Ring in 2026 With Apple’s New Year Workout Challenge
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Apple is once again helping its customers kick off their New Year’s fitness resolutions with its annual ‘Ring in the New Year’ challenge for Apple Watch users.
The New Year’s challenge has been running since 2016, and while it’s only one of several special activity challenges Apple runs throughout the year, it differs from most by encouraging you to get active on more than just a single day. To complete this particular challenge, you’ll need to close all three of your activity rings — Move, Exercise, and Stand — for seven consecutive days during the month of January.
Start the year strong and stay active! Earn this award by closing all three Activity rings for seven days in a row in January.
Apple
While the challenge and badge is now visible in the Apple Watch and iPhone apps, it doesn’t kick off until New Year’s Day, and since you’ll need to stay active for seven days in a row, the earliest you’ll be able to complete it is on January 7.
Similarly, if you end up getting a later start on your fitness goals, you’ll need to begin closing your rings by January 25 to have any chance of earning this special badge, as is can only be completed until January 31. Again, the goal is to close your rings for seven days in a row in January. February doesn’t count.
In addition to the badge in the Fitness app, the Ring in the New Year Challenge will also unlock a set of limited-edition animated stickers for the Messages app.
Apple offers several other activity challenges throughout the year, many of which commemorate other annual events, such as the Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day (for Heart Month), Earth Day, Veteran’s Day, International Women’s Day, National Parks Day and even International Dance Day.
It’s also run a few one-offs over the years, such as the Global Close Your Rings Day in April to mark the tenth anniversary of the Apple Watch. Others, such as the Unity Challenge for Black History Month, and Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving Day challenges have effectively been retired.
While most of these only have general activity or workout requirements, there are also a few with more specific goals, such as the Global Running Day and International Day of Yoga challenges, which require running or yoga workouts. The National Parks challenge also requires a hike, walk, or run of a minimum distance; other activities like cycling don’t count.
Apple also runs mindfulness challenges to mark occasions such as World Mental Health Day (Oct 10) and World Meditation Day (Dec 21), where the only requirement is to log meditation or mindfulness time.
What’s significant is that most of these are one-shot challenges that occur on a specific day. You complete the assigned activity and get the badge right away. The Ring in the New Year is one of the few entries that runs for a whole month and requires a consistent commitment to working out on multiple consecutive days.
As with all of Apple’s Activity Challenges, you don’t necessarily need to use the Apple Watch to achieve the New Year’s badge, as any third-party app or fitness tracker that’s compatible with Apple Health can also move your rings. However, you’ll likely still need to own an Apple Watch for this specific one, since it requires you to close all three rings, which includes the Stand ring.
Most third-party fitness apps don’t record Stand data, and that third ring may not even be active in the iPhone Fitness app, which typically only shows Move and Exercise unless it’s been paired with an Apple Watch. In theory, if an app submits stand data to HealthKit, it should unlock the third ring, but we haven’t confirmed that. For most, the Apple Watch remains the best way to ensure that the standing is officially counted for the challenge.
However, with the new AirPods Pro 3 now able to offer metrics for exercise workouts, many of Apple’s other regular activity challenges will be achievable even for non-Apple Watch owners, since they typically only require the completion of specific workouts.
