Kyōiku kanji (教育漢字, literally "education kanji"), also known as Gakunenbetsu kanji haitōhyō (学年別漢字配当表, literally "list of kanji by school year") is a list of 1,026 kanji and associated readings developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education that prescribes which kanji, and which readings of kanji, Japanese students should learn from first grade to the sixth grade (elementary school). Although the list is designed for Japanese students, it can also be used as a sequence of learning characters by non-native speakers as a means of focusing on the most commonly used kanji.

Parts of this article (those related to kanji from fourth grade onwards) need to be updated. (August 2021)

Kyōiku kanji is a subset (1,026) of the 2,136 characters of Jōyō kanji.

• 1946 created with 881 characters
• 1977 expanded to 996 characters
• 1982 expanded to 1,006 characters
• 2020 expanded to 1,026 characters
  • The following 20 characters, all used in prefecture names, were added in 2020.^[1]
  • 茨 (Ibaraki), 媛 (Ehime), 岡 (Shizuoka, Okayama and Fukuoka), 潟 (Niigata), 岐 (Gifu), 熊 (Kumamoto), 香 (Kagawa), 佐 (Saga), 埼 (Saitama), 崎 (Nagasaki and Miyazaki), 滋 (Shiga), 鹿 (Kagoshima), 縄 (Okinawa), 井 (Fukui), 沖 (Okinawa), 栃 (Tochigi), 奈 (Kanagawa and Nara), 梨 (Yamanashi), 阪 (Ōsaka), 阜 (Gifu)

Note 1: Many kanji have complex meanings and nuances, or express concepts not directly translatable into English. In those cases, the English meanings mentioned here are approximate.

Note 2: In the kun'yomi readings, readings after - (hyphen) are Okurigana.

Note 3: A - (hyphen) at the end of the -yomi corresponds to a small tsu in kana, which indicates that the following consonant is geminated.