata. An outcome of this discussion was to recommend that Unicode establish a liaison relationship with C2PA, and that the topic be discussed further between the two organizations.

For complete details on outcomes from UTC #186, see the draft minutes.

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Unicode ICU 78.2 and CLDR 48.1 released

2026-01-30T10:44:00.000-08:00

There are new maintenance releases of ICU and CLDR, with some small but significant changes. To find out more and to download these releases, go to:

CLDR and ICU are planning an additional maintenance release in March instead of a major release.

The next major releases, CLDR 49 and ICU 79, are planned for October and will include the data from the next CLDR general submission period which is planned to start in early Q2 2026, as well as Unicode 18.

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Opening CLDR Survey Tool early for DDL locales

2025-12-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

We are announcing an early submission window for the CLDR Survey Tool, exclusively for Digitally Disadvantaged Languages (DDLs). These include languages across the world that lack full digital support, such as Qʼeqchiʼ with about 1.3M speakers, and many more.

The early submission window will allow more time for individuals and organizations that make DDL contributions, providing crucial data to close the digital support gap. The data will go into the CLDR v50 release, targeted at October 2026. Languages maintained by the CLDR Technical Committee are not available during this special window. They will be available for submission in Q2 2026.

See DDL: Help Center for more information on how to contribute to a DDL language.

If your language is not yet in CLDR, organizations can submit a formal request to add it; see adding a new language.

CLDR Organizations are needed for approval of CLDR data, so that it can be picked up by libraries, applications, programming languages, and operating systems. To register a new CLDR Organization, see adding an organization to CLDR. Individuals can also request languages and submit/approve data; however, the data cannot reach even Basic coverage without at least one CLDR Organization supporting it.

What is CLDR?

CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). All major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR?)

Contributors supply data for their languages via the online Survey Tool. This data is widely used to support much of the world’s software and is also a factor in determining which languages are supported on mobile phones and computer operating systems.

The Survey Tool opened on December 18, 2025 for DDL languages. The tool will remain open for data submission and correction until July 2026. A public alpha will make the draft data available in early August 2026. Data contributed at this time will be scheduled for publication and available for use in October 2026.

Each additional CLDR language starts with a small set of Core Data, such as a list of characters used in the language. Submitters of new languages commit to bringing the coverage up to a minimum of Basic coverage (very basic formats for dates, times, numbers, and endonyms).

Once a language reaches Basic coverage, it will have the minimum support for use in language selection, such as on mobile devices. That is the first step; for broader support the Moderate level is typically required.

If you would like to contribute missing data for your language, see Survey Tool Accounts.

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UTC #185 Highlights

2025-12-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Unicode Technical Committee meeting #185 was held October 27 – 29 in Cupertino, CA, hosted by Apple. Here are some highlights.

Starting the Unicode 18.0 cycle

As we've been following an annual September release cycle for the Unicode Standard, the Q4 UTC meeting is the first meeting during a new cycle. While some decisions targeting the release might have been taken at a previous meeting, this is the first meeting in which the next release has particular focus. One of the decisions taken is to plan out the key milestones and dates for the next new cycle. Here's a summary of the timeline for Unicode 18.0:

November 2025: UTC #185 approved new character repertoire
January 2026: UTC #186 will finalize content for the alpha release
February – March: alpha release open for public review
April: UTC #187 will review alpha feedback and finalize content for the beta release
May – June: beta release open for public review
July: UTC #188 will finalize 18.0 content
September: Unicode 18.0 release

Unicode 18.0 character and emoji repertoire

During a release cycle, the primary focus for the alpha review is on the new character repertoire. The repertoire for the alpha review can be updated at the January UTC meeting; but we like to have that planned repertoire largely determined by the Q4 meeting so that working groups can focus early on preparing content that will be needed for the alpha.

UTC #184 had approved around 60 characters for publication in Unicode 18.0. (Some of those had been planned for Unicode 17.0 but, for various reasons, needed to be postponed.) These included the UAE Dirham sign, and the first tranche of a large set of symbols from the writings of Gottfried Leibniz for which proposals are in development. At UTC #185, nearly 13,000 additional characters were approved for encoding in Unicode 18.0.

The approved additions include encoding of Small Seal script ("Seal"), a repertoire of 11,328 ideographic characters. Seal is distinct from modern Han ideographs (aka, "CJK"), but is an important precursor of CJK resulting from the first efforts to standardize writing across Chinese-speaking regions during China's Qin Dynasty. As such, Seal has important cultural significance in China and for Chinese speakers throughout the world.

Other additions included 1,276 characters allocated in three new blocks: Archaic Cuneiform Numerals — 311 Cuneiform characters from the fourth millenium BCE; and Jurchen and Jurchen Radicals — 965 ideographic characters that were used for writing the Jurchen language in the12th – 13th century CE.

In addition, 321 other characters were approved as additions to a number of existing blocks. This includes many characters for Arabic and Latin scripts, many characters used in phonetic transcription, a number of symbols used in music notation, and a second set of the Leibniz symbols.

Finally, the new characters approved for Unicode 18.0 includes nine new emoji characters. Note that many emoji are represented as character sequences, so mentioning the new emoji characters doesn't provide a complete picture. Look for more information about Unicode 18.0 emoji in the coming months.

CJK & Unihan

UTC works on CJK character encoding in collaboration with IRG (Ideographic Research Group), a working group under ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2. There are over 100,000 CJK ideographs now encoded in Unicode, and with such a large repertoire of characters there are refinements to the already-encoded characters that continue to be made. At UTC #185, recommendations arising from a recent IRG meeting were reviewed, and a number of changes were approved for Unicode 18.0. Some of these are technical details that are not so visible, such as corrections to source references for certain characters (the references cited when the characters were encoded providing evidence of their usage and identity as distinct characters). Among the significant and visible changes approved by UTC are over 700 horizontal extensions, which will be reflected in the Unicode 18.0 code charts with additional glyphs for already-encoded characters.

For complete details on outcomes from UTC #185, see the draft minutes.

