Happy 2026!

Here’s when 2026 starts around the world!

It’s that time of year again, and we can play the 2026 NCTM Year Game in our January lessons. Use the digits in the year 2025 and the operations +, −, x, ÷, sqrt (square root), ^ (raise to a power), ! (factorial), along with grouping symbols to write expressions for the counting numbers 1 through 100. Full rules are here.

And so to the number of properties of 2026…

We can always check Tanya Khovanova’s Number Gossip site for properties of 2026, the common properties of 2026 are shown here. All Number Gossip properties are detailed here.

We see that the title Happy 2026 is most appropriate, as 2026 is a happy number!
Happy Numbers – one of my favourite investigations!

We can also check WolframAlpha for number properties of 2026.

2026 is a semiprime (semiprimes are used in Cryptography), meaning it is the product of exactly two prime numbers: 2×1013. Consulting the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, we can search for sequences in which 2026 appears as a term, and we see that 2026 occurs in numerous sequences, including sequences connected with semiprimes.

For further number properties of 2026, see Numbers APlenty.

Sarah Carter has several lovely New Year 2026 activities, including a challenge and several puzzles on her excellent M + A + T + H = love blog. You can find all the activities here.

Returning to WolframAlpha we can see what 2026 looks like in historical numeral forms. We could use the various historical numerals examples to learn how Babylonian, for example, numerals work. I have successfully used this as an interesting starter for January lessons.

The Babylonian system was a positional base 60 system, though it interestingly uses ‘units’ and ‘tens’ symbols to create the 59 symbols needed.

For more on the Babylonian system, including how fractions were represented, see History of Fractions from Nrich and Ancient Babylonian Numerals from MacTutor.

We could look back and use the excellent MacTutor History of Mathematics from the University of St Andrews, Scotland. We could check today or any day for Mathematicians who were born or died on that day.

The site is searchable in several ways, including the comprehensive index of History Topics.

On the subject of dates and the new year, from trol, Teacher Resources on Line, we can make a calendar for 2026, I do like the fold-and-tuck models – no glue required.

For another source of calendars, including the option to create your own, use Matt Woodfine’s resources on Maths Whiteboard.

We could try this Calendar Calculation from Nrich.

From Quanta Magazine, The Year in Math (2025); the features of Quanta’s video are described as follows:

Video: 2025 marked a historic year in mathematics. Researchers solved a major case of Hilbert’s ambitious sixth problem, proved a sweeping new theorem about hyperbolic surfaces, and settled the longstanding three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture.