Laying out New Year's resolutions for 2026

There's a factoid floating around out there that's oft-repeated, especially this time of year, about how early January is peak season for new gym memberships. And of course, it's equally oft-repeated that while every gym is packed at the start of the new year, the crowd starts to thin out, little by little, as January gives way to February and March and beyond. And this isn't just a myth, either. Speaking as a guy who lives five blocks from an LA Fitness and drives past all the people exercising every time he makes a grocery run, I can tell you that this phenomenon is undeniably real.

I think we all understand what's happening here. Everyone makes their New Year's resolution to get in better shape, they hit the gym at the start of the year, and then gradually they start to fall behind and their resolutions end up by the wayside before the first day of spring. It's sad, but it's human nature. We all sometimes have big ambitions that don't pan out. It happens.

I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that, CoCo-wise, I hope we can be better than the old cliché about the lapsed gym membership.

Below are a few of our organizational New Year's resolutions for 2026. Our plan is to put these in writing now, embark on them in January, and keep plugging away at them into the spring months, then summer, and thereafter.

Wish us luck, won't you?

Anyway, on to the resolutions...

Run elite Scrabble championships (plural!)

We're excited for 2026 because, for the first time ever, we've got two major championships on the docket! For those who prefer the big Scrabble extravaganza with the whole community under one roof, we've got Word Cup in Williamsburg in July. And for those looking for a smaller, more CSW-centric championship event, we've got the North American Collins Championship (NACC) slated for Minneapolis in November.

We're excited about both events. And one of our top priorities for the coming year is to make sure both of them are as successful as they can possibly be. That's going to be a major focus for us all year long.

Keep our other flagship events thriving

Aside from the two championships, we have a host of other major events throughout the year that make up the bread and butter of our tournament calendar. There's New Orleans in January. Hood River in February. Austin and Champions Cup in the spring. Portland over Labor Day. The California Open in December.

The hope is to bring all of these events back in 2026 bigger and better than ever. And while it's obviously still early, we're feeling pretty optimistic so far.

Beef up the rest of our tournament offerings

All of the above major events make a great skeleton for our yearly tournament offerings; the next step is to put some meat on those bones. We're eager to add more tournaments of all shapes and sizes.

Short tournaments. Long tournaments. Tournaments out East and out West and everywhere in between. Winter, spring, summer, fall, you name it. The more Scrabble events, the merrier. We'll spend all year working to make that happen.

Nurture a new class of directors

The best way to grow the tournament scene? That's easy - find more great people to direct tournaments. While we love, love, love the group of directors we have already, we are always eager to bring additional people on board. The more, the merrier.

In 2026, we're ready to dig into the nitty-gritty details when it comes to director talent - finding people, training them, giving them the tools to be successful, and encouraging them to tackle ambitious new projects. We're excited to get started.

Keep growing our player ranks

Over the last six years, we've gotten a grand total of 229 distinct humans to come join us for at least one live in-person Scrabble tournament. We're proud of that number, but that doesn't mean we're fully satisfied with it.

Next year, we hope to get as many players as possible to try Collins events - and CoCo events in particular - for the first time. Every time we bring a new player into the fold and expose them to the joys of CSW Scrabble, that's a huge win for us. We're going to try to pile up as many such wins as possible in 2026.

Expand our North American footprint

Traditionally, CoCo events have been most successful in a few select pockets of North America - most notably the Pacific Northwest, the mid-Atlantic, and a smattering of places across the midwestern U.S. We're proud of our success in these areas, but by no means do we want to limit ourselves to them. We're always looking for ways to expand geographically.

The dream is a future in which Scrabble players everywhere - across the U.S. and Canada both - can have easy access to CoCo events near them. This dream isn't fully actualized yet, but we're working on it, and we hope to make lots of progress in the year ahead.

Improve our marketing and outreach

Of course, many of the above goals - more tournaments, more directors, more people, more places - become easier to achieve the better job you do connecting with the outside world and drawing people in. For that reason, we try to put as much energy as we can into our marketing efforts.

We send emails. We post social content. We publish this blog that you're reading right now. We do plenty of stuff, but we're also mindful that we can always do more, and we can be more innovative about how we do things. This coming year, we pledge to work on it.

Stay true to our mission

As we go about this business of running all sorts of Scrabble tournaments, large and small, it's important for us to always remember why we got into this business. It's to run tournaments, yes, but it's also to fulfill a specific mission that we've always been passionate about.

We're here to promote Collins Scrabble play and to encourage people everywhere, at home and abroad, to enjoy the international game with one another. And we're here to give Scrabblers a truly democratic players' organization that cares about them, listens to them, and fights actively for their best interests. As we move forward into 2026 and beyond, we'll do our best not to lose sight of that.