About the Unicode Standard

The world relies on digital communications. The Unicode Standard is a vital building block for global digital communications, providing the encoding for more than 155,000 characters used by thousands of languages and scripts throughout the world.

Each character—letter, diacritic, symbol, emoji, etc.—is represented by a unique numeric code, and has defined properties data that define how characters behave in several text processing algorithms.

With this combination, The Unicode Standard provides the foundation for implementations to support the world's writing systems, enabling billions of people across the globe to seamlessly communicate with one another across platforms and devices. The Standard is also the foundation for the suite of code, libraries, data, and products that the Unicode Consortium delivers for robust language support.

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Introducing the Unicode Inflection Library Technical Preview Release

2025-11-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

The problem of linguistic inflection has long been a barrier to effective software internationalization. The problem is even more visible today with multimodal UIs. In many languages, word forms change (inflect) based on grammatical context, creating a significant challenge for developers aiming to build truly global applications. Getting the wrong word inflection can be as bad as using the wrong preposition in English.

Today, the Unicode Consortium is announcing a major step forward with the Technical Preview Release of the Unicode Inflection Library. It provides direct access through C and C++ APIs, or can be used in conjunction with Message Format 2.0 functionality.

This library is designed to solve a problem that is particularly acute in languages with a large number of inflectional forms, such as the Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Semitic, Indic and agglutinative families of languages.

The issue extends beyond common words like adjectives, nouns, and verbs. In many of these languages, proper nouns—including geo-location names, brands, and people’s names—can also inflect. This complexity affects a large number of users and has been largely unaddressed by the industry, which has typically opted for narrow, language-specific solutions. Even languages like French require handling inflection for gender and number, demonstrating the problem is not limited to a few specific language families.

The Unicode Inflection Library provides a robust and standardized approach to this challenge. It leverages extensive data sets to handle complex grammatical transformations, enabling more accurate text generation, search functionality, and natural language processing. A key resource for this project is the availability of comprehensive lexicons from the Wikidata project, which provide the foundational data necessary for these operations.

Get Started and Participate

This is a community effort. We invite developers and linguists to explore the library's capabilities and contribute to its development. A detailed tutorial is available to help you get started:

Tutorial: https://github.com/unicode-org/inflection/wiki/Tutorial

Release: https://github.com/unicode-org/inflection/releases/tag/Inflection-0.1

Your feedback and contributions are critical for refining the library's rules, expanding language coverage, and ensuring its performance. By participating, you will help build a foundational tool that will make the digital world more accessible and linguistically accurate for hundreds of millions of users.

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Unicode CLDR 48 available

2025-10-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

Unicode CLDR 48 is now available and has been integrated into version 78 of ICU.

Some of the most significant changes in this release are the following (for more detail, see the CLDR 48 release note page):

Updated for Unicode 17, including new names and search terms for new emoji, new sort order, and Han→Latin romanization additions for many characters.
Updated to the latest external standards and data sources, such as the language subtag registry, UN M49 macro regions, ISO 4217 currencies, etc.
Many enhancements of the CLDR specification (LDML)
Many additions to language data including:

Likely Subtags, for deriving the likely script and region from the language (used in many processes)

New formatting options:

Rational number formats added, allowing for formats like “5½” in tech preview
For timezones, usesMetazone adds two new attributes stdOffset and dstOffset so that implementations can use either “main” or “rearguard” TZDB data
Combination formats added for relative dates + times, such as “tomorrow at 12:30”
Additional units added for scientific contexts (coulombs, farads, teslas, etc.) and for English systems (fortnights, imperial pints, etc.)

Many corrections and updates for Metazone data and calendars eras (including removal of eras and fixes to start dates)
This is the first release where the new CLDR Organization process is in place for DDL languages. As a result, several locales were able to reach higher levels (see below).

See the CLDR 48 release note page for information on accessing the data, reviewing charts of the changes, and — importantly — Migration issues.

CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). All major browsers and modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR?)

Via the Survey Tool, contributors supply data for their languages — data that is widely used to support much of the world’s software. This data is also a factor in determining which languages are supported on mobile phones and computer operating systems.

Locale Coverage Levels

Level
Count
With Script
Regional Variants
Usage
Modern
104
5
305
Suitable for full UI internationalization
Moderate
13
0
1
Suitable for “document content” internationalization, eg. in spreadsheet
Basic
57
10
22
Suitable for locale selection, eg. choice of language on mobile phone

Changes in coverage

±	New Level	Locales
📈	Modern	Akan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Kazakh (Arabic), Romansh, Shan, Quechua
📈	Moderate	Anii, Esperanto
📈	Basic	Buriat, Piedmontese, Sicilian, Tuvinian
📉	Basic*	Baluchi (Latin), Kurdish

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ICU4X 2.1 released!

2025-10-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

The ICU4X Technical Committee is happy to announce ICU4X 2.1, an update to our modular, portable, and secure i18n library.

ICU4X is Unicode's modern, lightweight, portable, and secure i18n library. Built from the ground up, its binary size and memory usage footprint is 50-90% smaller than ICU4C. It is memory-safe, written in Rust with interfaces into C++, JavaScript, Dart, TypeScript — with other languages in the timeline. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Google Pixel Watch, core Android, numerous Flutter apps, and more clients are already using ICU4X.

Important changes since ICU4X 2.0 include:

Latest i18n data: This release includes an update to CLDR 48.
Calendar improvements: ICU4X is now being used to implement Temporal in V8 and SpiderMonkey via temporal_rs. icu_calendar has received many fixes and improvements in service of that, including new experimental arithmetic APIs.
Normalizer optimizations: icu_normalizer has received a lot of optimization work, with some more to come. Optimizations made to shared data structures will benefit other components as well.
Collation sort keys: It is now possible to use icu_collator to extract the sort key of a given string to amortize the cost of collation operations.

When updating ICU4X crates to 2.1, you may experience issues due to incompatibilities between older crates and newer crates around the alloc feature. In that case, please run cargo update for any crates that show up in the errors.

