The 'Official TOEIC Listening & Reading Workbook 13' was released on 19 October 2026. The conclusion first: for someone who owns Official Workbook 12, the reason to buy an additional copy is not in the specs.

¥3,630 (incl. tax), 312 pages, two full tests — 400 questions — with a conversion table for estimated score ranges. Every one of these is unchanged from Official Workbook 12. What changed is the included tests themselves and how the app edition is sold. Separate from general usage advice, this article covers only the differences specific to Official Workbook 13 and the criteria for buying or not buying it.

Only Three Differences from Official Workbook 12: Contents, Cumulative Sales, and the Simultaneous App Release

Line the specs up and the differences are barely there. The price is unchanged at ¥3,630, the page count is the same 312 pages, and the contents are the same two tests — 400 questions. That all questions are made by ETS through the same process as the real test, and that the audio uses official speakers, are also series-wide specs, not new features of Official Workbook 13.

What is numerically new is only that the included tests have been replaced wholesale, and that the publisher's cumulative series total has been updated from over 2.5 million copies at the time of Official Workbook 12 to over 3 million copies. In other words, the case for buying an additional copy boils down to one question: do you need the newest yardstick, the one closest to the current real test?

The release date is written slightly differently depending on the sales channel, but it carries little practical meaning. The publisher's release date is 19 October, 'TOEIC Day', established as a pun on the date. Rakuten Books' product information, on the other hand, shows the release date as around 16 October, and an instructor's blog reports that bookstores were already selling it before the scheduled date. What you should check is whether it fits a study plan counted back from your test date. Once you decide to buy, fix the arrival date first and build it into the plan.

The Bonuses Are Audio and an App. But None of Them Is a 'First' for Official Workbook 13

There are two ways to get the audio: download and the official app. The Listening audio can be downloaded free from the official site, and all of the audio can also be heard free in the official TOEIC app. In addition, read-aloud audio for part of the Reading section can be downloaded as a bonus.

The practical value of this bonus is that you can use the Reading passages as material for reading aloud and repeated listening. One disclaimer, though: this read-aloud audio is not a bonus that first appeared with Official Workbook 13. To be precise, a spec that has continued since Official Workbook 5 has simply continued in Official Workbook 13 as well.

The other headline is the official app edition, released on 19 October, at the same time as the book. Its contents are the same as the book's: two tests, 400 questions.

There is a mock-test mode, in which you work through all 200 questions with a timer, just like the real test, and a study mode, in which you solve part by part at your own pace and check the explanations right away. Your correct-answer rate by part is shown on a radar chart, and you can extract just the questions you got wrong for review.

In-app purchasers also get the vocabulary list 'Essential 200 Words'. The app itself is free to download, but using the materials requires an in-app purchase. You need only one of the paper book and the app. Decide this way: paper if you want to work through tests end to end in conditions close to the real test; the app if you want the tallying of your review done automatically.

If you add one more layer to how you use the audio, it becomes a question of close listening. Beyond the official app's study mode, Rehear is another option for people who want to cut audio into short segments and listen closely, again and again. It is a listening practice app made by the team behind this magazine, and it lets you repeatedly listen to just the phrases you could not catch.

For questions you dropped in Parts 3 and 4, do not stop at checking the correct answer: identify the one sentence you could not catch, and repeat it until you can. Precisely because the Official Workbook audio is recorded to the same standards as the real test, its value as close-listening material is the highest there is.

The Conclusion for Now: The Difficulty Has Not Changed Much

The concrete record in early reviews right after release is the impression of an advanced learner who solved TEST 1. In Part 2, the trick questions felt sharper, and there seemed to be fewer questions you could answer after hearing only the opening. Parts 3 and 4 had many questions with long options, and if your pre-reading rhythm breaks, they get quite tough.

Part 5 had questions that narrowed down to two options and still caused agonising, and in Part 7 the sentence-insertion and synonym questions were the hard spots — that is the gist. It is specific, but the basis is one person's feel for TEST 1 only. It will not be stated here as a settled trend.

The same learner also left a comparison with Official Workbook 12. Against 90 correct answers in each section on both TEST 1 and TEST 2 of Official Workbook 12, TEST 1 of Official Workbook 13 came out at 98 correct in Listening and 97 in Reading. Even so, that learner's own conclusion was 'the difficulty has not changed much', attributing the increase in correct answers instead to the possibility that other materials had built up their ability.

At this point, there is no material that would let anyone state flatly that 'Official Workbook 13 has become easier / harder'. On the real-test side, too, an instructor who sits the test every time wrote that Part 2 had questions you would get wrong if you solved them by the common textbook methods — the direction alone overlaps with the impressions of Official Workbook 13. Both, however, remain within the realm of personal impressions. Read them at a discount.

Who Should Buy It, and Who Should Not

The people who should buy it are those who have already finished everything up to Official Workbook 12. If you have zero unused tests on hand and want to run new full mock tests in the real format before your test date, the decision ends there. Two tests for ¥3,630 — ¥1,815 per test. As a yardstick, it is the newest one available now.

People who know they have been dropping marks on Part 2 trick questions or on pre-reading in Parts 3 and 4 in recent tests also gain something: re-measuring where they stand against the latest questions. Conversely, if you do not yet own a single Official Workbook, you are better off starting with Official Workbook 13 than reaching for a used copy of an old one. The conversion table and the audio bonuses all come in their latest form.

Official Workbook 12 is enough for people who have not used it up yet. Set the standard in numbers. If you have not finished both of its tests, or your correct-answer rate has not reached 90% even on re-solves, finishing Official Workbook 12 comes before buying Official Workbook 13.

A column for learners published right after release also warned about the state of '13 has arrived, but I have not even opened 12'. Decide first what you will throw away. The act of adding new material itself does not add a single point to your score.

How to work through the Official Workbooks themselves is covered in a separate article, How to Use the Official TOEIC Practice Book. That article sets out in what order and at what intervals to run the two tests, and what to look at when re-solving them. This article's role is strictly the differences specific to Official Workbook 13 and the decision on buying an additional copy; pair it with that article for how to proceed after you buy.

Buy it as the Official TOEIC Listening & Reading Workbook 13 (paper edition).

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