8 Best Planners of 2026: Roterunner, Hobonichi, Kokuyo
koowipublishing.com/Updated: 22/12/2025
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There's nothing like the feeling of a brand-new planner. As the new school year kicks off, we've found the best planners to deliver that satisfying rush of a fresh start and a blank page. The sensation of writing things down not only feels satisfying but helps improve retention, and paper planners give a sense of delight in a world that can feel bleak.
A great planner will help you keep your life on track, but that means something different for everyone—do you need room for multiple to-do lists? Places to track all your calls and meetings that week? Open space for whatever strikes your fancy? From daily and weekly planners to planners designed for a specific type of person, here are all of our favorite planners that we've tried and tested. My number one recommendation after over a year of planner testing is the Roterunner Purpose Planner ($30), an undated weekly planner with lots of premade list space and two blank pages for notes for each week. If you're more of a daily person, the Hobonichi Techo ($41) or Techo Cousin ($65) is my go-to. I'm also a big fan of the Kokuyo Jibun Techo First Kit ($45) and Plum Paper's A5 Vertical Priorities Planner ($48).
Once you find your perfect planner, don't forget to check out other great gear from stories in our Home Office directory, from the best digital notebooks and computer monitors to everything you need for your work-from-home setup.
Updated December 2025: The Roterunner Purpose Planner is now our top pick in this guide, followed by the Hobonichi Techo and Jibun Techo. We've updated this guide with prices and links for 2026 planners.
Our Favorite Paper Planners
Our Favorite Planners
From weekly and daily planners to planners for specific use cases (and even a completely custom planner!), here are all the top planners we recommend buying.
This was my standout planner of 2025, and it's one I'll be grabbing again in 2026. I love having space for lists and thoughts, and it takes a lot of room to corral my ideas, so I usually need both a planner and a journal. But not anymore, thanks to the Purpose Planner. It's the only planner that actually becomes the one-stop shop for every list, idea, plan, and goal I have without requiring extra steps or lots of flipping between sections of the planner to get to it.
The Purpose Planner's weekly spread includes six to-do list areas, already labeled with things like work, home, projects, and even stuff to buy, plus smaller checklists for each day and plenty of space to write in my schedule. Not only that, but there are two full dotted pages after each weekly spread for me to doodle, brainstorm, and write more lists all over for that specific week.
The monthly spread has six lists, plus six sections to reflect on when the month ends. It's a six-month, undated planner, so you can pick it up any time of the year and start using it, and you can skip a month without feeling guilty since you won't have a month of pages left blank. You do need to sit down and write in things like the months and dates, but I found that fun and satisfying to do. There are also some fun pages in the front to reflect and plan for your roles in life, goals you want to achieve, and books you want to read. I love the massive B5 size since it's finally enough space for me (almost too much, which feels like a miracle), but there's also a smaller (and cheaper!) A5 ($25) size.
If you're getting into planners, there's no way you won't hear about Hobonichi at some point. There are a few different planners the brand makes, and while the Techo is the most popular model, I tested the similar Hobonichi Cousin that adds weekly spreads to the front of the planner after the monthly overviews. While I wouldn't describe myself as much of a daily planner person, I really liked using the Hobonichi Cousin. All of Hobonichi's planners use Tomoe River S paper, which is super thin but won't bleed through the other side. It's also super smooth to the touch and to write on. I liked using the Cousin's weekly spread section to plan my week, and then the daily pages, I sketched a box to separate my to-do lists and habit trackers from my hourly agenda for the day. The Cousin is an A5 size, while the standard Techo is the smaller A6. I found the larger A5 to be plenty of space for my daily lists and schedule, and it gave me a little extra room for other notes or thoughts I had that day.
There are tons of colors, covers, and other accessories you can get for it, too. I recommend picking out a cover since I did ding up my soft cover quite a bit, and that was just from being used around the house with an occasional trip in a bag. (The Techo also has a nice faux leather cover option if that's more your style than a separate cover.) There are little quotes in the corners, but I got a Japanese version instead of an English one, so I can't actually read mine. But honestly, I'm glad I did; I prefer the Japanese lettering to distracting words on the corners of each page.
The Kokuyo Jibun Techo is another Japanese planner (as revealed by the Japanese word “techo” for notebook or planner), but this one is a weekly style planner. It's also more customizable with a cover and multiple books that fit into it. I've started using the Jibun Techo First Kit, which comes with three books that fit into the included cover: the Diary (labeled simply with the year 2026), Life, and Idea books. The Diary is in the center and is the true planner, with monthly spreads and weekly spreads for the whole year, plus other fun pages like a book list, movie list, project tracker (which I've turned into a habit tracker), money plan, and more.
The Life is in the front, and is full of pages with specific prompts like the 100 Wishes List and places to track specific information, like the passwords page. Finally, the Ideas booklet in the back is simply full of grid paper so you can write out ideas, lists, and doodles to your heart's content. All three books are laid out in an interlaced style to stay put inside the cover, but you could easily switch one out if you needed without needing to replace all three. The Ideas notebook ($8) is the only one available on Amazon, and the one I'm most likely to need to replace before 2026 ends.
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