See the full changelog for more information

Check out our quickstart tutorial, interactive demo, or C++, TypeScript, and (experimental) Dart documentation.

As before, the Rust crate is available at crates.io, with documentation at docs.rs.

Please post any questions via GitHub Discussions.

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ICU 78 Released

2025-10-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

Unicode® ICU 78 has just been released. ICU is the premier library for software internationalization, used by a wide array of companies and organizations to support the world's languages, implementing both the latest version of the Unicode Standard and of the Unicode locale data (CLDR).

ICU 78 updates to Unicode 17 (blog), including new characters and scripts, emoji, collation & IDNA changes, and corresponding APIs and implementations.

It also updates to CLDR 48 (beta blog) locale data with new locales, and various additions and corrections.

Details: ICU 78.
Download: releases/tag/release-78.1
Maven: com.ibm.icu / icu4j / version 78.1

In Java, there is a draft new Segmenter API which is easier and safer to use than BreakIterator. In C++, there is a new set of APIs for Unicode string (UTF-8/16/32) code point iteration that works seamlessly with modern C++ iterators and ranges.

The Java implementation of the CLDR MessageFormat 2.0 specification has been updated to CLDR 48. The core API has been upgraded to “draft”, while the Data Model API remains in technology preview.

The C++ implementation of MessageFormat 2.0 is at CLDR 47 level and remains in technology preview.

ICU 78 and CLDR 48 are major releases, including a new version of Unicode and major locale data improvements.

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Unicode CLDR 48 Beta available for specification review

2025-10-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

The Unicode CLDR 48 Beta is now available for specification review and integration testing. The release is planned for October 29th, 2025, but any feedback on the specification needs to be submitted well in advance of that date. The beta specification is available at Draft LDML Modifications. See also the Migration section of the new release page.

CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). For example, all major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR?)

The beta has already been integrated into the development versions of ICU 78, and ICU4X . We would especially appreciate feedback from non-ICU consumers of CLDR data and on Migration issues. Feedback can be filed at CLDR Requesting Changes.

The following are some of the most significant changes to the specification (LDML).

Locale Identifiers and Names

Display Name Elements - Described the usage of the language element menu values core and extension, and alt="menu". Also revamped the description of how to construct names for locale IDs, for clarity.

Misc.

Character Elements - Added new exemplar types.
Person Name Validation - Added guidance for validating person names.

DateTime formats

Element dateTimeFormat - Added a new type relative for relative date/times, such as “tomorrow at 10:00”, and updated the guidelines for using the different dateTimeFormat types.
timeZoneNames Elements Used for Fallback - Added the gmtUnknownFormat to indicate when the timezone is unknown.
Metazone Names - Added usesMetazone to specify which offset is considered standard time and which offset is considered daylight.
Time Zone Format Terminology - Added the Localized GMT format (and removed the Specific location format). This affects the behavior of the z timezone format symbol. There is also now a mechanism for finding the region code from a short timezone identifier, which is used for the non-location formats (generic or specific).
Calendar Data - Specified more precisely the meaning of the era attributes in supplemental data, and how to determine the transition point in time between eras.

Numbers

Plural rules syntax - Added substantial clarifications and new examples. The order of execution is also clearly specified.
Compact Number Formats - Specified the mechanism for formatting compact numbers more precisely.
Rational Numbers - Added support for formatting fractions like 5½.

Units of Measurement

Unit Syntax - Simplified the EBNF product_unit and added an additional well-formedness constraint for mixed units.
Unit Identifier Normalization - Modified the normalization process.
Mixed Units - Modified the guidance for handling precision.

MessageFormat

Syntax and data model errors - Prioritized over other errors.
Default Bidi Strategy - Required and default.
Function :offset - Made Stable. (It was previously draft, and named :math.)
Draft functions :datetime, :date, and :time - Updated to build on top of semantic skeletons.
Draft function :percent - Added.

There are many more changes that are important to implementations, such as changes to certain identifier syntax and various algorithms. See the Modifications section of the specification for details.

For more details see the draft CLDR 48 release page, which has information on the changes to data and structure, accessing the data, reviewing charts of the changes, and — importantly — Migration issues.

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Unicode CLDR 48 Alpha available for testing

2025-09-19T10:03:00.000-07:00

The Unicode CLDR 48 Alpha is now available for integration testing.

CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.) For example, all major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR?)

The alpha has already been integrated into the development versions of ICU 78 and ICU4X. We would especially appreciate feedback from non-ICU consumers of CLDR data and on Migration issues. Feedback can be filed via CLDR Tickets.

Some of the most significant changes in this release are the following (for more detail, see the CLDR 48 release note page):

Updated for Unicode 17, including new names and search terms for new emoji, new sort order, Han→Latin romanization additions for many characters.
Updated to the latest external standards and data sources, such as the language subtag registry, UN M49 macro regions, ISO 4217 currencies, etc.
Many enhancements of the CLDR specification (LDML) are due for addition by Oct 1.
Many additions to language data including:

Likely Subtags, for deriving the likely script and region from the language (used in many processes)
Language populations in countries: significant updates to improve accuracy and maintainability

New formatting options

Rational number formats added, allowing for formats like “5½”
For timezones, usesMetazone adds two new attributes stdOffset and dstOffset so that implementations can use either “vanguard” or “rearguard” TZDB data sources
Combination formats added for relative dates + times, such as “tomorrow at 12:30”
Additional units added for scientific contexts (coulombs, farads, teslas, etc.) and for English systems (fortnights, imperial pints, etc.)

Many corrections and updates for Metazone data, for calendars (including removal of eras and fixes to start dates).
This is the first release where the new CLDR Organization process is in place for DDL languages. As a result, several locales were able to reach higher levels (see below).

