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Announced as part of iOS 26, due out in September, “Emoji Game” has instead been launched to mark July 17’s World Emoji Day — and for iPhones running iOS 18.
Apple has marked World Emoji Day before, notably in 2017 when it unveiled new emoji — and in 2018, when profile pictures of Apple executives were all changed into Memoji. Now, though, it’s gone further with the unexpected early release of a new game.
Emoji Game is part of Apple News+ and is one of that service’s many puzzle games for subscribers. Note that as with all Apple News+ puzzles, Emoji Game is not available internationally.
The surprise is that Apple launched the game as part of iOS 26, so initially it was just in the developer betas of that. That appeared to mean it would only be officially released when iOS 26 becomes the current iPhone operating system, most likely in September 2025.
However, as of today, July 17, 2025, Emoji Game is available for Apple News+ subscribers on iOS 18.4. It’s also out for iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4.
As with all Apple News+ puzzles, Emoji Game is updated daily. It’s like an emoji version of Wordle, in that it’s a fill-in-the-blanks type of game.
Rather than determining a word of a specific length, Apple’s game displays incomplete words. Users then drag the correct emoji into the word to finish the puzzle.
The new Emoji Game, is the latest in a series of puzzles introduced to Apple News+ since a crossword game was added in 2023. Since then, it’s been updated to include others such as a daily Sudoku, although as yet none of the games are available outside the US.
