The 5-day Bible reading plan: a year of weekdays
A 5-day Bible reading plan reads the whole Bible in a year on weekdays: 4.6 chapters a reading day (5.1 for a Catholic Bible), about 15 minutes, weekends free.
The short answer
A 5-day Bible reading plan gives you five readings a week and two days with nothing assigned, so a year is 52 weeks of five, or 260 readings. Read that way, the 66-book Protestant Bible's 1,189 chapters come to 4.6 chapters a reading day, about 2,900 words or 12 to 15 minutes. A 73-book Catholic Bible takes 5.1 a reading day, and the New Testament alone is exactly one chapter every weekday.
In this guide
Most Bible reading plans assume you will read on every day of the year, and most weeks do not cooperate. A 5-day Bible reading plan starts from that fact: it assigns five readings a week and leaves two days open, so a missed reading has somewhere to go. Here is the arithmetic for every Bible, how the weekday plans already in print are built, and how to turn any reading order into one of your own.
- 260reading days in 52 weeks of five
- 4.6chapters a reading day, Protestant Bible
- 12–15 mina reading day, at an ordinary pace
- 1New Testament chapter a weekday, for a year
What is a 5-day Bible reading plan?
A 5-day Bible reading plan is a schedule with five readings a week instead of seven, usually covering the whole Bible, or the New Testament alone, in one year. The two days with nothing assigned are part of the design rather than a gap in it. They are where a busy Tuesday’s reading can go, or where a reader can simply rest.
Most plans of this kind number their readings rather than date them. One that has run for more than 30 years, the Five Day Bible Reading Program, prints 52 weeks with five boxes in each and leaves it to you which days you read. Ligonier’s list of reading plans describes it as reading “Monday through Friday”, but a reader who works weekends can just as well take Tuesday and Wednesday off.
How many chapters a day is a 5-day plan?
A 5-day plan through the 66-book Protestant Bible is 4.6 chapters a reading day: 1,189 chapters over 260 reading days. Bibles with more books ask a little more of each sitting, and the New Testament on its own comes out at exactly one chapter.
| Bible | Chapters | Each reading day | In whole chapters | About |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protestant (66 books) | 1,189 | 4.6 | 4 on 111 days, 5 on 149 | 15 min |
| Catholic (73 books) | 1,334 | 5.1 | 5 on 226 days, 6 on 34 | 17 min |
| With Apocrypha (76 books) | 1,360 | 5.2 | 5 on 200 days, 6 on 60 | 17 min |
| Orthodox (78 books) | 1,386 | 5.3 | 5 on 174 days, 6 on 86 | 18 min |
| Ethiopian (80 books) | 1,564 | 6.0 | 6 on 256 days, 7 on 4 | 20 min |
| New Testament only | 260 | 1.0 | 1 every day | 3 min |
Minutes assume about 3.3 minutes a chapter, a relaxed pace. The wider Bibles hold books that Catholics call deuterocanonical and many Protestants call the Apocrypha; the Ethiopian figure counts the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which also includes Enoch and Jubilees, with the 27-book New Testament.
Over a week that is about 23 chapters of the Protestant Bible and about 26 of the Catholic: the same weekly amount a daily plan reads, in five sittings instead of seven.
A calendar year has 260 to 262 weekdays, and 2026 and 2027 each have 261. So a weekday plan always fits inside a year, and in those two years with a day to spare. In 2027 the fit is exact if you begin on Monday, January 4: the 260th weekday from there is Friday, December 31.
How long does each reading day take?
A reading day of a 5-day plan is about 2,900 words of a modern translation, which takes about 12 minutes at the average adult’s silent reading pace and about 14 at a relaxed one. We counted the World English Bible, a public-domain modern translation: its 66 books come to 750,220 words, or 2,885 for each of 260 reading days. A 2019 review of reading-rate research put the average adult’s silent reading of non-fiction at 238 words a minute.