Locale Coverage Levels

Level	Count	With Script	Regional Variants	Usage
Modern	104	5	305	Suitable for full UI internationalization
Moderate	13	0	1	Suitable for “document content” internationalization, eg. in spreadsheet
Basic	57	10	22	Suitable for locale selection, eg. choice of language on mobile phone

Changes in coverage

±	New Level	Locales
📈	Modern	Akan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Kazakh (Arabic), Romansh, Shan, Quechua
📈	Moderate	Anii, Esperanto
📈	Basic	Buriat, Piedmontese, Sicilian, Tuvinian
📉	Basic*	Baluchi (Latin), Kurdish

For the details, see the CLDR 48 release note page, which has information on accessing the data, reviewing charts of the changes, and — importantly — will cover Migration issues.

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Unicode 17.0 Release Announcement

2025-09-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Announcing The Unicode® Standard, Version 17.0

The Unicode Standard is the foundation for all global digital communications, providing the encoding for text content used in all devices. The latest version of the standard, Version 17.0, is now available! This is a major update that includes new characters and code charts, updated data files, an updated Core Specification, and updated annexes and synchronized standards that cover implementation details for important aspects of text processing.

This version adds 4,803 new characters, including four new scripts, eight new emoji characters, as well as many other characters and symbols, bringing the total of encoded characters to 159,801.

One of the newly encoded symbols is SAUDI RIYAL SIGN. Addition of this in Unicode 17.0 will allow interoperable support for the new symbol announced earlier this year by the Saudi Central Bank to represent their riyal currency.

The new additions also include 4,298 additional CJK unified ideographs in a new block, CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J, as well as 18 other CJK ideographs added to the existing Extension C and Extension E blocks. This increases the number of encoded CJK ideographs to over 100,000! Also, nearly 2,500 already-encoded CJK ideographs are horizontally extended by the addition of source references and glyphs reflecting use of those ideographs in China and Korea.

The following four new scripts increase the total number of supported scripts in the Unicode Standard to 172:

Beria Erfe is a modern-use script used by Zaghawa communities in central Africa.
Tolong Siki is a modern-use script used by Kurukh communities in northeast India.
Tai Yo is the traditional script of Tai Yo communities in northern Vietnam.
Sidetic is an historic script used in ancient Anatolia.

Support for these in Unicode is the key initial step in bridging the digital divide for users of these scripts.

See the delta code charts for details on all the new scripts and characters. For additional details regarding new emoji, see Emoji Recently Added, v17.0. For complete details on Unicode Version 17.0, see https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode17.0.0/.

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Highlights from UTC Meeting #184

2025-07-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) meeting #184 was held last week, July 22 – 24, in Redmond, Washington, hosted by Microsoft. Here are some highlights.

Finalizing Unicode 17.0

The top priority was to finalize technical decisions for Unicode 17.0 in preparation for a September 9 release. Beta feedback and a small number of new proposals were considered, and various decisions affecting Unicode 17.0 were taken.

The most significant change from the Unicode 17.0 Beta is the removal of 44 characters, based on feedback requesting more time to review these characters and the associated proposals:

09FF BENGALI LETTER SANSKRIT BA
0B53 ORIYA SIGN DOT ABOVE
0B54 ORIYA SIGN DOUBLE DOT ABOVE
1FADD APPLE CORE
40 Chisoi script characters and the Chisoi block at 16D80..16DAF

These characters have been postponed to Unicode 18.0. With this change, the total number of new characters for Unicode 17.0 will be 4,803, including CJK Extension J and four new scripts.

Glyph changes were also approved for 21 characters, all of which were encoded in earlier versions.

Certain character property changes were also approved. These include a change to the Word_Break property for 00B8 CEDILLA to accommodate orthographic usage for SENĆOŦEN, an indigenous language spoken in Western Canada. In relation to identifiers and security, the seven scripts added in Unicode 16.0 (Garay, Gurung Khema, Kirat Rai, Ol Onal, Sunuwar, Todhri, and Tulu-Tigalari) will be classified in UAX #31 as Excluded Scripts (Table 4), which means that these will not be included in the General Security Profile for secure identifiers.

First characters approved for Unicode 18.0

The tentative plan for new characters to be added in the next Unicode version is usually decided at the fall UTC meeting. The first approvals for Unicode 18.0, however, were decided last week at UTC #184. These include the 44 characters postponed from Unicode 17.0, mentioned above, as well as u+20CE UAE DIRHAM SIGN and 16 geometric symbols used in the manuscripts of the 17th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

As typically happens at each UTC meeting, several code points were provisionally assigned for other new characters that will be candidates for future versions.

For characters approved for 18 or provisionally assigned for future versions, see https://www.unicode.org/alloc/Pipeline.html#future.

Text Terminal Working Group progress

A temporary working group was created at UTC #175 to work on improved support for Unicode text in text-only terminal environments, particularly for scripts requiring advanced layout. Due to changes in availability of key participants early on, progress was hindered, but the working group is now meeting regularly.

To scope the project, they will prioritize scripts classified in UAX #31 as Recommended. These include a number of scripts for which examples of fixed-width text have not been readily available, and the working group would welcome contributions from anyone with knowledge of prior art for fixed-width Indic text.

For complete details from UTC #184, see the draft minutes.

About the Unicode Standard

The world relies on digital communications. The Unicode Standard is one of the building blocks for global digital communications, providing the encoding for more than 155,000 characters used by thousands of languages and scripts throughout the world.

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🥳 Say Hello to the New Emoji Coming in Unicode 17.0 This Fall! ✨

2025-07-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

From 🥹 to 🦖 to 🎸, emoji have become the world's favorite way to say anything—without saying a word. Whether you're texting your best friend, posting on social media, or cheering someone up with a perfectly-timed 😭, emoji help us connect across languages, cultures, and continents.

But have you ever wondered how a new emoji makes its way to your keyboard?

That’s where the Unicode Consortium comes in. We're the nonprofit behind the Unicode Standard—the foundation that, in short, ensures your text (and emoji!) work across all your devices, around the world. Every year, new characters including emoji are added to the Unicode Standard and after a lot of paperwork are added to your device of choice :)

And today, on World Emoji Day, we’re thrilled to share some of the new emoji that will debut as part of the Unicode 17.0 release. Say hello to…

Trombone
Treasure Chest
Distorted Face
Hairy Creature
Fight Cloud
Apple Core
Orca
Ballet Dancer
Landslide

These new emoji have long standing symbolic meanings, are visually distinctive, and contain multitudes of expression. [Update - Additional characters in the repertoire of an upcoming release are subject to final approval by the Unicode Technical Committee.]

