Introduction: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega gives tips for wrapping up your 2025 genealogy goals – and setting new goals for 2026. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book “From the Family Kitchen.”

Another year is almost over! That means we will soon be considering what we want to accomplish genealogy-wise in 2026. But you may want to spend these last two weeks finishing up some tasks as we count down the days to the new year.

Here are a few suggestions that can be accomplished in small chunks of time and are essential to your longer-term genealogy goals.

Photo credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html

Download Photos from Your Phone

I am guilty of this. I go to the library and take tons of photos of book pages. I take photos of grave markers. I take photos of family. And those photos continue to reside on my phone.

I’m embarrassed to reveal just how many photos are sitting on my phone waiting for me to do something with them. And I’m even more embarrassed when I think how all that could be lost if something happened to me or my phone. Yes, I have backup services (and you should consider that too), but there are so many photos that they’re too much for my family to do anything with should I pass away unexpectedly. Plus, some of those photos are not family history-related, like the sign where I parked or the book I saw that I want to eventually buy, so cleaning out those photos by deleting the unnecessary ones should also be done.

Now’s the time to stop the doomscrolling and instead use that time to download your photos (or delete them if that’s your intention). You can do this in any number of ways, from buying a storage device that connects to your phone, to uploading your photos to a cloud-based service, to synching them to your computer. Whatever you choose, do it. After you take care of the photos on your phone, make a plan for how you will solve this problem in 2026.

We take more photos than any other generation, but we will leave behind very few photos because our devices are in a sense ephemeral. We no longer print our photos. We settle for the digital files. If something happens to you, most likely your family won’t think of downloading all the photos on your phone (they may not even be able to get into your phone). And even if they can get into your phone, that may be the last thing on their mind to do.

Scan Documents You Received in 2025

Did you order birth or death certificates? Did a family member gift your family history records? Maybe you received a large military file from the National Archives. Take some time now to scan and file them. Even if you don’t do anything else with them for now, at least get them scanned and filed away. A good goal for 2026 would be to analyze, transcribe, attach to a family tree, and share those scanned records.

Scanning original records helps you to ensure they are preserved. Scanned records can be shared and saved to online trees. Records are more likely to survive to be treasured by future generations if they are shared with others. Do this through an online tree, emailing to family, sharing to a social media family page, or a cloud storage website.

Update Your Family Tree for 2025

Family history is an ongoing process and most likely there were events in your family that need to be added to your family tree, such as births, marriages, and deaths. Add those now while they are still fresh so that going into 2026, your tree has all 2025 information updated. Attach any records you may have for those events including certificates, newspaper articles, funeral programs, or obituaries.

Start 2026 knowing that you have already updated your tree with the most recent events for your family. Family history is tracing the past, but we need to remember that those we know now will one day be someone’s ancestral family.

Get Ready for 2026!

The year 2025 is almost over, but that’s not a reason to take a vacation from your family history. Take some spare moments in between the holiday festivities to finish up your family history for the year. Even if you just choose one of these suggestions, you’ll be ahead of the curve when you start thinking of your 2026 goals.

Good luck finishing up your genealogy goals for this year and making new goals for next year!

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Note on the header image: old photos and correspondence. Credit: https://depositphotos.com/home.html