That is about 40 percent more per sitting than a seven-day plan, whose days are 3.3 chapters and about 2,055 words, or 9 to 10 minutes. The table shows how the sitting grows as the reading days in a week shrink, for one year of the Protestant and the Catholic Bible:
| Reading days a week | Reading days a year | Protestant chapters each | About, at 3.3 min a chapter | Catholic chapters each |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 365 | 3.3 | 11 min | 3.7 |
| 6 | 312 | 3.8 | 13 min | 4.3 |
| 5 | 260 | 4.6 | 15 min | 5.1 |
| 4 | 208 | 5.7 | 19 min | 6.4 |
| 3 | 156 | 7.6 | 25 min | 8.6 |
Five days a week keeps the sitting short: a quarter of an hour, with two free days to show for the extra few minutes. Chapters vary a great deal, from Psalm 117’s two verses to Psalm 119’s 176, so a plan that counts chapters has some quick days and some long ones. A schedule written by hand can vary the number of chapters to keep the sittings closer in length.
Why five days a week works
A five-day plan works because a missed reading has somewhere to go. On a seven-day plan every day already carries its own reading, so a missed one either doubles the next day or moves the finish back. The Five Day program’s FAQ puts the problem in one sentence: “If you ever miss a day you have to read double the next day and it really adds up from there.”
With five readings and seven days, the arithmetic changes:
- A missed weekday becomes a Saturday reading, and the week still closes with all five done.
- Two missed weekdays fit into the weekend that follows.
- A whole quiet week moves the finish back by a week, as it would on any plan, and nothing about it has to be made up in one sitting.
The Navigators describe the same idea for their own plans: five readings a week “allows for three to six free days each month to catch up, if needed.” If more has gone by than a weekend can hold, our guide to catching up on a Bible reading plan sets out the ways back in without starting over.
The Five Day Bible Reading Program and other 5-day plans
The Five Day Bible Reading Program is a free 5-day schedule published each year by Lower Light Publications. Its FAQ says a husband and wife put it together more than 30 years ago to help people stay with daily Bible reading, and its site says the schedule was completely revised in 2009. The 2026 edition is built like this:
- The whole Bible, or just the New Testament. Each reading is a few Old Testament chapters, often with a psalm, and one New Testament chapter, so the New Testament readings on their own make a one-year plan.
- The Old Testament in rough historical order. The readings are placed “as chronologically as possible”, with psalms read where they belong in Israel’s history when that is possible, which is why some prophets, Jeremiah especially, appear out of the usual order. Job, which the schedule calls probably the oldest book in the Bible, comes at the end because it is hard to fit anywhere else.
- One Gospel at a time. Mark opens the year, followed by Galatians, chosen for their short chapters; Luke, Matthew and John each arrive later, so the year keeps returning to the life of Jesus.
- Free, in several printings. The schedule page offers color, large-print and black-and-white PDFs, and says “There is never a charge for the Five Day Bible Reading Schedule.”
Supporters on Patreon receive the next year’s schedule by December 1, and anyone can download it from the program’s site on December 26. The schedule itself is theirs, so we link to it rather than copy it. Other weekday plans work the same way with a different shape:
| Plan | Covers | Readings | Each reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Five Day Bible Reading Program | Whole Bible, or the New Testament alone | 5 a week, 52 weeks | Old Testament in rough historical order, often a psalm, one New Testament chapter |
| The Navigators’ 5x5x5 | New Testament | 5 a week, about 5 minutes each | One chapter, all 260 in a year, with the Gospels spread through it |
| The Navigators’ Discipleship Journal plan | Whole Bible | 25 a month | Old and New Testament together, with three to six free days a month |
| A plan you make yourself | Any Bible, any order | 5 a week | 4.6 chapters (Protestant), 5.1 (Catholic) |
Our guide to the Navigators Bible reading plan covers both of theirs in detail. Some churches publish a five-day schedule of their own, and the figures above apply to those too. For a weekday plan in the order the events happen, the routes in how to read the Bible chronologically divide into 260 readings in the same way.