🎨 Got the next great emoji idea?

You can submit an emoji proposal by following our guidelines and tips. And if you want to support the future of digital communication, check out our Adopt a Character program. It’s a fun way to sponsor your favorite emoji, letter, or symbol while helping fund our mission to preserve and promote global languages in the digital age.

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Registration for Unicode Technology Workshop 2025 is now open!

2025-06-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

Join us at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, California for one, two, or all three days of community building around the Unicode technology that makes software work for billions of people.

🗓️ November 11 - Tutorial Day on Unicode Technologies
🗓️ November 12-13 - Unicode Technology Workshop 2025

Expect workshops, seminars, free-form discussions, and lightning talks centered around i18n libraries, locale data frameworks, globalization tooling, localization pipelines, input methods, and text rendering. Network with the developers and users to help shape the future of Unicode technology.

You will come away with deeper knowledge on how to solve tough problems in the i18n and l10n space and how to engineer products that work better for global users. To encourage maximum collaboration amongst the attendees, this is an in-person-only event.

💲Discounts

An early bird registration code for a discounted price on your registration is available. The code is: UTW2025Early. ⏳

Special rates are available to current Unicode members, students, and academics. Students and academics also receive one year of Unicode individual membership with their registration. The early bird discount code is not required for students or academics.

Learn more and complete your registration here or use the QR code below.

🫶 Sponsorship Opportunities

Sponsorship opportunities are available at various levels. Sponsorship benefits include complimentary registrations, opportunities to lead a session or workshop, recognition on the event website, program and event materials, visibility on social media, and much more. Specific offerings vary by sponsorship level.

If you want to demonstrate your industry leadership, enhance your brand, share your knowledge, promote your products and services, and foster community building, contact events@unicode.org today to learn more. Sponsorship discounts are available to Unicode Full and Supporting Members.

📣 Call for Submissions is also open

Unicode is also accepting session proposals for workshops, seminars, case studies, and tutorials that center around:
- Unicode i18n libraries
- Locale data frameworks
- Globalization tooling
- Localization pipelines
- Input methods
- Character encoding
- Text rendering
…and more!

Tutorial topics might include: font design and Unicode properties, introduction to Software Internationalization (i18n), and how to best support bidirectional text.

Share your knowledge and experience with other Unicode users, and help us envision the future of Unicode technology. You will also leave with deeper knowledge on how to solve tough problems in the i18n and l10n space and how to engineer products that work better for global users. Program and product managers who work with engineering teams are also strongly encouraged to join and propose sessions.

Deadline for submissions is July 31, 2025 by 5:00PM PT. Proposals will be reviewed in July and session hosts will be notified late July.

🗓️ Mark Your Calendars for Key Dates!

July 31 - Call for Submissions Closes - All Proposals, including Tutorials, Due
August 18 - Program Committee Notifications Go Out
August 31 - Early Bird Registration for Tutorials and UTW 2025 Closes
September 1 - Regular Registration for Tutorials and UTW 2025 Opens

Please visit https://www.unicode.org/events/utw/2025/ for updates. If you have any questions, please contact us at UTW2025@unicode.org. We look forward to seeing you in November!

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ICU4X 2.0 released!

2025-05-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

At the intersection of human and computer languages, internationalization (i18n) continues to play a pivotal role in modern software. Evolving i18n libraries means better quality experiences, improved performance, and support for digitally disadvantaged languages.

ICU4X is Unicode's modern, lightweight, portable, and secure i18n library. Built from the ground up, its binary size and memory usage footprint is 50-90% smaller than ICU4C. It is memory-safe, written in Rust with interfaces into C++, JavaScript, and TypeScript — and Python, Dart, and Kotlin are in the pipeline. Mozilla Firefox, Google Pixel Watch, core Android, numerous Flutter apps, and more clients are already using ICU4X.

After 6 months of iterating on beta releases and a soft launch earlier this month, the ICU4X Technical Committee is happy to announce ICU4X 2.0. This release brings a new paradigm for locale objects, a rewritten DateTime component, overhauled C++/C/JS interfaces, the latest locale data, and much more.

Date, Time, and Time Zone Formatting

ICU4X 2.0 implements the new semantic datetime skeletons specification in UTS 35. An evolution from previous datetime APIs, the ICU4X DateTime component is designed from decades of experience understanding what developers need from datetime formatting.

With ICU4X 2.0, users pick a "field set" and fine-tune it with "options". There are a fixed number of field sets, which represent all valid combinations of fields.

Users of ICU and JavaScript are familiar with "classical" datetime skeletons and components bags, respectively. The following table illustrates the correlation with semantic datetime skeletons:

ICU Classical Skeleton	ECMA-402 Components Bag	ICU4X 2.0 Rust Code
yMMMd	{ year: "numeric", month: "abbreviated", day: "numeric" }	fieldsets::YMD::medium()
MdEjm	{ month: "numeric", day: "numeric", weekday: "short", hour: "numeric", minute: "numeric" }	fieldsets::MDE::short() .time_hm()
jmsV	{ hour: "numeric", minute: "numeric", second: "numeric", timeZoneName: "generic" }	fieldsets::T::hms() .zone(zone::GenericShort)

Semantic datetime skeletons, called "field sets with options" in ICU4X, have numerous advantages:

Easier to understand and harder to make mistakes. For example, a common error in ICU skeletons is to write an incorrect skeleton string such as "YMd" or "ymd" instead of the correct "yMd".
Enables new formatting options not possible with components bags or skeletons:

Year style: the era, such as "BCE", can be automatically inserted

Time precision: the minute can be hidden if it is zero

Prevents nonsensical combinations of fields and options. For example, the ICU4X API prevents "month with minute" (“December 10” for December 5 at 7:10).
Well-suited for data slicing, allowing for minimal data overhead. For example, apps won’t carry weekday names if they are formatting with only a year/month/day or time field set.

