The Unicode® Consortium

Our Purpose

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit corporation devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalization standards and data, particularly the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in all modern software products and IT standards. The Unicode Consortium actively develops standards in the area of internationalization including defining the behavior and relationships between Unicode characters. The Consortium works closely with W3C and with ISO and IEC—in particular with ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC2/WG2, which is responsible for maintaining ISO/IEC 10646, the International Standard synchronized with the Unicode Standard.

Contact us for general queries.

Publications

The publications of the Unicode Consortium include The Unicode Standard, with its Annexes and the Unicode Character Database, Unicode Technical Standards and Reports, Unicode Technical Notes, the Common Locale Data Repository, and the International Components for Unicode.

Membership

Members of the Consortium include major computer corporations, software producers, database vendors, government ministries, research institutions, international agencies, various user groups, and interested individuals. A white paper outlining the overall value of a Unicode membership to an organization is available separately. Join Unicode!

Directors, Officers, and Staff

The Consortium's directors and officers and staff come from a variety of organizations, representing a wide spectrum of text-encoding and computing applications.

Legal and Governance

Unicode, Inc. is incorporated in the State of California, doing business as "The Unicode Consortium". The Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit public benefit corporation and has the status of a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. See also our State of California tax exempt status. Donations to the Consortium are tax-deductible to the extent allowed for by law. The Consortium Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws are publicly available.

The Consortium maintains a set of legal and governance policies, as well as a set of technical stability policies.

Technical Groups

There are several technical committees, responsible for the technical work and publications of the Unicode Consortium:

Unicode Technical Committee

Responsible for the creation, maintenance, and quality of the Unicode Standard, and related software globalization standards and documents.

Unicode CLDR Technical Committee

Responsible for the Unicode CLDR Project, the Common Locale Data Repository, and related software localization standards and documents.

Unicode ICU Technical Committee

Responsible for the ICU (International Components for Unicode) Project.

Unicode ICU4X Technical Committee

Responsible for the ICU4X Project, developing small, modular components for software internationalization.

These technical committees operate according to the Technical Group Procedures. The Technical Group Leadership page shows all current leaders of these committees and their working groups.

Acknowledgements and Awards

See our acknowledgements pages for the many, many people who have contributed to our standards and projects over the years.

The Unicode Consortium sponsors an occasional Bulldog award given to various personalities for their "outstanding personal contributions to the philosophy and dissemination of the Unicode Standard".

Events and Media

The Unicode Consortium hosts a number of online and in person events explaining various aspects of the standards and internatioalization libraries that we develop. See Unicode Events for information about upcoming events.

The Unicode Blog and Unicode Youtube Channel have other useful information and videoa about our standards and projects. You can also sign up for the Unicode Newsletter.

See also E-Mail Distribution Lists for how to subscribe to our various email lists on technical topics.

History

The Unicode History Corner contains a collection of information about our history, including lists of former directors and technical leadership, and various other resources for those who would like to dig into the early development of the Unicode Standard and the Unicode Consortium.

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