At last: Saltire emoji to be introduced in June 2017

Nearly 70 new emoji have been approved for release in June 2017 - and a Saltire flag is finally included.

The moment we've all been waiting for. Picture: Emojipedia

The Unicode Consortium has given the green light for 69 emoji including flags, fantasy characters including zombies and vampires, people and smileys.

Set for release in June, the new batch of emoji - known as Emoji 5.0 - will need to be encoded by Unicode before being adopted by Apple, Google, Microsoft and social networks including Twitter and Facebook.

Among the flag emoji set to be included are England, Wales and Scotland - and there’s also a curling stone emoji included for the first time.

An overview of the new emoji. Picture: Emojipedia

Joining them are ‘vomit face’, a Tyrannosaurus Rex emoji and a hedgehog, among others.

According to Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge, the three most requested emoji were bearded man, woman wearing a hijab and giraffe.

A hijab emoji was proposed by teenager Rayouf Alhumedi, who received backing from co-founder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian.

And the inclusion of ‘person in steamy room’ was pushed by Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs - presumably in a nod to the country’s sauna culture.

The new emoji join 2000 other existing symbols and, also of potential interest to Scots - the prospect of a redhead emoji is currently under discussion.