Emojis for England, Scotland and Wales flags will FINALLY be released this year

People from England, Scotland and Wales who have previously tried to express their patriotism in emoji form and been left disappointed will get their wish this year.

The flags for the three nations have finally been approved as emojis and will be released in 2017.

Until now, the only relevant flag available to emoji users in the British Isles was the UK’s Union Flag.

The new flags were confirmed by the Unicode Technical Committee, which controls the introduction of new emojis, and includes members from global tech brands like Apple, Google and Facebook.

The updated emojis are expected to land on iOS and Android devices in the second half of 2017, according to Emojipedia.

Northern Ireland was not included in the new Unicode standards as it has no official flag.

A technical update in the way that the tiny flags are coded, enabling nations to be subdivided, means that thousands more flags could now be added.

The Saltire, Red Dragon and St George’s Cross are the top three ‘top four missing locale flags’ according to search date from Emojipedia, following by the US state flag of Texas.

A campaign to introduce the home nations’s flags to the current emoji roster was spearheaded by Owen Williams of BBC Wales and Emojipedia editor Jeremy Burge.

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In a proposal, they highlighted the fact that of the 24 competing nations in last year’s UEFA Championships, only England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland did not have their own flag available as an emoji.

Last week, it was revealed that redhead emojis could finally be on the way soon as well.