The Sixth Batch of New Hymns!

general
frequency
new hymns
Author

Joey Stanley

Published

March 5, 2026

Modified

April 22, 2026

On February 26, 2026, the church released the sixth batch of new hymns. In previous posts, I have covered in detail the previous batches of hymns and how they were incorporated into sacrament meetings. This page covers period since when the sixth batch came out until now.

Currently I have data from 4,598 sacrament meetings from 1,089 wards since February 26, 2026. 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 Febrary 26, 2026
date wards
March 01 819
March 08 796
March 15 808
March 22 740
March 29 327
April 12 674
April 19 434

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.

As you can see, the sixth batch (highlighted in yellow) hasn’t been sung in sacrament meeting very often as a congregataional hymn. After almost two months, we’re still only seeing it in less than 2% of wards each week. Every batch since the third batch took a few weeks to get warmed up, and each batch seems to be less popular than the one previous.

One interesting thing to note though is the gray line—which represents the percent of wards that sang zero new hymns each week, is mostly staying under thte 50% mark. That means that for the past several months, more wards are singing at least on new hymn than not. The steady decline from June 2024 to now I think is pretty remarkable. It takes a few months for a batch to ramp up to its full usage, and none have really changed in popularity all that much over time. That means that we’re steadily incorporating more new hymns as the batches come out. If we’re singing a Batch 1 hymn every three or four weeks, we’ll sprinkle in a second and third batch one every five weeks. And when a new batch comes out, it gets slid into remaining slots. The result is fewer weeks without any new hymns. It also seems like no batches are “eating into” previous ones. I think we really are just adding to the new hymns we’re already singing.

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.

Here it’s easier to see that the first two months of the sixth batch have been the least popular out of any batch so far.

What hymns are most popular each week?

This plot shows how popular each hymn is each week. Take these numbers with a grain of salt, particularly the left sides of each panel, because there’s not a lot of data to work with.

The clearest trend is the rise and fall of Long Ago, Within a Garden (#1210) around Easter. There seems to be a possible trend of wards trying out some other new ones in the past week or so. But we’ll have to wait a few weeks to see if that pans out.

When during meetings are these hymns sung?

This table shows when during sacrament meetings these hymns have been sung. Again, because I’ve only seen most of these hymns sung a few times, take these numbers with a grain of salt.

When were new hymns sung in sacrament meeting?
Since February 26, 2026
New Hymn Opening Sacrament Intermediate Closing
Joyfully Bound (1052)
67%
33%
0%
0%
When I Am Baptized (1054)
0%
0%
100%
0%
The Power of the Holy Ghost (1055)
100%
0%
0%
0%
Elijah and the Still, Small Voice (1056)
0%
0%
100%
0%
Jesus Is My Shepherd (1057)
50%
0%
0%
50%
My Song in the Night (1058)
0%
0%
100%
0%
This Is My Father's World (1059)
71%
0%
14%
14%
Build an Ark (1060)
0%
50%
0%
50%
Love Will Bless Our Home (1061)
50%
0%
0%
50%
Lord, Accept Our Humble Fast (1062)
40%
0%
30%
30%
Long Ago, Within a Garden (1210)
24%
6%
53%
18%
Note: Each row adds up to 100%.

Conclusion

Even though the sixth batch has been out for two months, relatively few wards have sung any of those hymns. This makes it difficult to run stats (and indeed is the reason why it took until the end of April to finally publish this analysis). This is just a continuation of the trend seen since the second batch came out—newer batches are less popular. I’ve said this before in previous analyses, but it might be because the newness is losing its excitement. It might also be that the hymnal committee purposely chose hymns they anticipated being popular at the beginning. I’m thinking ahead to when the full hymnal gets released because presumably we’ll get a whole bunch of new ones then. I’m curious if those new ones will ever become as popular as the ones released in these batches.