WEEKLY TRENDS REPORT Friday 25 September 2026
Pictured: Adobe Stock
Macro trend
Difficult to action
Micro trend
THIS WEEK’S FORECAST Dopamine sites
Icon Glossary
Trending
News you should know
On the up
Cancelled
It’s gonna be big
That’s the tea
Sustainability
Consumer habit
TikTok trend
Be quick
Unhinged perfumes
Easy to action
Challenge screenings Iced Coffee Debate
Martinicore
FOR YOUR INFO
This week’s dates & microtrends
On our radar Digger – 02 October Verity – 02 October LEGO One Piece – 29 September Adventure Time: Side Quests – 02 October
Victoria Monét: Frequency of Love – 02 October
TikTok trends
What we’re loving
Rising trends
Bedazzle and whimsy your life with sprinkle suitcases, Guile’s hair popcorn holder and $999 trash can merch.
The greatest mash-up ever created, an Irish rapping wrestling event. The National Museum Of Korea held the funniest exhibit costume competition. Cloudspotting among the list of UK’s weirdest hobbies.
Want to go to private school? It’s either no-tech farmwork or an ultra-rich Goldman Sachs bootcamp. Onitsuka’s kitten heels are actually ok??!
ICYMI The Great Iced Coffee Debate took over the internet this week. Which side are you on? Squishies, brainrot figurines and fidgets are among the items in Gen Alpha’s backpacks. MSCHF’s Lexus.
Phrase of the week Patient Zero.
Digi updates The coding community are obsessed with a digital fly brain. Of course, DOOM can be played with it.
Tea of the week The new tech-bro is now chain smoking. No, they will never be cool. Speaking of ‘cool’, martinicore is taking over.
Established trend We fell to our knees and seagulls stole all our chips. Fish and chip shops are on the brink of extinction.
Insights of the week The reality of being over 50 and trying to get a job. A deep-rooted obsession with self-storage facilities. Sherwin Williams’ 2027 colour of the year: celery.
Image: @streetfightermovie
The future What 10-year-olds predict 2050 to be like. We gotta step up so we can make their dreams come true.
Image: @nationalmusuemofkorea
Stat of the week The Netflix audience is flocking to Anime at 10 times the rate of other genres.
Ones to watch GTA 6’s music album, the Seven Up series concludes and Mbappé is lured to ON.
Weekly doses of cute Thanks Wally, the shorebird, new Thomas the Tank engine, the winners of a microscopic video competition, adopt a data centre and Fat Bear Week.
Image: @glowfatyogurt
Image: @SherwinWilliams
TREND TRACKING How some of the trends we’ve identified have evolved in recent months
A challenging watch
Knowledge signalling
Dopamine sites
Image: @hannahzookpop
Image: @creativelyange
Image: @fox5newyork
Whatever happened to the days of going to the local cinema and scoffing popcorn in a regular bucket with your crush in the back row? Cinema screenings have had the attention economy treatment and are increasingly coming with a challenge themed to the film. Recent examples include Neon’s 36-hour screening of It Ends, pitting different rooms against each other in an endurance-style test, and Lionsgate’s influencer screening of Fall 2 which saw them balance on wobbling platforms to add yet another layer of tension to the film. For smaller, indie films without the budgets for press tours, the challenge screening is a quick and easy way to generate buzz and intrigue. With Gen Z ‘rescuing’ cinema, these immersive screenings tap into fandoms and create talkability through novelty and FOMO.
In 2026, knowledge is more desirable than ever. New dating apps tap into ‘smart’ hobbies, as founders hope to spark romance over the likes of books. Readme launched in New York last week with a promise to “use psycholinguistics to read you like a book and show you potential matches.” According to attendees at the launch, flirting was at “an all time low”, so it remains to be seen if a shared love of language can save the day. Elsewhere, museums, galleries and auction houses like Sotheby’s are cashing in on hospitality, partnering with chefs to create dining experiences that complement the surroundings. According to Future Lab, “the next generation of members’ clubs won’t be valued for exclusivity but will provide curated experiences where visitors can express their taste, discover new ideas and belong to distinctive cultural worlds.”
The South Korean trend of dopamine sites has been exploding worldwide. It started with shopping sites like FakeHaul, where you’d fill your basket with items, go to the checkout and click ‘pay’ – but the only thing taking a hit would be dopamine levels as the purchase never actually goes through. The sites have gone beyond retail therapy, with Damta World mimicking a smoke break and FoodNeverComes, which gives people real recipes for the food they ‘order’. According to the NYT, these vibe coded websites get millions of clicks every month, which could position them as viable tools to help people curb bad spending habits.
