Hello there,
I am preparing for the JLPT N1 in July 2026, and am wondering if reaching level 60 by that time is good enough (kanji-wise).
I know some of the Joyo Kanji are not in Wanikani. Are those rare enough that they can be neglected, or should I identify those kanji and study them besides Wanikani?
Very little of the JLPT is concerned with kanji. The big thing for most test takers is reading comprehension and reading speed, and that is a matter of practice in reading and to some extent vocabulary. Focusing on kanji study has sharply diminishing returns as you go up.
As usual, my suggestion is to do a practice paper or two and look at where youāre having difficulties, and then put the time in in those areas.
I donāt know much about the JLPT but generally speaking the jouyou kanji not on WK are indeed fairly niche for the most part. In general youāre probably better off just reading Japanese and seeing what new kanji do come up and then learn those if they seem useful. Some will be jouyou, but most probably wonāt be (unless you read a lot of Japanese legal documentsā¦).
If a level 60 failed N1 and said āif only I studied more kanjiā I would think āno wonder they failed!ā.
The kanji themself arenāt much of a bottleneck as PM said. If anything the bottleneck would be the amount of words you need to know that use WK kanji (despite not being on wk perhaps) and how to actually understand those words in sentences. Also grammar maybe.
I would focus on getting to a sufficient reading comprehension level have the amount of kanji you learn be naturally shaped by that practice rather than the other way around.
Thatās not even rare. The amount of times l think, oh this word is surely on wanikani. Super useful, and only kanji that are on wanikani. Only to be disappointed that the word isnāt on the platformā¦ That happens at least thrice a day atm. Not even reading that much.
To be fair the words on wanikani Iāve mostly learned, so I donāt have a need to look them up on the platform again 
I would cautiously estimate that 2k kanji are not necessary to pass N1, and 1.5k most frequent ones already provide a very good coverage. Plus you can often guess onyomi of rarer ones from phonetic components if they do come up on the test. So with lvl 60 you should be ready on the kanji front.
6k vocabulary on the other hand definitely requires a supplement, even for lower JLPT levels. I have 13k+ vocab on SRS rotation, a backlog, and still have to look up words all the time, even when recognizing kanji.
To take a very basic example, ē®äø is not on WK, and Iām not sure if Iād guess either reading or meaning correctly, depending on how much context was available in the test.
And, as others already said, and i fully agree, reading speed will be the limiting factor. You can try to time yourself with free practice tests on Bunpro as one data point (people say that the real N1 yesterday was harder than that).
edit: Maybe not the best example of āunnecessaryā jouyou kanji, but both ones in ęØę¶ are only ever used in this word. So even if you fail them as kanji on WK all the time, it will barely affect your ability to read this word at full speed.
I didnāt mean to imply it was. Itās a bottleneck because itās such a common problem to have
literally happened to me on N2 yesterday in one question. i probably shouldnāt say so soon what it was exactly, but it was a āhere it is in hiragana in context, pick the right kanji: (1) XY (2) XZ (3) WY (4) WZā question. all 4 kanji in question were below level 30 here and iād just never seen the compound before.
iām not even worried about that type of question, though. staying focused on the flow of ideas even when thereās a word i donāt know in čŖč§£ or č“č§£, rather than getting tripped up and falling behind, is the hard part imo.