In a world that is often full of surprises, did you expect President Trump to market a perfume as a sitting president? What about the breakup of the DOGE bromance between Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy? Or a step away from minimalism and an embrace of tchotchkes (see: Labubus)?
So what does 2026 have in store for us? We asked a group of reporters and editors to get out their crystal balls to find out.
Dumb Phones as Status Symbols
We’re approaching consensus that smartphones are making our lives dumber, so it’s no surprise that a category of lower-tech devices has been growing. My excitement about these options is tempered by a sense of consumerist whiplash: First we were sold smartphones, now we are being sold products to help wean ourselves off them.
I hope dumb phones will deliver us all from constant notifications, but it also seems possible that they will become markers of class and status. Surely a gig worker who drives for Uber or Lyft cannot delete apps with the same ease as a college student and aspiring Luddite. In 2026, flip phones may force us to confront an uncomfortable question: Who can afford to be less reachable? — Callie Holtermann, reporter, Styles
Everything Is Marketing
Forget posters and press tours; in the wake of thematic red carpet dressing, à la “Barbie” and “Wicked,” movie marketing will reach a new level. Film characters will become social media influencers in their own right, complete with their own merch, viral posts and pop-up stores. Marty Supreme, with his Ping-Pong balls and sweats, is just the beginning. — Vanessa Friedman, fashion director, Styles
The War on Slop
Reflecting your maker doesn’t mean doing just what they’d like — it’s a lesson taught through Adam and Eve and Frankenstein’s monster, too. So when artificial intelligence spits out images that look close to being human-generated but are just a little off, it’s no surprise.
A.I. might be trained on human art, but it has its own house style: slick, almost too polished, bumps retouched, like a smooth-talking car salesman. We call it slop, but the look is, if anything, sleeker and less textured than what humans tend to produce.
In 2026, as people grow weary of the inundation of slop, we’ll see a turn away from it and an embrace of art, text and other creative endeavors that embody the Japanese term wabi-sabi, an aesthetic that finds beauty in imperfection and delight in things that haven’t had their edges smoothed out. — Emma Goldberg, reporter, Styles
The White House Soap Opera Will Continue
Unlike the relatively demure Biden years, the first year of the second Trump administration gave us a steady diet of soap opera intrigue in the White House, with gossip about marriages on the rocks, extramarital activity, bad breakups and other romantic shenanigans.
Some gossip has risen to the level of news: the F.B.I. director Kash Patel’s in-person relationship with an aspiring country singer, Alexis Wilkins, has led to concerns about his use of taxpayer-paid security, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, continues to be dogged by a virtual (but intense) relationship he had in 2024 with the journalist Olivia Nuzzi.
The year closed with a flurry of engagements from the likes of Donald Trump Jr., Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer. When you consider the president’s fondness for drama, and, of course, his penchant for hiring good-looking people, more dishy reports seem almost inevitable. — Jesse McKinley, reporter, Styles
No Longer Cool to Be Cold
“Show me how you’d hold me if tomorrow wasn’t comin’ for sure,” Miley Cyrus sang in her 2025 banger “End of the World.”
With bad news around every corner, and Miley as our guide, a prediction for 2026: It will no longer be cool to be cold — in general, and in love.
Call it nihilism, memento mori or an unkind reminder of what matters, these dire times can be liberating. Perhaps you’ll unwisely pick up smoking, believe in another “rapture,” take a “microretirement” before age 40 or, as the line in “End of the World” goes, “spend the dollars you’ve been savin’ on a Mercedes-Benz.”
A better option is to re-embrace the inherent risk of romance. In 2026, “playing it cool” will be so passé. Instead, there will be intense declarations of love. Intentional dating. Mounting distrust of and boredom with A.I. companions. If tomorrow isn’t coming for sure, I believe, as Miley said, we will “do the things that we were way too terrified of before.” — Miya Lee, editor, Modern Love projects, Styles
Pipes Will Have a Moment
I blame the sheer awkwardness of vapes — clumsy, vaguely cyborgian, charmless — for the great cigarette resurgence of 2025. In 2026, we’re going older and bulkier: People will start pulling tobacco pipes out of their purses and pockets. Snuff will take over snus. Everyone’s hungry for a little gasp of Dickensian glamour, for someone to drop the word “dapper” in a conversation crammed with acronyms and algorithms. — Dani Blum, reporter, Well
Gambling on ‘The Real Housewives’
On the day of the New York City mayoral election, the prediction market Kalshi ran a billboard in Times Square showing real-time election odds (the platform had more or less called Zohran Mamdani’s victory weeks before). And there was a lot of money involved: The platform processed over $120 million in bets on that race.
Prediction markets have become mainstream behemoths valued in the billions, and they have opened up avenues of gambling (or commodities trading, if you believe their take) that no one had previously considered. The next big target will be gamifying the entertainment world with what amounts to a stock market for things that will happen in the “Real Housewives” franchise and other entertainment tentpoles. Brace yourself. — Alisha Haridasani Gupta, reporter, Styles
A New Style Icon
The United States has always loved to make first ladies into style icons, and New York City has found its own in Rama Duwaji, Mayor-elect Mamdani’s wife, who is not only a terrifyingly cool person, but also an artist in her own right. She has already appeared on the cover of The Cut, and in 2026, as her husband takes the reins of the city, Ms. Duwaji — because of her style and the public’s fascination with her — will land on the cover of Vogue or one of Condé Nast’s other glossy magazines. — Nikita Richardson, senior staff editor, Cooking
A Fan-Driven Cinematic Universe
Watch out, Marvel and “Star Wars,” there will be a new cinematic universe in town — and this time, it’ll be fan-driven. We’ve already seen fan creations based on established characters explode online with romantasy in the fiction market (Dramione, anyone?) and the Grammy Award-winning “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical” concept album, which started on TikTok. The logical next step is a crowd-funded project that takes a story line built from scratch and spins it into the next “KPop Demon Hunters.” My bet is on anime, but who knows? Get cooking, TikTok! — Sarah Bahr, senior staff editor
The Rise of the Exfluencer
The first half of the 2020s brought an influx of people making a living recording their lives as social media influencers, but the initial descent of the decade will be distinguished by a new phenomenon: the exfluencer.
The constant grind of that life has already led some prominent people to hang up their hats (or tripods) for greener pastures. The popular nature YouTuber behind the Outdoor Boys channel said goodbye to his 18 million subscribers; numerous TikTok creators have turned back to the corporate life; and even a bona fide star like Nara Smith is shifting from a TikTok trad wife into a business mogul as she expands into various types of traditional media.
The list will surely grow. — Nicole Stock, California audience editor
Callie Holtermann, Vanessa Friedman, Emma Goldberg, Jesse McKinley, Miya Lee, Dani Blum, Alisha Haridasani Gupta, Nikita Richardson, Sarah Bahr and Nicole Stock contributed reporting.
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