Is te reo Māori on Duolingo? The answer in 2026
No. As of October 2026 Duolingo has no te reo Māori course. Duolingo announced one in January 2020 and aimed to release it by the end of that year, then put the work on hold during Covid-19, and it has never launched. Its list of courses for English speakers includes Hawaiian and Navajo, but not Māori.
Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.
Does Duolingo have Māori?
No. We checked Duolingo’s own list of courses for English speakers on 6 October 2026. It offers about forty languages, from Spanish, with 42 million learners, to Yiddish, and Māori is not among them, either as a course or as one marked as coming soon. There is no Māori course for speakers of any other language either.
Two Indigenous languages are there: Hawaiian, a close Polynesian relative of te reo Māori with about 710,000 learners on the page, and Navajo, with about 280,000. That is part of why people expect to find Māori too, and why the question keeps being asked.
Duolingo’s course list changes. Everything on this page about Duolingo is as of October 2026, and the dates below come from Duolingo’s own statements as New Zealand media reported them.
What Duolingo announced in 2020
Duolingo launched its Hawaiian course in October 2018, and a te reo Māori course was announced about fifteen months later. On 15 January 2020 RNZ reported that Duolingo planned to add a beginners’ course in te reo Māori by the end of that year. The idea came from a learner, Gary Pointon, who had used Duolingo for Spanish and French, suggested te reo, and then led the team building it. The broadcaster and te reo teacher Stacey Morrison was on the team.
At Duolingo the project was led by Myra Awodey, who told RNZ they had a good plan for the first 50 skills of the course but still a long way to go before anything could be released. The course was to teach greetings, food and transport through simple phrases, and Duolingo said it would give te reo Māori teachers and students its paid, ad-free version for free.
Morrison welcomed the access an app gives, and said in the same report that an app alone would not give a learner a holistic understanding of te reo, and that learning in the community and with iwi matters as well.
Why the Māori course never launched
The course was being written in Duolingo’s Incubator, originally by volunteers. Three published reports trace what happened next:
| Date | What was reported | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 15 January 2020 | A beginners’ te reo Māori course planned for the end of 2020 | RNZ |
| 21 December 2020 | Work put on hold because the teachers building it had to move to remote teaching during Covid-19; no new launch date | RNZ, quoting a Duolingo spokesperson |
| 3 February 2022 | Still in the Incubator after several delays to the beta; no release date confirmed; the volunteer programme had closed and contributors were now paid | The Spinoff |
| 6 October 2026 | No Māori course on Duolingo’s course list | Duolingo’s own course page |
The Spinoff gave a lack of resources as one reason for the delay: the course had been started by volunteers, and the company had since closed its volunteer contributor programme. We could find no later statement from Duolingo about the course, and no news report of it resuming. Whether any work continues inside the company is not public, so nobody outside it can honestly give a launch date.
Will Duolingo add te reo Māori?
There is no public sign of it. Duolingo has not announced a new date since December 2020, when it said it hoped to know more within a few months. Waiting for it means not learning in the meantime, and there are good ways to start now.
What to use instead of Duolingo for Māori
If you liked Duolingo for another language, what you are probably after is short daily lessons, a steady order of new words and something that keeps you coming back. Several apps, courses and classes do that for te reo Māori, and some are free.
Our top pick: Verbavia (our own course)
Verbavia’s te reo Māori course is free on the web and works in any browser, including on a phone. It is a daily course written by hand from the first word to the end of B1: 311 lessons, none of them generated by AI, and after the last one the daily lesson goes back over the B1 lessons. Every example plays in Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice Te Hiku Media built from recordings of native speakers. New words arrive in frequency order, so the common ones come first; the grammar is explained in English; and each lesson has reading, listening and writing sections.
What it does not do: there is no speaking section for Māori, so it will not listen to you and correct your pronunciation, which a class or a conversation partner does better. The course stops at B1. And for the languages it does teach, Duolingo has a far larger community of learners.
Verbavia Premium on the web costs US$4 a month after a 7-day free trial. It removes the short ad before each lesson and lets you study more than one language at a time. The Māori course itself is the same with or without it. If you already know some words, the Māori vocabulary test estimates how many in a few minutes.
Other ways to learn
- The best apps for learning te reo Māori, if you want an app on your phone.
- Free te reo Māori courses, if cost decides it.
- The best way to learn te reo Māori, if you have not yet decided between an app, a class and immersion.
Whichever you choose, a sentence like Kei te ako au i te reo Māori. ‘I’m learning te reo Māori.’ is a good first sentence to aim for.
How far can an app take you?
Stacey Morrison’s point from 2020 holds for any app, Duolingo or otherwise. An app is good at the steady part, the daily words and the patterns that repeat. It cannot give you a marae, a whānau to talk to, or the confidence that comes from being answered by a person. So it makes sense to use both: an app or course for the habit, and people for the language as it is lived.
For the size of the job, how many Māori words you need sets out what each stage of vocabulary lets you do, and how far a daily habit takes you.
Sources
- Duolingo. Courses for English Speakers (duolingo.com/courses/en), checked 6 October 2026 — Hawaiian (710K learners) and Navajo (280K) listed; no Māori course.
- RNZ (15 January 2020). Duolingo app to add te reo Māori course for beginners — end-of-2020 plan; Gary Pointon; Myra Awodey and the first 50 skills; Stacey Morrison; free premium for te reo teachers and students.
- RNZ (21 December 2020). Duolingo’s te reo Māori course release pushed back — Duolingo spokesperson on Covid-19, remote teaching and no updated target launch date.
- Shanti Mathias, The Spinoff (3 February 2022). When you can’t learn a language from your ancestors, learn from an app — the course in the Duolingo Incubator, beta pushed back, no release date, volunteer programme closed.
- NBC News (8 October 2018). Language-learning app Duolingo adds Hawaiian lessons.