NaNoWriMo 2026: What's Actually Running This November (and Where to Write Your 50,000 Words)

Every October someone in a writing group asks whether NaNoWriMo is on this year, and gets three different answers. The organisation is gone. The challenge is not. Most of the confusion lives in the gap between those two facts.

Here is where things stand on 6 October 2026, taken from the organisers’ own pages, plus what you need to write 50,000 words in November with or without any of them.

The short version

The National Novel Writing Month nonprofit announced its closure on 31 March 2025, and nothing has officially replaced it. The challenge itself, 50,000 words of a novel between 1 and 30 November, now runs in several places at once. NaNo 2.0 is the volunteer effort that includes NaNoWriMo’s founder. ProWritingAid runs a free event called Novel November, and an unrelated volunteer site uses the same name. Reedsy and World Anvil run their own. All are free to join, and you need none of them. A spreadsheet and 1,667 words a day will do.

What happened to NaNoWriMo

On the evening of Monday 31 March 2025, the nonprofit’s interim executive director announced the closure in a YouTube video, citing “a six-year downward trend in participation” and calling it “a logical outcome of longstanding circumstances, not a salacious tale of scandal”, as Publishers Weekly reported. The email that went to the community, quoted by Reactor, put it plainly: “After six years of struggling to sustain itself financially, NaNoWriMo (the nonprofit) will begin the process of shutting down.”

It had been a rough stretch before that. Community members said that inconsistent moderation on its all-ages forums “created an unsafe environment for teenage writers”, as TechCrunch reported, and the forums were put into read-only mode and never reopened. At the end of August 2024 a statement on AI said that “the categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones” (404 Media). Authors Maureen Johnson and Daniel José Older resigned from its writers’ boards, and after several rewrites the organisation announced it was “taking a position of neutrality” on AI. That is all the history this post needs.

The website and its tracker went with the nonprofit. The day after the announcement, Lit Hub told anyone with data stored there that “now’s the time to back it up.” When we checked this week, nanowrimo.org showed a parked-domain placeholder page.

Two myths worth clearing up

“NaNoWriMo isn’t happening any more.” Even the nonprofit didn’t think so. Its closing email said: “We hold no belief that people will stop writing 50,000 words in November (and April, and July) or stop seeking support for the journey they’re on.” They were right. The habit outlived the organisation, and NaNo 2.0’s FAQ is blunt about the organisation part: “There is no longer an official NaNoWriMo organization.”

“Novel November is the official replacement.” There is no official replacement, and there are two Novel Novembers. ProWritingAid’s is run by a company that sells writing software. The other, at novel-november.com, is an independent site with a tracker and forums whose lead developer, Bethany Drake, is an Australian programmer. NaNoWriMo.ca has the old name in its address and no official standing either. NaNo 2.0 describes it as a resource site run by former volunteers from Toronto, and its about page says it “isn’t affiliated with the nonprofit or its past actions.”

What’s running in November 2026

All six are free to join.

Challenge	Goal and tracking	Community	Worth knowing
NaNo 2.0	50,000 words or any project, including editing hours. New tracker, accounts from 7 October	Newsletter, Bluesky word sprints, blog roundups of other groups	All volunteers, including founder Chris Baty. Accounts 16 and up, no message boards or DMs
Novel November by ProWritingAid	50,000 words. Counts words in Word, Scrivener or Google Docs, or log them by hand	Daily sprints, forums, 150+ live workshops	Needs a free ProWritingAid account. Some of the company’s tools use AI
Novel November (independent site)	50,000 words or a custom goal, daily tracker, trophies	Forums under a public code of conduct	13 and up
Reedsy Novel Sprint	50,000 new words, typed inside Reedsy Studio	Online community, weekly check-ins, workshops	No pasting in, no AI. Finishers can enter a contest with a $5,000 top prize (cash prizes are for over-18s)
NovelEmber by World Anvil	50,000 words of prose, or a “rebel” goal such as an editing pass	World Anvil’s community. Challenges launch on its Twitch stream	Badge and printable certificate for finishers. WorldEmber follows in December: 10,000 words of worldbuilding
Novel Quest	50,000 words, 50 hours of editing, or a mix. No sign-up	Zoom, YouTube, Discord, and library write-ins in the US with an online option	Built by former NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaisons. Anyone can host their own

Which one suits whom

You miss the old NaNo and mostly want the tracker: NaNo 2.0. Its site deliberately has no social features, so find your company elsewhere (see below). Its FAQ hopes you’ll write “without AI intervention” and says: “We do not give or sell anything submitted by participants to AI companies for any reason.”
You want workshops and a crowd: ProWritingAid’s Novel November. Prep workshops started on 1 October and editing advice follows in December. Its AI page says some features use large language models, and promises never to use your writing to train its own systems. NaNo 2.0’s roundup of challenges said that ProWritingAid’s use of AI “may make this event a non-starter for some writers”. Work out which camp you’re in before you sign up.
You want a forum, which for plenty of people was half of NaNo: novel-november.com.
You like a prize to aim at and don’t mind living in one app: Reedsy. Every word has to be typed in Studio, and the cash prizes are for over-18s. The window runs on US Eastern time and closes at 11:59 pm on 30 November, which is 3:59 pm on 1 December in Sydney.
You write fantasy and already keep a world bible: NovelEmber in November, then WorldEmber in December.
You are revising, not drafting: Novel Quest counts editing hours, and NaNo 2.0’s tracker takes an editing goal in hours as well.