Locale Preferences

ICU4X 2.0 introduces Preferences objects, a new paradigm for locale and user preference resolution in component constructors.

The new structures enable richer, type-safe management of user preferences coming from different sources, including locales and other preferences objects. String-based locales are still supported as well.

Locale Identifier String	ICU4X 2.0 Rust Code*
en-US-u-hc-h23	let mut p = Preferences::from(LanguageIdentifier { language: language!("en"), region: region!("US"), ..Default::default() }) p.hour_cycle = HourCycle::H23;
zh-Hant-TW-u-ca-roc	let mut p = Preferences::from(LanguageIdentifier { language: language!("zh"), script: Some(script!("Hant")), region: Some(region!("TW")), ..Default::default() }) p.calendar_algorithm = CalendarAlgorithm::Roc;
ar-EG-u-nu-latn-fw-sun	let mut p = Preferences::from(LanguageIdentifier { language: language!("ar"), region: region!("EG"), ..Default::default() }) p.numbering_system = value!("latn").try_into().unwrap(); p.first_day = FirstDay::Sun;

* The type name "Preferences" is a placeholder for the formatter-specific preferences object, such as DecimalFormatterPreferences, a structured object containing all the pieces of a locale required for number formatting: information on the language, script, region, variant, and numbering system preference, but not irrelevant pieces like calendar system.

Cross Programming Language Improvements

The foreign function interface (FFI) has been overhauled with major ergonomic improvements. Key changes include:

Separate constructors in FFI for built-in compiled data and data from an explicit data provider, enabling better dead-code elimination for non-Rust clients.
C/C++

Namespacing: ICU4X types are exported in a namespace, allowing for including "icu4x::DateTimeFormatter" instead of "ICU4XDateTimeFormatter".
Smart pointers: ICU4X types are returned within std::unique_ptr instead of internally containing an allocation; allowing more flexible usage with other reference strategies.
Versioned ABI: structs that are #[non_exhaustive] in Rust (and methods that use them) are now versioned on both the ABI and in headers, allowing them to evolve safely in future versions

JavaScript

Enums: enum representation changed from strings to classes. Strings can still be used in the constructor
Structs: objects can now be used wherever structs (such as options bags) are required
Special methods: constructors, iterator, getters and setters are now exposed idiomatically
Documentation: typedoc-generated documentation is a lot more readable now (check it out)
ICU4X is now published as an NPM package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/icu

Other Cross-Cutting Changes

Additional changes you may encounter when upgrading from 1.5 to 2.0:

Many Rust types have gained separate owned and borrowed variants; for example, there are now both "Collator" and "CollatorBorrowed". The borrowed variant is slightly more efficient; it can be created statically from compiled data or derived from the owned variant.
Our internal data storage type has a more efficient binary representation (see the zerovec crate). This means that postcard data generated with ICU4X 1.5 will not work with 2.0.
The icu_locid and icu_locid_transform crates were re-organized into icu_locale and icu_locale_core. This means that icu_locid and icu_locid_transform will be forever at 1.5. If you currently depend directly on icu_locid or icu_locid_transform, you need to switch to icu_locale or icu_locale_core.
The icu_calendar crate now focuses only on calendrical calculations, and a new crate, icu_time, contains pieces from icu_calendar and icu_timezone. The icu_timezone crate will be forever at 1.5. If you currently depend directly on icu_timezone, you need to switch to icu_time.
The icu_datagen crate was split into several sub-crates. If you currently depend directly on icu_datagen, you need to switch to icu_provider_source, icu_provider_export, and/or the icu4x-datagen binary crate.
Performance improvements in multiple components. For example, the normalizer got a data rearrangement that benefits non-NFD normalizations, and the collator now has an identical prefix optimization.
Input types for formatters are now re-exported from the formatter crate to reduce the number of explicit Cargo.toml dependencies.
All crates are updated to the latest CLDR (47) and Unicode (16) versions.

Get started with ICU4X 2.0

ICU4X's new website, icu4x.unicode.org, now hosts tutorials, documentation, and more. The website reflects the current release, with previous releases also available.

Check out our quickstart tutorial, interactive demo, or C++, TypeScript, and (experimental) Dart documentation.

As before, the Rust crate is available at crates.io, with documentation at docs.rs.

Please post any questions via GitHub Discussions.

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Unicode 17.0 Beta Review Open

2025-05-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

The beta review period for Unicode® 17.0 has started and is open until July 1, 2025.

The beta is intended primarily for review of character property data and changes to algorithm specifications (Unicode Standard Annexes and certain Unicode Technical Standards that are synchronized with the Unicode Standard). Also, a complete draft of the core specification text is available for review during the beta period.

At this phase of a release, the character repertoire is considered stable. No new characters will be added. Characters could still be removed, and character names or code points could be changed, but such changes would require strong justification.

For this release, 4,847 new characters have been added, bringing the total number of encoded characters in Unicode 17.0 to 159,845. The largest set of added characters is in the new CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J block, with 4,298 new CJK unified ideographs, which increases the number of CJK unified ideographs to over 100,000. The new additions also include characters for the following five new scripts:

Beria Erfe is a modern-use script used in central Africa.
Chisoi is a modern-use script used in northeast India.
Tolong Siki is a modern-use script used in northeast India.
Tai Yo is the traditional script of Tai Yo communities in northern Vietnam.
Sidetic is an historic script used in ancient Anatolia.

In addition to new CJK unified ideographs, nearly 2,500 already-encoded CJK ideographs were horizontally extended, adding source references and glyphs reflecting use of those ideographs in China and Korea.

Another notable character addition is the SAUDI RIYAL SIGN, recently created by the Saudi Central Bank for its riyal currency.

See The Pipeline and the delta code charts for details on all of the new characters.

