A year-in-review card is the one message at the end of December that people keep. Not the forwarded fireworks, not the group-chat "HNY!", but the thing that says here is our year, in order, and I remember it. It is the same idea as a streaming app's yearly recap, which is why it works: numbers for nobody, frames for one person.
This guide gives you everything to write: a caption for every month, eight three-line quote sets for the typed pages, a wish for a partner, a best friend, the family chat, a team, long distance, or yourself, and a card that plays it all as a film: Rewind, a year-ending story, on MomentoCard.
What a year-in-review card is
A year-in-review card is a recap of one year, made for one person (or one group), in order. The shape that holds:
| Part | What goes there |
|---|---|
| The frames | One photo per month, January to now. Four is enough; twelve is the full year. |
| The captions | Forty characters under each photo, starting with the month. |
| The lines | Three short sentences that say what the year was. |
| The wish | Their name, the wish for next year, your name. |
Everything else is decoration. The order is what makes it a review and not a dump of photos: January first, the month you are in last, and the months in between named even when they are empty. An empty frame that says April tells the truth about April.
Which photos to pick
One rule: one photo per month, and the photo is the month's answer to "what happened?"
- Pick the moment, not the best photo. A blurry phone shot of the kitchen on moving day beats the posed one from the restaurant. The caption will say why.
- Square crops, faces near the middle. Most cards crop to 1:1. A face in the corner gets cut; a face in the middle survives.
- Four is enough. If you only have January, March, June and September, use those. The card still plays every month from January to the one you choose; the rest keep a dark frame with the month's name, and the year still reads in order.
- One closing photo, in colour, for the wish. The one you would frame.
Before you send
Scroll your camera roll month by month, not all at once. Pick one per month before you look at the next. It takes ten minutes and you stop second-guessing.
A caption for every month
Forty characters or fewer, handwritten under the photo, starting with the month. Name the place or the moment; let the photo carry the feeling.
January
Jan, where it started
Jan, new city, same us
Jan, the first morning of the year
Jan, cold hands, warm plans
February
Feb, the week we stopped pretending
Feb, your birthday, my cake
Feb, two umbrellas, one street
Feb, the long call
March
Mar, the trip
Mar, first sun of the year
Mar, the day we got lost on purpose
Mar, you, mid-laugh
April
Apr, the move
Apr, new keys
Apr, rain and the good coffee
Apr, the exam we survived
May
May, the wedding we danced through
May, mangoes, finally
May, graduation, somehow
May, the garden you started
June
Jun, the beach, finally
Jun, the summer we said yes
Jun, midsummer, no sleep
Jun, the road trip playlist
July
Jul, monsoon and the window seat
Jul, the festival weekend
Jul, the one with the fireworks
Jul, home for a week
August
Aug, the hike that nearly ended us
Aug, late trains, better stories
Aug, the birthday on the roof
Aug, the last of the heat
September
Sep, where we are now
Sep, first day of the new job
Sep, the apartment, before the furniture
Sep, back to school, back to us
October
Oct, the lights went up
Oct, the marathon you finished
Oct, the costume you still deny
Oct, the first cold evening
November
Nov, the table was full
Nov, the trip we almost cancelled
Nov, the long weekend
Nov, the photo you hate and I love
December
Dec, the last frame
Dec, the tree, the mess, the noise
Dec, snow, at last
Dec, here's to the next one
Three lines: quotes for the typed pages
The lines are the spine of the card. Three sentences, sixty characters or fewer each, one per page, with a pause after the third. The best ones are plain.
The people who stay (for anyone who was there all year)
Years change. · Routes change. · The people who stay don't.
For a partner
Twelve months. · A hundred small plans. · One person I'd pick again.
For a best friend
Some years test you. · This one did. · You answered every time.
For family
We were apart more than we liked. · We were together when it counted. · That is the whole year.
Long distance
Two time zones. · A thousand voice notes. · Still the same frame.
For a team
We shipped. · We fixed what broke. · We're still here, and so are you.
For yourself
It was not the year I planned. · It was the year I got. · I kept the good frames.
A quiet year
Not every year is loud. · This one was small and true. · Thank you for being in it.
Before you send
Write the third line first. It is the one they will screenshot; the first two only have to walk towards it.
The wish, by who it is for
The wish goes under a gold line with their name above it and yours below. Up to 140 characters; the card fills in the next year for you.
For a partner
Here's to 2027. Every frame of this year had you in it, and next year's reel is already loading.
For a best friend
Here's to 2027. Same chaos, same you, more frames. Thank you for staying in the picture.
For the family group
Here's to 2027. Whatever changes, the frame stays full. Love from all of us.
For long distance
Here's to 2027, and fewer months between frames. You were here even when you weren't.
For a team
Here's to 2027. Thank you for every late frame. The best roll is still ahead of us.
For yourself
Here's to 2027. I kept the good frames and learned from the rest.
The default, if you want the plain one: Here's to 2027. Thank you for being in the frame. More lines by relationship are on the New Year wishes page.
Rewind: a year-in-review card that plays like a film
Rewind, a year-ending story on MomentoCard is the card built for exactly this. Everything above goes into it: the photos, the captions, the three lines, the wish. It plays on a black screen with film grain and takes about a minute.
Scene by scene:
- A clock made of months. January at twelve, December at eleven. One flick and the dial spins, a tick on every month, slowing until the month you chose stops under the hands and lights gold. Three stepped zooms, and the word fills the screen; the gold fades to black.
- A 35 mm negative, one frame per month. Sprocket holes, orange frame numbers, a blinking REWIND, a timecode. The strip runs slowly; each photo comes up from negative to colour as it passes the centre, with your caption handwritten under it. Months without a photo keep their frame.
- Three lines, typed. Black pages, a cursor, a hairline between them like a film gate.
- The wish. Midnight blue at the bottom edge, a gold line, their name, your wish, an optional closing photo in full colour, your name.
- The contact sheet. Every frame of the year on one sheet, in colour, landing one after another.
- 3, 2, 1. An old film leader counts down and the next year lands in gold: take one, roll 2027. Your closing line signs off.
What you fill in:
- The year and the month. The dial stops on the month; the reel plays January up to it. December for New Year's Eve, or the month you are in.
- Up to twelve photos, one per month, square, with a caption under each.
- Three lines for the pages, sixty characters each.
- Their name, the wish, a closing photo, your name, and a closing line for after the countdown.
It is silent by default, so it plays cleanly in a chat; add any track from the library if you want one. Export it in 9:16 for a story or 16:9 for a screen, or send the link. Try it with your own month on the Year in Review card page.
When to send it
- The evening of 31 December. New Year's Eve 2026 is a Thursday. Send it before the countdown, while people are still reading their phones.
- The morning of 1 January. The first thing they open in the new year.
- Christmas week, 24 to 30 December, when inboxes are quieter and a minute-long card gets watched rather than skimmed.
- Any month. A year-in-review is any twelve months: a birthday year, the year since the move, a work year that ends in March. Pick the month and the clock stops there.
Before you send
Watch it through once before you send it. If a caption makes you wince, cut it to the month and the place. If the third line makes you stop, you are done.
For the wish itself, the New Year wishes page has lines by relationship, and the New Year date page has the countdown.
