Printable Kwanzaa bingo cards

Playing Kwanzaa bingo in class or at home

The page opens with the classroom list loaded: 25 cards, 4x4, no free space, 4 to a page, which is 7 sheets of paper. Change the number of cards to the number of players. Use Start from above the word box to switch to the family list. Both lists are plain text you can edit before printing, and the edited list stays in this browser for next time.

How long a game lasts

Each list has 52 entries and a 4x4 card shows 16 of them, so no two cards match. In 4,000 simulated games with this page's classroom list on 4x4 cards, the first completed row, column or diagonal came after a median of 14 calls with 25 players (10 to 18 calls in most games). With 10 players at home it came after a median of 16 calls. On 3x3 cards with 25 young children, the median was 9 calls; on 5x5 cards with a free space and 30 players, 15 calls. Calling one entry every 15 to 20 seconds, a first line takes about four minutes, so a lesson has room for a line game, a four-corners game and a full-card game.

For the classroom

The classroom list puts each principle on the card twice, once by its Swahili name and once by its English meaning (Umoja and Unity, Nia and Purpose, Kuumba and Creativity), so children meet both. A simple way to teach with it: when you call a Swahili name, read its one-line meaning from the quoted lines below before moving on, and ask who has the English word on their card. The symbols are there the same way: Kinara and Candle holder, Mazao and The crops, Muhindi and Ear of corn, Kikombe cha Umoja and The unity cup. A few squares are things the class can do during the game, such as "Help a classmate" and "Tidy up together"; call them when you see them happen. If your class meets in the weeks before the winter break, one principle a day works well: play a short game, then talk about the day's principle. If some children celebrate Kwanzaa at home, ask them to add words of their own; the list is a starting point, not a description of how every family keeps the holiday.

For a family evening

The family list mixes words to call with things that happen during the evening: "Who lights it tonight?", "Fill the unity cup", "Someone reads a poem", "Grandparent tells a story", "Second plate". Give each person a card and a pen when they sit down, and let people mark a square when they see it happen as well as when it is called. The candle squares follow the order the official site gives (quoted below): black in the centre, reds on the left, greens on the right, black lit first. Three squares are the three questions the official site names for the day of meditation ("Who am I?", "Am I who I say I am?", "Am I all I ought to be?"); call one and give whoever has it a moment to answer, or to pass. The dishes on the list are common at family tables but are only suggestions; swap in your own before printing. For a mixed-age group, 4x4 with 2 per page keeps the longer squares readable.

Printing

Print with margins set to Default and scale at 100%, or press Download PDF to print elsewhere. Every press of Generate makes a new set, so print all the cards at once. Press Caller sheet for every entry in a shuffled order with a tick box, and check a winning card against the ticks. The PDF uses the Helvetica font, and every entry on both lists is plain Latin letters, so nothing prints as a question mark.

The seven principles, in the official site's words

This page is a game, not a guide to the holiday. The names and meanings of the seven principles below, and every other line set off this way, are quoted word for word from the Official Kwanzaa Website (officialkwanzaawebsite.org), which says it is maintained by Organization Us, the group it names as the founding organization of Kwanzaa. Each line names the page it came from and the date we checked it.

Umoja (Unity): "To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/umoja.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): "To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/kujichagulia.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): "To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/ujima.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): "To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/ujamaa.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

Nia (Purpose): "To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/nia.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

Kuumba (Creativity): "To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/kuumba.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

Imani (Faith): "To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle." — Official Kwanzaa Website, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/imani.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

The days, the candles and the greeting

"Kwanzaa is a seven-day holiday for two reasons: In terms of authenticity, Kwanzaa is modeled on first-fruits celebrations in ancient Africa, especially on Southern African first-fruits celebrations like Umkhosi of Zululand which has seven days." — Official Kwanzaa Website, FAQ, officialkwanzaawebsite.org/faq.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

"The last day of Kwanzaa is the first day of the new year, January 1." — Official Kwanzaa Website, "The Day of Meditation", officialkwanzaawebsite.org/the-meditation.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

"The black candle is lit first on the first day of the celebration. And the remaining candles are lit afterwards from left to right on the following days." — Official Kwanzaa Website, "The Celebration", officialkwanzaawebsite.org/the-celebration.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

"It is: "Habari gani?" and the answer is each of the principles for each of the days of Kwanzaa, i.e., "Umoja", on the first day, "Kujichagulia", on the second day and so on." — Official Kwanzaa Website, "Greetings", officialkwanzaawebsite.org/the-greetings.html. Checked 2026-10-15.

What it cannot do

The page ships no pictures, and the word lists are not a complete or authoritative account of Kwanzaa. The only date on this page is the one in the quoted line above: of the official site's pages we opened, that line gives the last day and the FAQ gives the length, and none of them gave the first day in its own words, so this page does not state one either. Check the official site for the dates before you plan a class event around them. The dishes and clothes on the family list were chosen by us, not by the source.

Sources

The quoted lines above are from the Official Kwanzaa Website (officialkwanzaawebsite.org): its seven principle pages (umoja, kujichagulia, ujima, ujamaa, nia, kuumba and imani), its FAQ, and its pages "The Day of Meditation", "The Celebration" and "Greetings", all checked 2026-10-15. The simulated game figures were computed for this page. Both word lists were written for this page.