In addition to new characters, there are some significant character property and algorithm changes, including the following:

A proposed update to UAX #14, Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm, introduces a new Line_Break property value and associated rule changes.
In a proposed update to UTS #39, Unicode Security Mechanisms, a large number of Identifier_Type property value changes are made. These values are used for defining a default recommended set of characters for identifiers used in secure contexts.

Also note that locations of data files for synchronized UTSes have been changed. See the Unicode 17.0 Beta landing page for other noteworthy property and algorithm changes. For full details regarding the Beta, see Public Review Issue #526. Feedback should be reported under PRI #526 using the Unicode Contact Form by July 1, 2025.

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Unicode Technology Workshop 2025 — Call for Submissions Now Open!

2025-05-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

📣 Call for Submissions Now Open!

Unicode is pleased to announce that session proposals for UTW 2025 are now being accepted!

We are seeking proposals for workshops, seminars, case studies, and tutorials that center around:

Unicode i18n libraries
Locale data frameworks
Globalization tooling
Localization pipelines
Input methods
Character encoding
Text rendering …and more!

Tutorial topics might include: font design and Unicode properties, introduction to Software Internationalization (i18n), and how to best support Bidirectional text.

Come connect with other Unicode users, share your knowledge and experience, and help us envision the future of Unicode technology. You will come away with deeper knowledge on how to solve tough problems in the i18n and l10n space and how to engineer products that work better for global users. Program and product managers who work with engineering teams are also strongly encouraged to join and propose sessions.

Deadline for submissions is July 15, 2025 by 5:00PM PT. Proposals will be reviewed in July and session hosts will be notified late July.

‼️Note: To encourage maximum collaboration amongst the attendees, this is an in-person-only event.

🗓️ Mark Your Calendars for Key Dates!

By June 11 - Early Bird Registration for Tutorials and UTW 2025 Opens

July 15 - Call for Submissions Closes - All Proposals, including Tutorials, Due

July 31 - Program Committee Notifications Go Out

August 31 - Early Bird Registration for Tutorials and UTW 2025 Closes

September 1 - Regular Registration for Tutorials and UTW 2025 Opens

See you there!

🫶 Sponsorship Opportunities

If you want to demonstrate your industry leadership, enhance your brand, share your knowledge, promote your products and services, and foster community building, contact events@unicode.org today to learn more. Sponsorship discounts are available to Unicode Full and Supporting Members.

If you have any questions, please contact us at UTW2025@unicode.org

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Unicode CLDR Version 48: Submission Open

2025-05-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

The Unicode CLDR Survey Tool is open for submission for version 48. CLDR provides key building blocks for software to support the world's languages (dates, times, numbers, sort-order, etc.). All major browsers and all modern mobile phones use CLDR for language support. (See Who uses CLDR?)

Via the online Survey Tool, contributors supply data for their languages — data that is widely used to support much of the world’s software. This data is also a factor in determining which languages are supported on mobile phones and computer operating systems.

Version 48 is focusing on:

Unicode 17 additions: new emoji, script names, …
Changes to the root and/or English names of many exemplar cities and some metazones
Additional number and date formats:
- New “relative” variant for date-time combining pattern
- Two new currency formats
- Rational number formats
- New ‘Year-First’ calendar formatting for year-month-day order (Gregorian).
Units:
- New units for languages in modern coverage
- Reworking certain concentration units
New Languages available for submission in Survey Tool:
- Buryat (bua)
- Coptic (cop)
- Haitian Creole (ht)
- Kazakh (Latin) (kk-Latn)
- Laz (lzz)
- Luri Bakhtiari (bqi)
- Nselxcin (Okanagan) (oka)
- Pāli (pi)
- Piedmontese (pms)
- Q’eqchi’ (kek)
- Samogitian (sgs)
- Sunuwar (suz)
- Chinese (Latin) (zh-Latn)

Submission of new data opened recently and is slated to finish on June 11. The new data then enters a vetting phase, where contributors work out which of the supplied data for each field is best. That vetting phase is slated to finish on June 30. A public alpha makes the draft data available in early August, and the final release targets mid-October.

Each new locale starts with a small set of Core Data, such as a list of characters used in the language. Submitters of those locales need to bring the coverage up to Basic level (very basic basic dates, times, numbers, and endonyms) during the next submission cycle.

Once a language reaches Basic coverage, it has the minimum support for use in language selection, such as on mobile devices. In the next submission cycle, the name for that language is also added for translation for all languages at Modern coverage.

If you would like to contribute missing data for your language, see Survey Tool Accounts. For more information on contributing to CLDR, see the CLDR Information Hub.

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Each adoption includes a digital badge and certificate that you can proudly display!

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Highlights from UTC #183

2025-05-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

By Peter Constable, Chair of UTC

Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) meeting #183 was held April 22 – 24. Thanks to member company Microsoft for hosting at its Mountain View, CA campus. Here are some highlights.

Unicode 17.0 Beta

Unicode 17.0 is scheduled for release in September of this year. At UTC #183, technical decisions were taken for updates to be reflected in the Beta release, which will be available for public review later this month.

The most significant changes affecting Unicode 17.0 are encoding of 14 additional characters:

A new currency symbol, SAUDI RIYAL SIGN, was proposed by the Saudi Central Bank and will be added to Unicode 17.0. This has been assigned to code point U+20C1.

Note: We know that many vendors will want to implement support for this quickly. Keep in mind that, while it's unlikely that the code point will change, this isn't completely guaranteed until Unicode 17.0 is finalized at the next UTC meeting, in July.
For more background, see a recent Unicode Blog article, Support for the New Saudi Riyal Currency Symbol.

Thirteen new CJK unified ideographs will be added, twelve of which are needed for use in China. These were reviewed by experts in the Ideographic Research Group (IRG—a working group within ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC2), who recommended immediate encoding. For more information, see Sections 25 and 27 of the CJK & Unihan Working Group recommendations (L2/25-090).