What to do on the weekends
The free days are yours, to use however the week needs:
- Catch up. A reading missed on Thursday fits on Saturday in about a quarter of an hour.
- Rest. Two days with nothing assigned are not a test. Leaving them empty is one of the things they are there for.
- Read something short and different. A psalm or a chapter of Proverbs takes a couple of minutes.
- Read ahead. Monday’s reading done on Sunday makes a full Monday lighter.
- Read Sunday’s passages. If your church follows a lectionary, the weekend is a natural time to read them before you hear them.
How to make your own 5-day plan
Any reading order becomes a 5-day plan once its chapters are divided into 260 readings: about 23 chapters a week for the Protestant Bible and 26 for the Catholic.
- Choose your Bible and your order. Straight through, the two testaments side by side, or the order of events.
- Divide by 260. That is four or five chapters a reading for the Protestant Bible, five or six for the Catholic, Apocrypha and Orthodox Bibles, and six or seven for the Ethiopian. Where a book ends partway through a reading, carry on into the next.
- Count weeks rather than days. A week of about 23 chapters is the unit that matters; which two days are free is up to you.
- Start on any Monday. The plan takes 52 weeks from there.
Read straight through, a weekday year reaches each book in the same week a daily plan does, give or take a day, because the week’s chapters are the same:
| Book | Week it begins |
|---|---|
| Leviticus | 4 |
| Joshua | 9 |
| 1 Samuel | 11 |
| Job | 20 |
| Psalms | 21 |
| Isaiah | 30 |
| Matthew | 41 |
| Romans | 46 |
| Revelation | 52 |
Matthew does not arrive until week 41, which is one reason plans such as the Five Day program put some New Testament in every week. The reading plan calculator lays out a straight-through or a testaments-together plan day by day: ask it for a plan about 260 days long, then take its days in turn on your reading days rather than by the dates it prints. For a paper record, the printable Bible reading tracker has a box for every chapter, in every canon.
Questions people ask
Can you read the whole Bible in a year reading only five days a week?
Yes. Fifty-two weeks of five readings is 260 reading days, and the Protestant Bible's 1,189 chapters over 260 days means four chapters on 111 of them and five on the other 149. A calendar year has 260 to 262 weekdays (2026 and 2027 each have 261), so a weekday plan always fits inside one.
Is the 5-day Bible reading plan chronological?
The Five Day Bible Reading Program partly is. It places its Old Testament readings as chronologically as possible, reading psalms where they belong in Israel's history when it can and keeping Job for the end, while its New Testament readings take the Gospels one at a time through the year. Any order can become a five-day plan, and a chronological one asks the same 4.6 chapters of the Protestant Bible a reading day.
Is there a 5-day plan for the New Testament only?
Yes, and the arithmetic is unusually tidy. The New Testament has 260 chapters and 52 weeks of five readings is 260 days, so it is one chapter every weekday for a year, about three minutes each. The Navigators' 5x5x5 plan is built this way, and the Five Day Bible Reading Program can be followed for its New Testament readings alone.
What do I do on the weekends of a 5-day plan?
Whatever the week needs. Catch up a reading you missed, read ahead, read a psalm, or read nothing at all. The Five Day schedule describes its free days as room to catch up or to take a day off for other Bible reading or spiritual disciplines. The free days need not be Saturday and Sunday; any two days of the week work.
When does the 5-day Bible reading schedule for the new year come out?
The Five Day Bible Reading Program's FAQ says supporters on Patreon get the next year's schedule by December 1, and the general public can download it on December 26. Its 2026 edition began with a week running from December 28 to January 3. A plan you make yourself can start on any Monday of the year.
Sources
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
- World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
- King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
- The Five Day Bible Reading Program (Lower Light Publications)
- Five Day Bible Reading Program: frequently asked questions
- The Five Day Bible Reading Schedule, 2026 edition (PDF)
- Five Day Bible Reading Program: the schedule and its printings
- The Navigators: Bible reading plans
- Ligonier Ministries (December 19, 2025). Bible reading plans
