England, Scotland and Wales are getting their own flag emoji

Twitter users in England, Scotland and Wales who feel the urge to be a little more patriotic will soon have just the emoji for the job as the three country’s flags have been approved for release later this year.

At the moment, only the Union flag is available as an emoji to users, but following a meeting of the Unicode Technical Council – the body that decides and regulates emoji creation and approval – the Saltire, St George’s Cross and Red Dragon have been confirmed as future designs by the president of Unicode.

Given the timing of the approval, the emoji are likely to come into circulation in the second half of this year, with the likes of Apple, Google and Facebook able to implement the design into their various systems.The process of approving the designs involves a standard being agreed upon, which can then be introduced to various smartphone software and social media platforms individually. In this instance, Unicode has categorised the three flags as subdivisions of the Union Flag, in a similar set-up to the way the flags of US states sit beneath the US national flag.

Since Northern Ireland has no official flag, it is not included in the set-up. The designs come as a result of a campaign led by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge and BBC Wales’ Owen Williams, both of whom were mentioned in Davis’ tweet revealing the news.It follows other recent emoji news, with the understanding that redhead versions of many of the people-based designs could be introduced next year.