Three characters that were to be newly-added have been removed. The Unicode 17.0 Alpha included the addition of Sidetic script, with 29 characters. (Sidetic is an historic script used in ancient Anatolia.) Based on expert feedback during the Alpha review, three of the characters were deemed not ready for encoding, and so will be removed from Unicode 17.0. Hence, the Beta will include only 26 Sidetic characters.

With these repertoire changes, Unicode 17.0 Beta will include 4,847 new characters.

There were other notable changes related to CJK Unified Ideographs. Thanks to ongoing research by IRG experts, a number of corrections will be made affecting already-encoded ideographs, including changes to the region-specific glyphs shown in the code charts and to source references (the details that map CJK Unified Ideographs to the specific ideograph forms used in different regions). One significant change being made is the horizontal extension of 2,145 existing CJK Unified Ideographs with the addition of glyphs and source data for those characters reflecting use in China. For details, see section 28 of L2/25-090.

Operational criteria for security-related classification of characters

One Unicode specification, UTS 39, Unicode Security Mechanisms, provides guidance on Unicode characters that should or should not be used in identifier systems where security is an issue, such as Internet domain names. It defines a General Security Profile for identifiers, which gives all Unicode characters a status of allowed or restricted. This is based on a classification of characters by a character property, Identifier_Type.

Up to now, there has been a basic description of the different Identifier_Type values, but not detailed operational criteria for assigning characters to the various types. UTC reviewed a proposal for such operational criteria—see L2/25-069, Factors used in determining the Identifier_Type of characters. These criteria were informed by work done in ICANN in defining rules used for determining permitted DNS and second-level domain name labels. UTC approved these criteria to be incorporated into UTS #39 and used for this purpose going forward.

Related to this, the Identifier_Type classifications of over 1000 characters will be revised in Unicode 17.0, in line with these criteria. (Similar changes were made during UTC #182 for a large number of CJK Unified Ideographs.)

New Unicode Technical Standards in development

When I sent email mentioning highlights from UTC #182, I mentioned two technical documents in early stages of development that were available for public review:

PRI #509, Proposed Draft UTS #58, Unicode Link Detection and Serialization
PRI #510, Proposed Draft UTR #59, East Asian Spacing

UTC #183 advanced both of these from Proposed Draft to Draft status.

Also, the specification for East Asian spacing will be changed from a Unicode Technical Report (UTR) to a Unicode Technical Standard (UTS). Technical reports are used to provide technical information, which could include potential algorithms that could be useful for implementations. But they are not used as a basis for specifying data or algorithms where interoperability between implementations is required. As pointed out in document L2/25-138, this new Unicode technical document will be referenced by CSS specifications for the text-autospace property which is in development and being implemented in browsers. Hence, it is appropriate for this Unicode document to be designated as a UTS.

In addition, UTC reviewed a proposal for another UTS and authorized its development: Proposed Draft UTS #61, Unicode Set Notation. Unicode specs for properties and algorithms often need to refer to sets of code points or strings using property assignments. Certain conventions have been used in UTC specs as well as in certain Unicode-provided tools and implementations, including the Unicode Utilities and ICU, and in the Unicode CLDR LDML spec. However, the conventions used in these various contexts have not been mutually consistent and interoperable. The proposed new UTS is a first step toward convergence of the conventions across these contexts. The proposed draft UTS has been posted for public review, and UTC invites feedback on it:

PRI #523, Proposed Draft UTS #61, Unicode Set Notation

Note: some working group reports are referred to for background details, but be sure to check the minutes for definitive outcomes, which sometimes differ from what working groups recommended. For complete details, see the draft UTC #183 minutes.

The Unicode Blog

ICU4X 2.2 released!

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Unicode ICU 78.3 and CLDR 48.2 released

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UTS #18: More Unicode Properties in Regular Expressions

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From Central Bank to Code Point: A Roadmap for Currency Symbol Implementation

Recent currency symbol trend

Implementing support for the new currency symbols

Note regarding support on devices

Recommendations for implementation of Unicode 18.0 currency symbols

Extending support with CLDR

Working together to support local monetary authorities

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UTS #58: Making URLs Readable for Humans: From %E0%A4%AE… to महात्मा

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Unicode 18.0 Alpha review

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Highlights from UTC Meeting #186

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Unicode ICU 78.2 and CLDR 48.1 released

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Opening CLDR Survey Tool early for DDL locales

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UTC #185 Highlights

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Introducing the Unicode Inflection Library Technical Preview Release

Get Started and Participate

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Unicode CLDR 48 available

Locale Coverage Levels

LevelCountWith ScriptRegional VariantsUsage Modern1045305Suitable for full UI internationalization Moderate1301Suitable for “document content” internationalization, eg. in spreadsheet Basic571022Suitable for locale selection, eg. choice of language on mobile phone

Changes in coverage

±

New Level

Locales

📈

Modern

Akan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Kazakh (Arabic), Romansh, Shan, Quechua

📈

Moderate

Anii, Esperanto

📈

Basic

Buriat, Piedmontese, Sicilian, Tuvinian

📉

Basic*

Baluchi (Latin), Kurdish

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ICU4X 2.1 released!

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ICU 78 Released

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Unicode CLDR 48 Beta available for specification review

Locale Identifiers and Names

Misc.

DateTime formats

Numbers

Units of Measurement

MessageFormat

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Unicode CLDR 48 Alpha available for testing

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Unicode 17.0 Release Announcement

Announcing The Unicode® Standard, Version 17.0

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Highlights from UTC Meeting #184

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🥳 Say Hello to the New Emoji Coming in Unicode 17.0 This Fall! ✨

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Registration for Unicode Technology Workshop 2025 is now open!

💲Discounts

🫶 Sponsorship Opportunities

📣 Call for Submissions is also open

🗓️ Mark Your Calendars for Key Dates!

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ICU4X 2.0 released!

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Unicode 17.0 Beta Review Open

Level
Count
With Script
Regional Variants
Usage
Modern
104
5
305
Suitable for full UI internationalization
Moderate
13
0
1
Suitable for “document content” internationalization, eg. in spreadsheet
Basic
57
10
22
Suitable for locale selection, eg. choice of language on mobile phone