How to Sort Your BibTeX Bibliography by Year (Descending)

By default, BibTeX sorts alphabetically by author. Getting reverse-chronological (newest first) order requires different approaches depending on your system.

With biblatex (recommended)

biblatex has built-in descending sort:

\\usepackage[
    backend=biber,
    style=authoryear,
    sorting=ydnt        % Year (Descending), Name, Title
]{biblatex}
\\addbibresource{refs.bib}

The ydnt sorting scheme sorts by year descending, then name, then title. Other useful schemes:

Scheme	Order
nty	Name → Title → Year (default)
nyt	Name → Year → Title
ydnt	Year (desc) → Name → Title
none	Order of citation

With classic BibTeX

BibTeX itself doesn't support descending sort. Your options:

• Use \\bibliographystyle{unsrt} and cite in reverse order (hacky)
• Switch to biblatex (recommended — see our migration guide)
• Use a custom .bst file (complex to create)

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