What Are The YA Bestsellers So Far in 2026–and What Do They Say About The State of YA?

It’s been several years since I’ve done a deep dive into the YA books landing on The New York Times bestseller list. The last time was in 2023, where I looked at the titles on the list over the 10 years of the list’s existence. But as we enter into the middle of 2026 and begin talking about the best YA of the year so far, as well as what we might expect to see in the second half of the year, it felt worthwhile to check in with The New York Times lists. As has been the case for several years now, there are three lists where YA books show up in The New York Times. There’s the weekly list that focuses on hardcover best sellers. Then there’s the monthly paperback bestsellers list which, as the name suggests, publishes the bestselling YA paperbacks over the last month. The final list is the series list, which combines children’s and YA books; books end up on this list once there are three titles within a given series (for example, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder would land on the series list, combining sales of all the titles within it; Queen of Faces, the first in a new series, would be on the YA hardcover list, as there is only one book in the series so far). There is, of course, also t...