The Fifth Batch of New Hymns!

general
frequency
new hymns
Author

Joey Stanley

Published

September 18, 2025

Modified

February 3, 2026

On September 18, 2025, the church released the fifth batch of new hymns, which features another African American spiritual, a hymn written by a Tongan saint, and lyrics written by President Nelson. In previous posts, I have covered in detail the first, second, third, and fourth batches of hymns and how they were incorporated into sacrament meetings. This page covers period since when the fifth batch came out and will update weekly as more data comes in.

Currently I have data from 11,956 sacrament meetings from 1,223 wards since September 21, 2025. Here’s how much data I have for each week so far, just so you have an idea of what I’m working with.

Number of wards I have data from, by week
Since September 21, 2025
date wards
September 21 440
September 28 647
October 12 720
October 19 587
October 26 604
November 02 691
November 09 674
November 16 720
November 23 679
November 30 692
December 07 722
December 14 687
December 21 598
December 28 674
January 04 792
January 11 751
January 18 813
January 25 427
February 01 38

How many wards sang new hymns each week?

The following plot show what percentage of wards sang from each of the new batches of hymns, per week, since June 2024 when the new hymns started getting rolled out. I’ve included data from all batches just so you can compare them to each other.

The first two weeks of the fifth batch were pretty lukewarm. Very few wards sang those hymns. A few wards sang Our Prayer to Thee (#1048) on September 28, the day after President Nelson died, but otherwise, fifth-batch hymns were quite rare.

There is a noticeable jump after General Conference though. More wards sang from the fifth batch on October 12 (7.9%) than even the best week of the fourth batch when it was the newest batch (August 24th: 6.8%). The bulk of this surge (about 62%) was, perhaps unsurprisingly because of President Nelson’s recent passing, Our Prayer to Thee (#1048). However, since then, I’ve seen all of the fifth batch hymns at least twice.

Since General Conference and through Christmastime, the fifth batch has held pretty constant at around 5%–10% of wards each week. Meanwhile, the other batches (notably the second and third) experience some slumps during Christmas time.

A noteworthy landmark is that October 26 was the day where the most number of wards sang at least one new hymn: about 55%. We’ve seen a handful of weeks were right around half of wards sang new hymns, but that day was quite a bit more than others. We hit came close to this again on November 30, presumably as many wards started to sing the new Christmas hymns. In January 2026, we’re seeing even more wards singing new hymns.

An interesting trend generally is that the first batch of hymns continues to be the most popular among any of the other ones. Even a year and a half after its release it still outperforms almost all of the more recent hymns.

Here’s another version of the same plot but instead of the actual dates, it’s in terms of how many weeks since the batches came out. This version of the plot is useful to spot any parallel trends across the batches, especially in the first few weeks of their release.

In this version of the plot, it’s easier to compare batches. Thanks to that post–General Conference surge, the fifth batch was nearly as popular as the third batch for one week. Since then, it seems to be about as popular as the fourth batch was around this time. But it’s still not super popular: it’s as common to sing fifth batch hymns as it was to sing second batch hymns during Christmastime 2024.

What hymns are most popular each week?

This plot shows how popular each hymn is each week. Out of all the fifth batch hymns sing in a given week, what percentage of them were Our Prayer to Thee (#1048), for example?

For some weeks, particularly in the beginning, the data is sparse, so it’s important to to put too much weight into the percentages. But it is clear that Our Prayer to Thee (#1048) was the most popular in the batch when these first came out, but it has been waning since then. The other super clear pattern is the spike in the two Christmas hymns, Go Tell It on the Mountain (#1208) and Little Baby in a Manger (#1209). There aren’t too many other super clear patterns other than those three, although there does seem to be a trend for some hymns to be more popular in the past few weeks than earlier in this batch’s time.

When during meetings are these hymns sung?

This table shows when during sacrament meetings these hymns have been sung.

When were new hymns sung in sacrament meeting?
Since September 21, 2025
New Hymn Opening Sacrament Intermediate Closing
Thou Gracious Lord, Whose Mercy Lends (1042)
40%
0%
27%
33%
Help Us Remember (1043)
1%
97%
2%
0%
How Did the Savior Minister? (1044)
44%
0%
22%
33%
Jesus Is the Way (1045)
42%
0%
28%
30%
Can You Count the Stars in Heaven? (1046)
33%
0%
37%
30%
He Cares for Me (1047)
46%
0%
29%
25%
Our Prayer to Thee (1048)
40%
10%
20%
30%
Joseph Prayed in Faith (1049)
20%
0%
60%
20%
Stand by Me (1050)
40%
0%
24%
36%
This Day Is a Good Day, Lord (1051)
56%
0%
14%
31%
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1208)
41%
0%
27%
32%
Little Baby in a Manger (1209)
45%
0%
32%
23%
Note: Each row adds up to 100%.

Like many other hymns and batches of hymns, each hymn here has their own story. So some hymns are more common as opening hymns while others are more common later in the meeting, and that’s true generally. The clearest pattern is Help Us Remember (#1043) which is almost always sung as a sacrament hymn. Again, that makes sense since it is about the sacrament. A general trend that I see here though is that most hymns are most common as opening hymns. This is an interesting insight into when during sacrament meetings people like to sing new hymns. It’s of course not a hard-and-fast rule of course, but it is a patterns shared among almost all these hymns.

Conclusion

That’s all for now. Overall, there are some cool things we learn from this batch. On the one hand, more wards are singing at least one new hymn each week. But, as seen in the first plot above, the first batch is where all the action is at. All batches are getting some attention, but the fifth batch is not doing any better than any of the other ones. In general, it seems like people are still enthusiastically singing new hymns, but not all the new hymns.

We’re due for a sixth batch anytime now I believe, so I can’t wait to see what we’ll get to sing soon!