Afer much hesitation, I finally decided to make a bingo for 2026 ! But I am making a bingo with all the languages I (don’t) read in. I also decided to only add ‘prompts’ for half of the slots per languages, except for English and German, which I added to the bingo only to get through my long overdue owned TBR list. This year, I was mostly choosing books first, and then trying to fit them in somewhere afterwards, with a couple that didn’t fit anywhere, so I only picked a few of the prompts that I thought would be interesting and that I am sure I will want to complete at some point : I just want some motivation to read more, not necessarily challenge myself to diversify my reading (except across languages).
With a 7x7 bingo, a still relatively slow reading speed in a few of these languages (especially KR), and considering I have no idea what’s in store for me next year, I am not aiming for a blackout… but completing a few bingos (more than in 2025 ) would be nice.
Prompts I kept :
Fantasy (KR, NL, FR)
SF (KR, NL, FR)
Published in 2026 (KR, NL, FR)
Received an award (KR, NL, FR)
Book club (KR)
Finish a series (KR)
Altered prompt
Prettiest book you own → Judged by its cover (get a new book based on how pretty the cover is rather than choosing between books I already own) (KR, NL, FR)
Dutch is a tricky one…. I DNFed most of the fiction books I started over the past 3 years. I usually don’t read translations when I can read in the original language, but I gave in this year just to get a few books in. I didn’t mention it, but I will challenge myself to not read translations when I can read in the original language (for fiction only) on the bingo. I do have a few books in mind already, hopefully the bingo will be extra motivation to not DNF books a few hundred pages in (yes, that happened lol)
Haha, oh yeah, I have been there. I adore the Dutch language but only discovered once I was at Uni that the vast majority of Dutch literature is not my cup of tea. ‘Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding’ remains one of my favorite Dutch books I have read. Along with ‘Pluk van de Petteflet’
Guess I’m joining this year. I just stuck to the default prompts - though I may swap out the book club ones, cuz that’s really boring to me. Completion = filling all 25 spaces. This will be an all novels card, but maybe I’ll do one for manga too
I don’t really hold myself super firmly to the prompts. For me, a bingo board is a vehicle for sharing my reading progress with others and relating to others’ progress. It also ends up looking pretty. My original 36 prompts were mostly the 2025 prompts that interested me the most, as well as some challenge prompts (book I dropped, nonfiction, etc (I HATE nonfiction)) with some of them being duplicated (2 books I dropped).
When it became clear that I was going to read way more than 36 books in 2025, I upgraded to 7x7 first, but I don’t remember what I did with the prompts. When I upgraded to 8x8 I started doing reverse bingo where I just distributed the remaining numbers somewhat randomly and then made up my own name for the square after I finished the book.
I plan to do something similar in 2026 where I choose 25 or so prompts, most of which I like, some of which really challenge me, and make the rest reverse bingo.
Ohh, fun concept, I might just do that as well. I’d tried doing both a Spanish and a Korean bingo at once, but that was too much . And for 2026 I was considering adding Japanese to my bingo, but again I feel like it would be overwhelming to have several boards to keep track of. One massive multi language bingo though, that seems less daunting somehow, and it also means I can control the amount of squares better
Edit: Which website did you use to create your bingo? Those colors are nice, great to visualize the languages
I’m a native Dutch speaker, and I don’t want to read anything in Dutch. Everything that’s interesting is in English. Most of my friends and family members who read books do the same. I think it’s because we’ve consumed so much content in English that Dutch books just sound cringy to us in a way.
I made this in powerpoint. (I generated the bingo board using the suggested website first). So it does take some additional manual work, but it’s worth it for me.
I also didn’t think it would work for me to have multiple boards. Multiple boards = multiple failures haha. And I didn’t want the languages to compete with each other. We’ll see how it goes!
A book that doesn’t have any ratings/gradings/reviews on Natively
Join/Participate in a Book Club / Past book club choice Book club (combining these two; so I can either read a current book club pick or a past one to fill this square)
Fantasy
Book you planned to read in 2025 and either gave up on or replaced with another read for the 2025 bingo Nonfiction
Finish a series (can be either one you are already reading or you can start a new one)
Science fiction
Book you keep hearing about but haven’t read yet
Read an author you’ve never read before Buddy read
Prettiest book you own
Why is this in my TBR? - for titles in your TBR that you keep skipping over Been in TBR the longest
Book from someone else’s bingo card
I forgot I bought this - a book that you forgot you owned
Going in Blind - no knowledge of the concept, only choosing it based on vibes
Title you didn’t understand when you first saw it Ask in Seeking Recs thread
Lowest level on TBR
A book that you added to Natively Mythological/fantastical creatures Published in 2026 Historical fiction Has a creature/lifeform you have never seen in real life Has cat(s) Set in a period that’s not modern Book that has won an award Main cast character hides (part) of their identity.
Modifiers:
Must be from my TBR (so no books bought in 2026 count, unless I literally can’t otherwise fill a square)
No manga
4x4
Potential book candidates; this won't be hard and fast, just gonna leave it here as a reference for later
I removed the “Free” field so that I could fit in all 25 prompts.
Then I realized that “I forgot I bought this” and “Why is this in my TBR?” feel like the same to me, so I replaced one of them by (the totally randomly chosen ) “Non-Fiction”.
I have a few ideas for how to fill the slots, but I think I will do the planning by myself and only reveal them once I’ve finished them.
Looking forward to another fun and entertaining bingo reading year with y’all!
I have started to plan my bingo reading, and I am struggling a bit with this prompt:
Is there a common understanding (or even an official definition) what “not modern” means? Is this Edo period? Or pre-WWII? Or even 昭和? (which feels really un-modern to me in so many respects tbh…)
Personally I assumed that as long as it wasn’t present day (like 20-21st century) it’s fine. The book I picked is set in the future. There are androids.
But maybe the intent was historical setting? oh well
Edit: it does look like the intent was historical, based on the original submission? But I don’t see a specific time period called out. Oh well
I took it to mean “the historical period is what puts flavor in the plot and it just wouldn’t work if they didn’t specify it/include a lot of elements from that time”. Something different from “historical/historical fiction” where history itself is carrying the plot.
I personally think the 昭和 era is a perfect example of something that captures this feeling in so many ways. Beside something more historical like WW2, you have a lot of periods that are quite interesting and unique backdrops.
Think something like the University Protests of the 60s, the rise of feminism and women liberation movements in the 70s, and absolutely, the nostalgic pink colored lenses of the Economic Bubble in late 80s. All very unique and worth the reading
) would be nice.
Final boss (inspired from 
Lowest level on TBR
A book that you added to Natively
) “Non-Fiction”.
oh well
