WhatsApp Wrapped 2026: your group chat's year in review

Every December the year-in-review recaps roll in: your most played songs, your photos, your miles. The group chat, which is where the year actually happened, gets nothing. WhatsApp doesn’t make a “Wrapped” for groups, but with a chat export and ten minutes you can have one: your 2026 told in screens, with real numbers.

How to make the 2026 Wrapped, in three steps

1. Export the group. On iPhone, tap the group name, scroll to the bottom and tap “Export Chat”. On Android, tap the three dots, “More” and “Export chat”. Choose “Without media” either way. If the option isn’t there, the guide to exporting a chat goes through the usual reasons.
2. Pick “Only 2026”. Open the analyzer with 2026 already selected and drop in the .txt or .zip. Under the file you’ll see “What do you want to analyze?”: “Whole chat”, “Only 2026” or the previous year.
3. Analyze it. The file is read in your browser and the Wrapped opens a few seconds later. The first screen makes it clear: “Your 2026” and how many days of 2026 had messages.

With “Only 2026”, everything is worked out from the calendar year’s messages alone, January 1 to December 31: the totals, the leaderboards, the awards, the emoji, the phrases, the full report, the PDF and, if you turn it on, the AI analysis. Earlier years never come into it.

When to export: after the countdown

An export is a snapshot of the chat at the moment you make it. Export on December 20 and your 2026 ends on December 20, missing what is the busiest day of the year for a lot of groups: New Year’s Eve, with all the “happy new year!” messages and midnight photos.

The safest move is to export on January 1 or the days after and pick 2026. In January the analyzer still offers the previous year, precisely because that’s when it makes the most sense.

If you want to show it at a Christmas dinner, that works too: it’ll be “2026 so far”. Just keep it in mind when you get to the busiest-day screen.

What it will show about your 2026

The screens are the same as in the whole-chat Wrapped, read as a recap of the year:

Screen	What it means in the year-in-review
Messages	How many messages you sent in 2026 and on how many days of the year there was activity.
The group	How many people wrote this year and how many of them make up 60% of the messages.
Busiest day	The day of 2026 with the most messages. It’s often a trip, a match or some news, and it’s the screen that brings back the most memories.
Who talks the most	The year’s podium. It can look very different from the group’s all-time ranking.
Peak hour	The hour and weekday with the most messages in 2026.
Awards	The Ghost, the night owl and the other awards, decided only by what happened this year. How each one is picked is in the awards guide.
Emoji and phrase	The emoji of the year and the phrase repeated most in 2026.

One detail: to win an award you need to have written enough messages that year. Someone who was very active years ago but barely wrote in 2026 can drop out of awards they used to win.

Do it twice: 2026 against all time

One of the games that works best is making the Wrapped twice from the same file: first “Whole chat”, then “Only 2026”. Comparing the two podiums answers the questions every group keeps asking:

• who climbed this year and who has been slowly fading out;
• whether the peak hour moved or the chat still lights up at the same time;
• whether the group’s official emoji is still the same.

To start again with the other option, close the Wrapped, go back to the analyzer and pick the other period. You don’t need to export the file again.

With the AI analysis: the year as a story

Everything above is free. The optional AI analysis (3 € per chat) reads only the 2026 messages when you’ve picked the year, so what you get is the story of the year: the big moments of 2026 in order, the inside jokes born this year, broken promises, a profile of each person and some predictions for next year. The AI gets the text with pseudonyms instead of names and without phone numbers, emails or links. It’s entertainment, not psychology.

How to show it to the group

• Live. At a Christmas dinner or the first meetup in January, put the Wrapped on the TV or share your screen on a video call and go through it together. The “who talks the most” screen starts the debate.
• Screen by screen. Each screen has a “Share” button that makes an image for stories, a square or a landscape format. One a day through the first week of January keeps the conversation going.
• With a link. From the last screen you can create a link so everyone can see the Wrapped and the report on their own phone. It’s stored encrypted for 90 days and the key only travels in the link. Check the group is fine with it first: names and stats are in it.
• Second round. Once everyone has seen the numbers, the “Who said it?” game with real messages from the group rounds off the night.

If something doesn’t work

• “This chat has no messages from 2026”. The file is from a chat with no activity this year, or the export is old. Export it again now and retry, or pick “Whole chat”.
• The recap starts after January. The export only carries what’s on your phone: if you joined the group mid-year or cleared the chat, it starts there. And without media, WhatsApp exports about 40,000 messages at most, starting from the most recent; a group that goes past that in a year won’t reach back to January.

Picking the year doesn’t change your privacy: the chat is read in your browser and isn’t uploaded to any server to work out the stats. The privacy guide has the details.