Doing it on your own

Fifty thousand words in 30 days is 1,667 a day. You do not need an account or anyone’s permission.

November 2026 opens on a Sunday and closes on a Monday, so it has 21 weekdays and 9 weekend days. If your weekdays are already spoken for, split the load:

Flat: 1,667 every day.
Weekend-heavy: 1,200 on weekdays and 2,800 on weekend days. That comes to 50,400.
Weekdays as upkeep: 1,000 on weekdays and 3,250 on weekend days, for 50,250.

The last day is a Monday. Aim to finish on Sunday the 29th and keep the Monday spare.

If you miss three days

Three missed days leave you about 5,000 words behind par. Don’t try to win it all back in one sitting. An 8,000-word Saturday is a bad trade if it flattens your Sunday.

Spread it instead. Say you were on par at the end of Monday 9 November and lost Tuesday to Thursday. From Friday the 13th you have 18 days to write 35,000 words, which is 1,945 a day, about 280 more than the usual target. Or leave the weekdays alone and add about 830 words to each of the six weekend days still to come. Both are dull. Dull gets finished.

When you come back, skip the scene that stopped you. Type [the argument at the station goes here] and start the next scene you actually want to write. Brackets are a plan. They don’t count towards the total, but they stop one bad scene costing you another week.

A Preptober outline in one weekend

You do not need a binder. You need enough of a plan that a tired Wednesday has a next scene waiting. Any weekend before the 31st works, and 24 and 25 October is the last full one.

Saturday morning: one sentence. Fill in [someone] wants [something], but [something is in the way], and if they fail, [this is what it costs]. If the sentence won’t come, the idea isn’t ready for 50,000 words. Try a different idea.

Saturday afternoon: five signposts. A line for each, pinned to a word count and a date:

The start. Who they are before any of it happens.
The door. The event that makes going back impossible. About 12,500 words in, around 8 November.
The turn. Halfway, something they believed turns out to be wrong. 25,000 words, around the 15th.
The floor. The worst point. 37,500 words, around the 23rd.
The end. Roughly where it lands. You can change it in December.

Sunday: thirty lines. One line per scene, one scene per day. Each line names who’s in it, what they want in that scene, and what goes wrong. A scene of around 1,700 words is a comfortable day’s work, so the list doubles as your calendar.

Sunday evening: star five. Mark the five scenes you most want to write. They are your emergency supply for days when the next scene in order won’t come. Nobody checks what order you write in.

Then stop. Names, one rough sketch of the main location, and whatever chapter one needs. Leave the rest of the setting until the story asks for it; our guide to building just enough world explains why that order works.

Trackers that don’t need an organisation

A spreadsheet. Column A is the day (1 to 30), B is words written that day, C is the running total, D is par (=ROUND(50000*A2/30,0)), and E is C minus D. Ten minutes to build, and column E tells you at a glance whether you’re ahead.
A paper calendar. Before November, write the target total on each date: 1,667 on the 1st, 16,667 on the 10th, 25,000 on the 15th, 41,667 on the 25th. Crossing a number out in pen does more for morale than it has any right to.
TrackBear. A free web app that records words, chapters, pages, scenes, lines or time. It says it “will always be free to use”, with no ads and no premium tier, and that it isn’t AI-powered. Leaderboards let a few friends watch each other’s totals climb.
The event trackers. NaNo 2.0’s opens on 7 October. ProWritingAid counts words inside the app you already write in. Novel Quest points you to the free Writing Quests trackers, or paper.

Finding writing buddies

The old regions did not all vanish with the website. NaNoWriMo.ca keeps a list of former regions that still meet. Most have online events, and you don’t have to live nearby to join. Australia has Melbourne’s November Novelling Now, New Zealand has wrimo.nz, and the UK list runs from Bristol and Bath to Manchester, Edinburgh, Northern Ireland, London and the west of Scotland.

Beyond those:

Word sprints. Everyone writes for a set number of minutes, then reports a count. NaNo 2.0 runs a Bluesky account for daily sprints in November.
Your library. Novel Quest holds its November write-ins at a public library in the US, with an online option for everyone else. If your local branch runs writing groups, ask whether it would host a November write-in.
One buddy. Two people texting each other a number every night is the cheapest accountability system going.

Posting your draft as you write it

Some people want readers in November, not in two years. That can work, with one check first.

If you might ever send this novel to an agent, a publisher or a contest, find out before you post it. Literary agent Mary C. Moore, in an interview first published in 2017 and still up on Jane Friedman’s site, put it this way: “If you’ve posted your book online in a public forum, that unfortunately usually means it’s been published, which limits what an agent can do with the rights as most publishers want first rights.”

