How many combinations are possible with 26 letters?

The number of combinations that can be formed with 26 letters depends on two factors: whether repetitions are allowed and how many letters you are choosing for each combination.

If repetitions are not allowed and you’re choosing all 26 letters, there’s only one combination possible, which is all the letters themselves in any order. However, the more interesting case is when we allow repetitions.

For example, if you want to find the number of combinations of any length ‘n’ where repetitions are allowed, you would calculate it as:

Number of combinations = 26^n

This means for every letter selected, you have 26 options. So if you’re selecting:

• 1 letter: 26¹ = 26 combinations
• 2 letters: 26² = 676 combinations
• 3 letters: 26³ = 17,576 combinations

As the length increases, the number of combinations increases exponentially. For example, if you were to choose combinations of length 5, you would have:

26^5 = 11,881,376 combinations

In summary, the total number of combinations with 26 letters, allowing for repetition and varying lengths, expands significantly based on your selection criteria.