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The first four-session general conference looked and sounded like the five previous decades of conferences with five sessions, centered on Jesus Christ and counsel for listeners.
It was fair to be curious how church leaders would accomplish that with fewer speakers. The solution was to increase the number of speakers.
Somehow, there were more talks — 34 — in a four-session conference than the 33 there were in October for the final five-session conference.
Church leaders managed the feat in two ways.
First, they used more of the two hours allotted for each session. In recent years, some sessions had been ending as many as 10 or 20 minutes or even 30 minutes early.
Second, the talks were shorter.
That allowed the schedule to increase from six or seven speakers per session to eight or nine speakers per session. (Eight spoke in each session on Saturday, with nine in each of Sunday’s sessions.)
The talks remained packed with Christ’s teachings — ICYMI, he was mentioned 1,242 times on Sunday alone — and with doctrine, scripture, testimony, stories of faith, and emotion.
Here’s a look at the length of the October 2025 talks and the April 2026 talks (Note: The list includes only the longest talks by President Dallin H. Oaks at each conference):
| Speaker | Oct ’25 | April ’26 |
|---|---|---|
| President Oaks | 17:23 | 13:38 |
| President Eyring | 13:11 | 13:13 |
| Pres. Christofferson | 14:13 | 12:10 |
| President Uchtdorf | 15:22 | 12:28 |
| Elder Bednar | 14:25 | 12:59 |
| Elder Cook | 14:55 | 11:32 |
| Elder Andersen | 14:33 | 11:42 |
| Elder Rasband | 13:57 | 10:21 |
| Elder Stevenson | 13:16 | 11:16 |
| Elder Renlund | 13:22 | 10:59 |
| Elder Gong | 14:02 | 11:08 |
| Elder Soares | 15:07 | 11:40 |
| Elder Kearon | 14:19 | 11:21 |
| President Holland | 17:23 | — |
| Elder Caussé | — | 11:27 |
| Elder Gilbert | — | 13:08 |
On a separate note about church growth, there were 1,935,487 convert baptisms from Jan. 1, 2018, through Dec. 31, 2025.
Those dates closely reflect missionary efforts during the church presidency of President Russell M. Nelson. He led the church from Jan. 2, 2018, briefly as president of the Quorum of the Twelve upon the death of President Thomas S. Monson and then as church president, until his own death on Sept. 27, 2025.
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