YouTube Music Recap comes out in the second half of November. Every year since 2022 it has landed between roughly November 20 and November 29, and it rolls out gradually, so some accounts see it days before others. For 2026, plan on late November, most likely the week of November 23, with the feature reaching everyone over the following days.

That is the short answer. The longer answer is more useful if you want to know why the date moves a little each year, whether it has already dropped, and what to do if you are impatient. Recap (Google's name for its year-in-review, even though half the internet calls it "YouTube Music Wrapped") has a pretty consistent pattern once you line up the past few years.

The expected 2026 window

Google has never announced Recap on a fixed calendar date the way it ships some products. Instead the feature quietly starts appearing in the app, tech press notices, and word spreads. Based on the last four years, here is what to expect for 2026:

One detail Google's own help page makes clear explains the timing. To qualify for the year-end Recap you need at least 10 hours of music listening across YouTube platforms between January 1 and November 15. That November 15 cutoff is the tell. Google needs a few days after the cutoff to build everyone's Recap, which is why the feature almost never appears before the back half of November. If you are seeing this in early November and wondering where your Recap is, it is not late. It genuinely has not been built yet.

Past YouTube Music Recap release dates by year

Recap has been around since 2021, and the release date has crept into a tight late-November groove. Here is the verified history.

2021: The first year-end Recap. YouTube Music introduced it to compete with Spotify Wrapped. The exact rollout day is not well documented, but it appeared in the second half of that November.

2022: Rolled out November 29, 2022, per TechCrunch. That year YouTube actually beat Spotify to the punch, since Wrapped had not gone live yet.

2023: Rolled out around late November, with reports of it slowly appearing on November 30, 2023, and Google publishing its own blog post around the same time. This was the "Your album cover" edition, which pulled colors from your top tracks to build custom art.

2024: Started appearing for some users on November 20, 2024, and was widely available by November 25, 2024, according to 9to5Google and TechCrunch. This edition added the "Your music character" personality label and, for the first time, podcast listening stats.

2025: Rolled out around November 24, 2025, with a few people spotting the banner in the days before. It introduced an AI feature that let you "ask about your year," including prompts like "describe my listening as a weather report."

So the trend line is clear. After a slightly later debut, YouTube settled into a window that consistently skips December entirely and lands in the final ten days or so of November. If you want the deeper walkthrough of what each edition includes and how to open it, we keep a running explainer at our YouTube Music Recap guide.

Why people call it "YouTube Music Wrapped"

A quick note on names, because it trips people up in search. "Wrapped" is Spotify's brand. YouTube's version is officially Recap. They do the same basic thing, a personalized year-in-review of your top songs, artists, and total listening time, but if you go looking for "YouTube Music Wrapped" inside the app you will not find that phrase anywhere. It is Recap. We wrote up the naming confusion in more detail in YouTube Music Wrapped explained, if you want the full story.

How the timing compares to Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay

If you use more than one streaming service, the recaps arrive in a rough sequence each year.

YouTube Music Recap has repeatedly been the early bird. In both 2022 and 2024 it went live before Spotify Wrapped. Spotify Wrapped almost always lands in the first week of December, usually the first few days of the month, and it makes a much bigger marketing splash when it does. Apple Music Replay is the outlier of the group because it runs differently. Apple gives you a Replay page you can check any month of the year, then drops the big animated "highlight reel" version in late November or early December. We break down Apple's schedule separately in when does Apple Music Replay come out.

Put simply, YouTube Music tends to go first, Spotify follows a week or so later with the loudest launch, and Apple Music Replay sits in the same late-November to early-December band while also being viewable year round. That is worth knowing if you are the kind of person who wants to post all of them the same week.

The seasonal recaps, and why you might see a "Fall Recap" first

The year-end Recap is not the only one anymore. Google introduced seasonal recap playlists back in June 2022 and has run quarterly seasonal recaps since. These cover winter, spring, summer, and fall, and they need only about 4 hours of listening per season to unlock, versus 10 hours for the annual one.

The seasonal versions have been less predictable than the year-end one. The "Winter" recap has shown up embarrassingly late in the past. In 2023 it rolled out on March 23, and in 2024 the winter edition did not go wide until April 12, so late that Google quietly renamed it from "Winter Recap '24" to the blunter "December-February '24." In late 2025, some users reported still seeing their Fall Recap in the app while waiting for the annual Recap to replace it. So if you open YouTube Music in mid-November and see a seasonal recap rather than the full year-in-review, that is expected. The big one has not swapped in yet.

Is it out yet? How to check and where it lives

When Recap goes live, you usually do not have to hunt for it. A banner appears on the YouTube Music home screen. If it does not, open the app, tap your profile avatar in the top-right corner, and look for Your Recap. Google also surfaces the year-end Recap inside the main YouTube app during the same window.

Recap has historically been a mobile-first experience, built for the phone app and awkward or impossible to view properly on the desktop web player. That has loosened up a little. Google now maintains a "Computer" version of its Recap help page, so desktop is no longer completely shut out, but the full swipeable, shareable experience still really wants to live on your phone. If your Recap is not showing up at all once the rollout starts, that is common enough that we wrote a separate fix-it guide: YouTube Music Recap not showing.

This exact question, some version of "is Recap out yet, and why do my friends have it and I don't," is a fixture on the r/YoutubeMusic subreddit every November. The honest answer that keeps coming up in those threads matches what the tech coverage shows: the rollout is staggered, it reaches accounts over several days, and there is no button that forces it to appear early. Waiting a day or two usually solves it.

What to do if you want your stats now instead of waiting

If it is not November yet, or Recap simply has not reached your account, you do not have to sit on your hands. You have a few options for seeing your listening data on demand.

The most reliable one is Google Takeout. You can request an export of your YouTube and YouTube Music data, including your watch and listening history as a file. It is not as pretty as Recap, but it is the real, complete record of what you have played, and it is available any time of year. This is also the route people use for scrobbling their YouTube Music history to Last.fm, since the Recap card itself does not export anywhere.

You can also browse your own library signals in the app right now: your liked songs, your playlists, and the artists you subscribe to all hint at your top rotation without waiting for November. We collected the full set of methods in how to see your YouTube Music stats, and we are building a dedicated YouTube Music stats tool that works with the official YouTube Data API. Worth being upfront about what that API can and cannot do: it can show your liked videos, playlists, and subscriptions, but it does not expose true play counts or minute-by-minute listening history, so that part still comes from a Takeout export.

Also on Spotify? You never have to wait for an annual reveal there. Music Profile Viewer is our free Spotify stats viewer that pulls your top artists and tracks across every time range on demand.

It reads Spotify only, not YouTube Music. Sign in is official and read-only, and nothing is stored, so you can check the Spotify side of your listening any day of the year.

And if you also use Spotify, you never have to wait for anyone's annual reveal. You can pull your Spotify top artists and tracks on demand with Music Profile Viewer, our free Spotify stats viewer. It reads Spotify, not YouTube Music, but it is a fast way to get the same kind of year-in-review energy in the eleven months when nobody is running a recap.

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