Is Yoruba on Duolingo? (2026 Answer)

No. Duolingo does not offer a Yoruba course, and there is no Yoruba course in development on Duolingo as of August 2026. If you want to learn Yoruba, you will need an alternative to Duolingo. This page explains the current situation, why Yoruba is not available, and what the real options are.

The short answer

Duolingo has never offered Yoruba. Despite Yoruba being spoken by more than 40 million people, primarily in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, it has not appeared in Duolingo's course catalogue at any point, and it is not currently listed as in development.

What African languages does Duolingo actually offer?

As of 2026, Duolingo offers two African languages:

Swahili (added 2017)
Zulu (added 2022)

A third, Xhosa, was briefly available but was removed in September 2023 due to low engagement. No West African language, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Twi or otherwise, has ever been on the platform. Both languages Duolingo does offer are Bantu languages from East and Southern Africa, not West Africa.

This is worth stating plainly because some third-party articles describe Duolingo as having "made significant strides in incorporating African languages." That framing is misleading. Two Bantu languages out of a catalogue of more than 100 courses, with the entirety of West Africa's major languages absent, is not broad African coverage.

Why isn't Yoruba on Duolingo?

Duolingo has not published a specific reason, but the pattern is consistent across its African-language decisions:

Duolingo prioritises by projected user demand. It has historically added languages it expects large numbers of its existing users to study, and has been slow to add languages with large speaker populations but less demand from its current base.
Tonal languages are harder to build for. Yoruba is a tonal language with three level tones and a diacritic-heavy orthography. Duolingo's course tooling was built around non-tonal languages, and the company has said it needed to design entirely new teaching methods even for the click sounds in Zulu and Xhosa. Tone presents a similar tooling problem.
Xhosa's removal set a precedent. When Xhosa was pulled in 2023 for low engagement, it signalled that Duolingo will deprioritise or remove African-language courses that do not reach its engagement thresholds, which raises the bar for adding new ones.

Demand clearly exists. There is an active public petition calling on Duolingo to add Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa, driven largely by diaspora learners who want to reconnect with their heritage languages. As of 2026, Duolingo has not responded to it with a course.

Will Yoruba come to Duolingo in the future?

There is no announced Yoruba course and no public timeline. Duolingo's course development is not open for community contribution in the way it once was, so the older "contribute via the Incubator" advice found in some articles is out of date. For now, anyone waiting for Duolingo Yoruba is waiting indefinitely.

Where can you actually learn Yoruba online?

Because Duolingo is not an option, learners typically use one of three types of resource:

Dedicated tutoring with structured practice. Platforms built specifically for Yoruba and Igbo pair live native-speaker tutors with self-paced app practice between lessons. This is the closest thing to a complete path, and it is the category Lingawa is built for: structured lessons, matching and sentence-building activities, vocabulary practice, and live tutors, aimed at diaspora adults and children.
App-only vocabulary tools. Apps like Memrise and Drops include some Yoruba vocabulary content. They are useful for words and phrases but do not provide structured grammar progression or speaking practice with a person.
Free reference material. Public-domain resources such as the FSI and Live Lingua archives offer ebooks and audio for self-study, though they are scattered and lack a guided path.

The honest trade-off: app-only tools are low-commitment but shallow for Yoruba specifically, and free material is comprehensive but unstructured. If your goal is to actually hold a conversation, a platform that combines self-paced practice with a real tutor closes the gap that leaving Duolingo opens.

Summary

Duolingo does not offer Yoruba, and has never offered it.
Duolingo offers only two African languages, Swahili and Zulu, both Bantu languages from East and Southern Africa.
There is no announced plan to add Yoruba.
To learn Yoruba, use a dedicated platform that combines structured self-paced practice with live native-speaker tutoring, rather than waiting for a mainstream app.

Last verified against Duolingo's public course catalogue in August 2026. Course availability can change; check Duolingo's official course list for the current state.