26 Pentomino Puzzle for New Years 2026

Celebrate the new year with a 2026-themed pentominoes puzzle that involves building the numbers 2 and 6 for 26 in honor of New Years. Each number requires a full set of 12 pentomino pieces.

This puzzle is just one of many printable pentominoes puzzles that I have created for my own classroom and am sharing with you!

Be sure to check out my entire collection of hands-on puzzles for the classroom.

Looking for more New Years Puzzles and Activities for celebrating the beginning of 2026? Here’s a few examples of the other 2026-themed New Years Resources I have created.

• 
  26 Clock Puzzle
• 
  Twenty-Six Hidden Word Puzzle for New Years 2026
• 
  New Years Tic Tac Toe Game
• 
  New Years Word Search Puzzle
• 
  New Years Hidden Word Puzzle
• 
  2026 No Four in a Row Puzzles for New Years

Puzzle Instructions

Use a standard set of 12 pentominoes to form the shapes of the numbers 2 and 6 (each puzzle will require the full set of 12 pentominoes). Pieces may be flipped or rotated, but they may not overlap one another.

Puzzle Source

The 2 and 6 puzzle designs were created by Helmut Postl. I found it on one of my favorite sources of pentominoes puzzles: pentomino.classy.be. There is one unique solution to both of the puzzles.

Printing and Prepping the Pentominoes Puzzles

11 x 17 Version

This pentominoes puzzle is designed to print on 11 x 17 inch paper. I print all of my pentominoes puzzles on 11 x 17 cardstock for extra durability, but regular 11 x 17 copy paper will work just fine as well. (If you don’t have the ability to print on 11 x 17 paper, keep reading for an alternative printing option!)

All of my pentominoes puzzles are sized for plastic pentominoes made up of 1-inch squares.

If you don’t have a class set of plastic pentominoes, I do have a printable version of 1-inch pentominoes available to save and print. Please be aware that you MUST allow students to turn over the printed pentominoes pieces in order to solve the puzzle! This is less obvious than with the plastic pentominoes pieces.

MATH = LOVE RECOMMENDS…

Amazon offers several brands of plastic pentominoes which I recommend. Each brand is sold in a tub containing six sets of twelve pentominoes each for a total of 72 pentomino pieces.

• Learning Resources Rainbow Pentominoes
• Learning Advantage (edxeducation) Pentominoes
• Didax Colorful Pentominoes

Want each student to have their own set of pentominoes? I also offer a set of free printable one-inch pentominoes pieces which can be laminated or printed on cardstock for durability.

Letter Sized Version

Since many teachers have told me that they do not have access to a copy machine or printer which prints on 11 x 17 paper, I have also uploaded a letter-sized version below which prints on 8.5 x 11 inch paper. You will have to trim and tape or glue the two letter-sized pages together to form the pentominoes puzzle board.

Hints for Solving

Pentominoes puzzles can be quite tricky to solve. It’s not unusual to hear that students have worked on a puzzle for over 30+ minutes without finding a solution.

While some students can handle this level of perseverance, other students might benefit from a few hints in solving the puzzle. I have created a set of 4 printable hint cards that can be used with students to give them (or yourself!) a small piece of the solution.

I do find that the more experience students have with working pentominoes puzzles, the less they need the hints!

Alternate Version from Previous Years

In 2024 and 2025, I shared an alternate version of a pentominoes puzzle that used pentominoes pieces with circular holes cut in some of the pieces.

2025 Pentomino Puzzle

The 2025 Pentomino Puzzle puts a fun twist on a classic pentominoes puzzle by having holes in some of the pieces. Can you build a 5×6 rectangle using pentominoes pieces so that the year 2025 is still visible?

Puzzle Instructions

Arrange six of the twelve provided pentomino pieces to completely cover the rectangular grid. Four of the pieces will contain holes. These holes must be placed to reveal the number 2025 at the center of the grid.

Pieces may be rotated or flipped, but the pieces may not overlap one another. Six pieces will not be used.

Puzzle Pieces

This puzzle uses a standard set of twelve pentominoes pieces with a single hole cut in eight of the pieces. The solved puzzle will use four pentominoes pieces with holes in them and two standard pentominoes pieces.

I used my Cricut Maker 3 machine to cut the pieces out of Astrobrights cardstock and punch the holes out of the pieces.

Cricut used to have an easy way to share their Design Space files with others, but unfortunately I cannot share the file I created with you because Cricut has changed their terms of use. No files including uploaded images can be shared, and I uploaded the images of the pentominoes pieces into Design Space. Ugh.

You can still cut out the pieces on your own cutting machine, but it will require a bit more work since you will have to remove the background from each image/hole and resize the pieces so they print properly. Each pentomino piece should be made up of 1 inch squares.

Don’t have a cutting machine? You can still print the pieces on cardstock and cut out the circles by hand. Take a single hole punch and punch a hole onto the circle you are trying to remove. Then, you can continue to use the hole punch to punch out the rest of the circle or you can use scissors to cut out the rest of the circle.

Ideas for Using the Puzzle in the Classroom

I will be putting this 2025 Pentomino Puzzle out as one of my puzzles of the week alongside the 2025 Yearly Number Challenge and the 2025 Digit Grid Puzzle I shared earlier.

Fun Fact: My “Puzzle of the Week” has really turned into “Puzzles of the Week” because so many of my students have become eager puzzle solvers. They get very sad when they solve all of the puzzles early in the week and don’t have anything to challenge them for the rest of the week.

I don’t dedicate any class time to these puzzles of the week. I just hang the puzzles on my dry erase board. Students grab the puzzles off the board as they come into the classroom and take them to their tables to work on. Groups often see other groups working on puzzles which inspires them to give that puzzle a try the next day.

Students are puzzling before class, between classes, and in odd moments in class like the daily announcements. Some students also work on puzzles if they finish early and don’t have other work to work on.

Modifying the Puzzle for Younger Students

I created this puzzle with secondary students in mind since I personally work with juniors and seniors in my high school math classes.

If you are working with much younger students, you can modify this puzzle by removing some of the pentominoes pieces that are not in the solution. As the puzzle is written, 6 pieces will be in the solution and 6 pieces will be unused.

To make the puzzle VERY easy, only give your students the six pieces needed to solve the puzzle. My husband was able to solve this version of the puzzle in around 30 seconds, so I would suggest including at least one or two distractor pieces to make the puzzle a bit more fun and challenging. Last year, my then-four-year-old, on the other hand, spent 5 minutes on the easier version before giving up.

2024 Pentomino Puzzle

The 2024 Pentomino Puzzle is available to save as a convenient PDF file and an editable Publisher file. In order to edit the Publisher file, you will need to make sure you have Microsoft Publisher installed on your computer.

PDF

Click here to SAVE the file to your device.
2024 Pentomino Puzzle (PDF)
2885 saves – 85.26 KB

Publisher (Editable)

Click here to SAVE the file to your device.
2024 Pentomino Puzzle (Editable Publisher File ZIP)
1958 saves – 568.17 KB

ZIP Folder of Pentomino Piece Images for Creating a Cut File

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Images of Pentomino Pieces for Yearly Pentomino Puzzle (ZIP)
2231 saves – 135.77 KB