2026 quiz questions: a graded year in review round with answers

In short

• Thirty 2026 quiz questions and answers, in five rounds of six: news, sport, entertainment, science and the odd moments of the year.
• Each round is graded from 10 points up to 60, so the easy ones come first and the room warms up before it gets hard.
• Every answer was checked against a named source in October 2026, and anything still unresolved then was left out.
• The rounds cover January to October 2026, so add your own for November and December.
• Two numerical tie-breakers at the end.

A quiz of the year is the one round where nobody can claim the questions were unfair. Everybody lived through 2026, so everybody has an opinion, and the arguing is half the entertainment. These 2026 quiz questions are written for an end-of-year party or a Christmas lunch, with the point values doing the grading.

These are the rounds I would actually read out. On a December night, the year in review is where tables that were being polite at 7pm start shouting across the room.

What makes good 2026 quiz questions?

Good 2026 quiz questions have one answer that can be checked, a date attached, and a mix of things people half noticed at the time. The year in review round fails when it turns into a news exam.

Four rules I stick to when I write one:

• Date the question. “In July 2026” beats “recently”, because somebody will read this round out in January and recently will have moved.
• Avoid anything still being argued about. Court cases, records under review and anything with a pending appeal are out.
• Include the silly ones. The map projection and the oldest shipwreck get more noise in the room than the politics.
• Keep the point values visible. People take a run at a 60 when they know it is meant to be hard.

How does the scoring work?

Each round has six questions, worth 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 points in that order, so a perfect round is 210 and a perfect quiz is 1,050. The question gets harder as the value climbs.

Grading by points rather than by round means the hard questions are spread across all five topics. A team who follow the football do not get wiped out by one brutal round, and the last question of each round is the one that separates the top two.

Read the questions in order. If the room is flat on 10 and 20 points, something has gone wrong with your audience, not with the quiz.

2026 quiz questions and answers: the five rounds

Round 1: news and politics

• 10. Who became prime minister in July 2026, having previously been Mayor of Greater Manchester? Answer: Andy Burnham, on 20 July.
• 20. Which country adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, becoming the eurozone’s 21st member? Answer: Bulgaria.
• 30. Sarah Mullally was installed at Canterbury Cathedral in March 2026. Why was it a first? Answer: she is the first woman to be Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 40. Which London share index passed 10,000 points for the first time in January 2026? Answer: the FTSE 100.
• 50. In January 2026 Equatorial Guinea moved its capital from Malabo to which purpose-built city? Answer: Ciudad de la Paz.
• 60. Which South African former United Nations human rights chief won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize? Answer: Navi Pillay.

Round 2: sport

• 10. Which country won the 2026 World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time on 19 July? Answer: Spain.
• 20. Who retained the PDC World Darts Championship on 3 January 2026, beating Gian van Veen 7-1? Answer: Luke Littler.
• 30. Which country topped the medal table at the Milan and Cortina Winter Olympics with a record 18 golds? Answer: Norway.
• 40. Which British middle-distance runner broke the world mile record in London in July 2026? Answer: Josh Kerr, in 3:42.66.
• 50. Which horse won the 2026 Grand National, two years after winning the 2024 running? Answer: I Am Maximus.
• 60. Which 22-year-old beat Shaun Murphy 18-17 at the Crucible in May 2026? Answer: Wu Yize, the second world champion from Asia.

Round 3: entertainment and culture

• 10. Which Sam Fender duet with Olivia Dean became the longest-running UK number one single in 2026? Answer: “Rein Me In”.
• 20. Which 11th-century embroidery went on public display at the British Museum in September 2026? Answer: the Bayeux Tapestry.
• 30. Which revived BBC game show, once hosted by Terry Wogan and Les Dawson, was axed in July 2026? Answer: Blankety Blank.
• 40. Who took over the Radio 2 Breakfast Show in July 2026? Answer: Sara Cox.
• 50. The Shaftesbury Theatre in London is being renamed after which actress from February 2027? Answer: Dame Judi Dench.
• 60. Which Canadian poet, essayist and classicist won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature? Answer: Anne Carson.

