This Is How We Grow: How the 2026 Substack Notes Algorithm Really Works
+ Join the new 2026 Notes Boost Challenge—the original, the one and only
» Your weekly report on the state of the platform + what to do now + quick tips based on the Substack DNA Framework™️ with your guide, leading Substack Strategist Sarah Fay
My days and nights have been spent understanding how the new Notes algorithm really works.
I didn’t rush to write about it when Substack held its Notes party in Manhattan or when Substack’s Head of Machine Learning Mike Cohen revealed more details about the algorithm than they ever had before.
I wanted to give you a full report based on what I was seeing on the ground with my clients and Premier members, and in light of my experience being in the beta run of Notes two-and-a-half years ago and on Notes since the beginning.
What’s out:
Going viral is so 2025.
Yes, during the Notes bubble (October 2024-June 2025, when just about anyone could grow), some Notes went viral, and some people got 10,000-30,000 subscribers from one Note.
But it didn’t always lead to engaged subscribers. They ended up with an email list of emails, not an audience and readership of humans.
In November 2024, as the Notes bubble was inflating, I predicted it would burst, which it did.
And that’s a very, very good thing…
What’s in:
2026 is all about connection, expansion, and reciprocity.
As Substack said, “Boosting other publishers and joining the wider conversation” are the most effective behaviors for growth.
I love this. This is what Notes was like for the first two years. Our whole MO was to promote other people, and when we did, we all grew.
What matters:
Growth is driven by intersecting audiences. All that matters now is how much you restack and how you restack other people’s posts and Notes, and your replies.
What will work on Notes in 2026:
Post once a day for fresh Notes. Some people are saying to post 3-5 times/day. If you love Notes, go for it, but the algorithm doesn’t want you to flood the feed. The ranking layer mixes content to avoid you appearing multiple times in a row.
Meaty replies, not “love this” or a heart. Engagement, not just with the Note, with the people who’ve already commented. Each Note is a dinner party, to use Substack’s analogy (the algorithm is supposedly “a really good dinner party host), and you are entering the room. Meet people. Have an actual conversation.
Don’t spend your time writing a bunch of Notes and don’t use a template or AI; you don’t need to: repurpose your posts. Go into your posts and find paragraphs and sections you can copy into a Note. You’re signaling who you are and sharing your Substack DNA, which Substack has advised us to do. That’s what brings in subscribers.
Case study: One of my clients had a Note that got 85 likes and a dozen restacks and got 100 subscribers. Another client had a Note that got 12,000 likes and hundreds of restacks and got 100 subscribers.
Restack other people’s Notes and posts with your own insights. Doing so tells the algorithm your interests overlap with that publication, which surfaces your work to their subscribers.
Don’t form a Notes “club.” If you only boost the same people over and over, the algorithm may sense saturation and diversify the reader’s feed away from your circle. You need a larger pool (like in the 2026 Notes Boost Challenge ↓).
The four types of Notes that get traction still holds true. Notes is just an amalgamation of the other social media platforms: early Twitter meets Facebook meets Instagram (with LinkedIn for certain categories like finance and tech).
Back in the day, Substack was great because we all acted on one premise: Growth comes from promoting other people.
That’s the spirit we have in the SW@W paid and Premier community and in the Notes Boost Challenge (NBC). ↓
Join the 2026 Notes Boost Challenge—the one, the only, the original—or don’t and be sure you follow the 4 Types of Substack Notes in 2026.
What the Notes Boost Challenge is:
A weekly challenge (not daily—that was the old algorithm) where you engage with other people’s Notes to grow through audience overlap.
On Tuesdays at 9:00 AM CT, you’ll get the Notes Boost Challenge link at the top of each SW@W post. Everything’s centrally located in the Tuesday SW@W post—you don’t have to go looking for anything.
How the new format suits the new algorithm:
It prioritizes “audience overlap” over isolated spikes—boosting others trains the algorithm to see your work as a natural continuation of a reader’s journey.
It avoids “saturation” penalties—a weekly thread allows for a natural temporal rhythm versus concentrated posting that triggers algorithm boredom.
It shifts from “noise” to “momentum”—replying and restacking with insights of your own creates flow that surfaces your work in front of other people’s subscribers.
It builds “persistent weight”—high-signal interactions (in-depth comments and restacks of other people) carry weight in the model, creating “virtuous cycles” of discovery between audiences.
The emphasis on boosting others is counterintuitive in our me-me-me social media world, but this mindshift will be good for us.
How it suits us all:
It’s about connection and generosity, which is what the SW@W paid and Premier community is all about.
If you join the Boost or not, create Notes based on the 4 types of Notes that get traction in 2026.
Notes is our internal social media network. It’s an amalgamation of the other platforms: old-school Twitter with a dash of Instagram, a dose of Facebook, and a drizzle of LinkedIn.
Follow the 4 types and you will get traction. Just remember that posting your Notes won’t get you as much traction as being in conversation with others.
For those of you in the Premier membership, these are your “joy” Notes.
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The dinner party analogy is very helpful! Thank you, Sarah. I will hop onto the Notes Boost later today.
I find this shift refreshing, Sarah, because I have always been a person who prefers depth over quantity. My growth has been slow and steady these past three years, but I've had such powerful conversations and real, meaningful connections with real people - and that is what matters to me. To know that's what Notes is becoming encourages me to keep showing up as my most authentic self.