Contests disagree with each other. The Page One Prize treats work posted on your own website or on Wattpad as unpublished. Book Pipeline’s Unpublished Contest bars a manuscript that has “previously been published in full”, though excerpts and chapters are allowed. The Australian Fiction Prize’s FAQ asks for a manuscript “not previously published in a commercial publication” and adds that your entry “must not have been published before”. Neither line mentions posting online for free, so ask HarperCollins before you post. Keeping the draft private until you have an answer loses you nothing.

Web fiction and fan fiction are different. They are written to be read in instalments, and November is a fine month to start one. Our serialised fiction guide covers schedules and tags, and the best places to share your writing compares Royal Road, Wattpad, AO3 and the others.

On artbase. Disclosure first: this blog belongs to artbase. A novel can go up there chapter by chapter, tagged and categorised the same way as artwork, and short stories, poetry and fanfiction are welcome too. Put the chapters in a collection, and someone who lands on chapter nine can find chapter one. Each chapter takes comments. Members are friendly, their comments say something about the writing, and constructive feedback comes as standard. Beginners are welcome, first drafts included. If you draw as well, your cover and character art can share a profile with the chapters.

Since going public in July 2026, artbase has been growing fast. It costs nothing and shows no ads on any plan. It works well in any modern browser, so you can post a chapter from your phone on the bus and answer the comments on a desktop at home, with nothing to install. Pro is optional. It adds scheduled posts, if you’d like December’s chapters to go up while you sleep. AI-made work must carry a label from the moment it is uploaded, and artbase never uses members’ work to train AI models.

Final thoughts

What people loved about NaNoWriMo was never the website. It was a shared, slightly unreasonable deadline, with a lot of other people attempting it in the same month. That still happens on 1 November, organised this year by volunteers, a few companies and at least one library.

Pick one of them, or none. Write the sentence on Saturday and the thirty lines on Sunday. Start on the 1st and leave the editing for December.

And when December comes and 1,667 a day is more than you want, dailydraw sets a single prompt each day, and it takes a short piece of writing as readily as a drawing. Our piece on why daily prompts work covers the habit side.

Frequently asked questions

Is NaNoWriMo happening in 2026?

The organisation is not. The National Novel Writing Month nonprofit announced its closure on 31 March 2025, and NaNo 2.0 says there is no longer an official NaNoWriMo organisation. The challenge is still happening. NaNo 2.0, ProWritingAid's Novel November, the separate volunteer site novel-november.com, the Reedsy Novel Sprint, World Anvil's NovelEmber and Novel Quest all run in November 2026, and all of them are free to join.

What replaced NaNoWriMo?

Nothing official. NaNo 2.0 is the closest in spirit: an all-volunteer group that includes founder Chris Baty, with a free tracker for writers aged 16 and up that opens on 7 October 2026. ProWritingAid's Novel November adds workshops, sprints and forums. Reedsy and World Anvil run their own November challenges, and many former regions still meet as independent local groups.

Is Novel November free?

Yes. ProWritingAid's Novel November is free and needs a free ProWritingAid account. Prep workshops start on 1 October, the writing runs from 1 to 30 November, and editing resources follow in December. ProWritingAid says some of its software features use large language models, and promises never to use your writing to train its own systems. An unrelated volunteer site at novel-november.com, with its own tracker and forums, is also free.

How many words a day is NaNoWriMo?

1,667 words a day gets you to 50,000 in 30 days. November 2026 has 21 weekdays and 9 weekend days, so another way to do it is 1,200 words on weekdays and 2,800 on weekend days, which comes to 50,400. Missing three days puts you about 5,000 words behind, and spreading that over the rest of the month works better than one enormous catch-up day.

Can I still do NaNoWriMo on my own?

Yes. The goal is 50,000 words of a novel between 1 and 30 November, and you do not need an account anywhere. A spreadsheet with a par column, a paper calendar with each day's target total written in, or the free TrackBear app will track it. For company, NaNoWriMo.ca lists former regions that still meet, including Melbourne's November Novelling Now and wrimo.nz in New Zealand.

Can I post my NaNoWriMo novel online as I write it?

Yes, but check first if you might ever submit it. Literary agent Mary C. Moore has said that a book posted online in a public forum usually counts as published, which limits what an agent can do because most publishers want first rights. Contest rules differ, so read the rules of the one you care about before you post. Web fiction and fan fiction are written to be read in instalments, so posting as you go suits them. On artbase you can post a novel chapter by chapter, keep the chapters together in a collection and get comments on each one. Since going public in July 2026 it has grown quickly, and the people there are friendly, welcoming to beginners and generous with constructive feedback. There is nothing to pay and no ads on any plan, and it works well on phones and desktops alike through any modern browser, with nothing to install.

What happened to the NaNoWriMo website?

The website and its tracker went with the nonprofit. In October 2026, nanowrimo.org shows a parked-domain placeholder page. NaNoWriMo.ca is a separate resource site, and it says it is not affiliated with the old nonprofit or its past actions.