Round 4: science, space and the natural world

• 10. Which NASA space telescope, named after the agency’s first chief of astronomy, launched on a Falcon Heavy in August 2026? Answer: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
• 20. The UK’s first deep geothermal power plant was switched on in 2026. Which county? Answer: Cornwall, near Redruth.
• 30. Leopardus tilcayo, described as a new species in 2026, is what sort of animal and from which country? Answer: a wild cat, from Bolivia.
• 40. Which Barcelona basilica became the world’s tallest church in 2026, at 172.5 metres? Answer: the Sagrada Família.
• 50. The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francis Halzen for the IceCube observatory. Which continent’s ice is it buried in? Answer: Antarctica.
• 60. In June 2026 the United Nations warned that which climate pattern could become one of the strongest in decades? Answer: El Niño.

Round 5: the odd moments of 2026

• 10. Which Pacific island country changed its official English name to the Republic of Naoero? Answer: Nauru.
• 20. England’s June temperature record fell on 26 June 2026, at 38.0 °C in Lingwood. Which county? Answer: Norfolk.
• 30. In September 2026 the UN General Assembly backed which map projection in place of Mercator? Answer: Equal Earth.
• 40. Who briefly became the first dollar trillionaire in June 2026, on the day SpaceX floated? Answer: Elon Musk, who dropped back below it the following month.
• 50. Delegates on weights and measures voted in October 2026 to stop adding what to our clocks? Answer: the leap second, with continuous time from 20 May 2027.
• 60. A wreck found off Kekova in Turkey was reported in 2026 as the world’s oldest. Roughly how old? Answer: about 4,700 years, from 2700 to 2400 BC.

What is a good tie-breaker for a 2026 quiz?

A good tie-breaker has a number for an answer, so the closest team wins and nobody has to share a prize. Norway’s record haul in Milan and Cortina works: how many medals did they win in total? The answer is 41.

Need a second? Ask for Josh Kerr’s mile record to the hundredth. The answer is 3:42.66, and the guesses go wild.

Which rounds suit a family audience?

Rounds three and five suit a family audience best, because entertainment and the odd moments of 2026 do not need anyone to have followed the news. At a family event I would drop the politics round altogether and add a music round instead.

For a work Christmas lunch, keep all five and add a sixth of your own: your company’s 2026. The office move, the new starters, the thing that went wrong in March. Nobody can look those up, and they get the biggest reaction of the night.

How do you run these 2026 quiz questions at a Christmas party?

Run them in two halves of 15 questions, read the answers out at the end of each half, and keep the whole thing inside 25 minutes. A year in review round is talkier than a normal quiz, so leave space for the arguing.

• Mix the teams. Put finance with sales and the room gets louder.
• Give the year’s odd moments to the quietest table first. It is the round that gets people talking.
• Read the point value before the question, not after.
• Small prizes. The bragging rights do the work.

For a longer night, bolt this on to a general round from my pub quiz questions or pair it with the new year quiz, which has traditions, resolutions and a separate review round.

How I run a year in review round on my own software

At a work party, half the room would never call themselves quizzers, and when one person per table holds the pen the rest drift off. So I run the year in review as a show on software I wrote myself, played at the front, at the tables, or on every guest’s phone.

Three ways these rounds play on the night:

• On a quiz show board. Five categories, six values each, exactly as they are written above. Teams pick a square, race to buzz in and steal the misses. In a big room I rotate who plays each round, the way I do on Family Fortunes, so more people get a turn at the front.
• On every phone. With quiz software in the room, every guest plays on their own handset. Fast and right beats slow and right, and the leaderboard lands after every question.
• As a knockout. The odd moments round makes a strong round of The Cut: typed answers, nothing to guess from, lowest scores cut until one person is left.

I write the questions for the people in the room, so a graduate intake and a board of directors get different versions of the same round, and your own company’s 2026 can sit right next to the Nobel Prize.

In my experience the year in review is also the safest round to open with at a Christmas party. Everyone can score something, which matters when half the tables have only just sat down.

If you would rather hand the whole evening over, I will pick the games, write the rounds and host it as your quiz master. One host, the whole evening. Call me on 07596 851647 and tell me about the room.