Trend: Announcements gone wild
Trend: Under the new influence
Trend: Consumers against consumerism
This week’s long read
Image: @dazeddigital.com
I SMELL NOTES OF UNHINGED Why perfumes are getting weird AF
Image: @treenz
Image: @allure
Weber Forecast Insight Image: @dazeddigital.com
Scent rewires emotions instantly and lingers long after, yet remains underused in brand building. If consumers are buying the scent of dial-up internet, imagine the loyalty your brand could command with a memory-triggering scent. Don’t just tell them what you stand for. Make them smell it.
Ghosts. Kitten fur. Diet Coke. The internet. Timothée Chalamet’s armpits. Wonder what’s common among all these? They’re all signature notes in perfumes blowing up on TikTok. Perfumes were once meant to signal sophistication and desirability. So why do we suddenly want to smell weird? Because scent is emotion. And in this age of copycat culture and emotional numbness, we are craving something that provokes, evokes, and transports us. That’s exactly what these scents are doing—serving as emotional portals. The familiar whiff of Diet Coke brings comfort and belonging. The smell of the early-2000s internet (yes, a Skype perfume exists) triggers pure nostalgia. The scent of a celebrity’s sweaty armpit offers a
connection to a specific cultural moment, just as the smell of ghosts and decay transports us to another world. As Brieuc Larsonneur, perfumer and founder of fragrance brand ānti Parfum, puts it, “Perfume is humanity’s first time-machine.” And people are buying into it, especially Gen Z. Rather than focusing on traditional fragrance notes, Gen Z prefers to explore scents based on “vibes”—45% buy a perfume based on what’s trending on #PerfumeTok, sometimes without ever smelling it. This is redefining the way we relate to fragrance. We are clearly no longer just buying a product; we are buying the unique story, the narrative, and the emotional escape each scent promises.
BRANDWATCH Inspiring creative from around the world
Heinz
Coach x Spotify
BuzzBallz
McDonald’s
KFC x Surreal
Image: @ heinz_uk
Image: Spotify
Image: Spirits Business
Image: @ronaldmcdonaldhouse_uk
Image: @eat_surreal
Heinz is serving sauce with a side of internet culture by turning its Sriracha Mayo into SLAYO, a limited-edition rebrand inspired by the language of its fans. The spicy, sweet and tangy sauce gets a playful new identity that feels made for social feeds, with scarcity (only 57 bottles!!) adding an extra layer of hype. It’s a brilliantly simple lesson in listening to your audience: take an existing product, give the community a role in the story and suddenly a condiment becomes a cultural talking point. This indeed SLAYOs.
Coach is turning up the volume on its latest campaign, teaming up with Spotify to blend fashion, music and IRL connection. The dedicated Spotify hub lets fans explore personalised listening personas. The idea then hits the road with Tabby on Tour, bringing live performances, customisation and collectible merch to audiences internationally. It’s a smart bit of 360° storytelling, taking one campaign idea seamlessly from screen to stream to street, while tapping into music fandom to build genuine Gen Z relevance. BRB boarding the Tabby Tour Bus.
BuzzBallz is refusing to let summer go quietly, launching limited-edition BallzTentz inspired by the colours and round shape of its signature RTDs. With 74% of Brits reportedly in denial that summer is ending, five camping kits are being given away through Instagram, complete with a twoperson tent, camping chair and lanterns. It’s a playful way to turn consumer insight into a highly visual, social-first activation, to keep BuzzBallz part of the late-summer conversation. The local campsite won’t know what’s hit it.
McDonald’s has brought a little Golden Arches energy to London Fashion Week with the launch of its McHappy Day® Beanie - a reversible yellow and red knit spotted on celebrity fashion-week attendees before hitting restaurants nationwide. All proceeds support Ronald McDonald House UK, helping families with children in hospital. It’s a clever collision of fashion, culture and purpose, using limited-edition merch and street-style to make charitable giving feel conversation-worthy and wearable!
KFC and Surreal are serving up arguably the most unhinged breakfast yet with KFCereal, a limited-edition savoury cereal inspired by KFC’s Original Recipe chicken. Seasoned with the famous 11 herbs and spices, the cereal packs 19g of protein and, naturally, swaps milk for KFC gravy. It’s a brilliantly bizarre brand mash-up that plays perfectly into Surreal’s disruptive personality, using shock factor, unexpected category crossover and limited-edition appeal to create instant social chatter. Not quite sure this was what we meant by breakfast of champions…
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Pictured: Envato