How to Read the 2026 NMJL Card

Sections, colors, dragons, and where to look first

The first time a student opens the National Mah Jongg League card, I can usually see her face drop a little. It's a small folded card covered in numbers, letters, and three colors, and nobody has told her yet what any of it means.

Here's how I teach it, in the order that keeps faces from dropping.

The card changes every year

The League publishes a new card every year, and the hands change each time. That's why you'll hear players say "the 2026 card," and why last year's card won't work at this year's table.

The 2026 card has 55 lines. Some lines hold two hands joined by the word "or," so there are 72 hands in all.

Sections are neighborhoods

The card is split into sections, each built around a theme. For 2026 they are 2026, 2468, Quints, Consecutive Run, 13579, Any Like Numbers, Winds-Dragons, 369, and Singles and Pairs.

I teach the card with my KISS Method, Keep It Simple, Seriously. The card is a city, each section is a neighborhood, and each hand listed is a house you could move into.

When I refer to a hand, I use the section and the line number. So 2468 #5 means the fifth line in the 2468 section.

The colors mean "a suit," not "this suit"

This is the part that trips up almost everyone. The card prints hands in blue, green, and red, but those colors don't stand for specific suits.

One color on a line means the whole hand is in any one suit you choose. Two colors means any two suits, and three colors means all three. A change in color is simply where the hand switches suits.

Take 2468 #5, which reads FFF 22 44 666 8888, all in one color. That's three Flowers, then a pair of 2s, a pair of 4s, three 6s, and four 8s, all in whichever single suit you like.

The fine print in the parentheses

Each line ends with a note in parentheses, and that's where the real instructions live. It might say Any 2 Suits, or These Nos. Only, or Any 3 Consec. Nos.

Read the parentheses before you fall in love with a hand. They tell you how much freedom you have, and sometimes that's more freedom than the printed numbers suggest.

Dragons and zeros

Each suit has a matching dragon. Red goes with Craks, Green goes with Bams, and the White Dragon, which everyone calls Soap, goes with Dots.

The card tells you which kind of dragon a hand wants. A matching dragon belongs to the same suit as the numbers next to it, an opposite dragon must come from a different suit, and any dragon means you can use whichever one you have.

Soap also does a second job as the zero in hands like 2026. As a zero, it can go with any suit.

X, C, and the number at the end

The letter at the end of each line tells you how you're allowed to build the hand. X means exposed, so you can call discards to build groups of three or more. C means concealed, so the hand stays hidden on your rack until you call Mahjong, and you can only claim a discard for that final tile.

The number is the hand's value. On the 2026 card, values run from 25 up to 75, and the 75-point hand is the last line of Singles and Pairs.

Where a beginner should start

You don't need all 72 hands on your first day, or your first month. I start beginners in four neighborhoods: 2468, 13579, 369, and Winds-Dragons.

Within those, you look at two houses each, which gives you eight hands instead of the whole city. You stay there for two games, two weeks, or two months, whatever your brain needs, and then the rest of the card opens up on its own.

Practice with your own card

Get out your 2026 card, find 2468 #5, and lay it out with real tiles or on paper. Then do the same with the first two lines of 13579, and stop there for today.

If you'd rather learn it with someone sitting beside you, I teach it in every Mahjong 101 class around St. Pete and in my Zoom classes.