WEEKLY TRENDS REPORT
Monday 23 February 2026
Pictured: Edited from Unsplash
THIS WEEK’S FORECAST
FOR YOUR INFO
TikTok trends
Transforming into a historically accurate Bebot Winter Olympics pin trading. Can we please get one?! We’ll give you a Forecast pin.
ICYMI
Pikawhat? Logan Paul sold his Pikachu card for $16.49 million.
Barack Obama almost confirmed aliens are real We’re pretty sure Mars Attacks was a documentary?
Phrase of the week
“Cool guys have boy bangs now”. Fades fade away as bangs are the hot new style. Think unkempt Beatles ‘do.
Digi updates
Meta-glasses are creating anxiety for students and restaurants while earbuds are indistinguishable for fashion pieces
A pop-up for speed dating AI companions Romance isn’t dead yet
This week’s dates & microtrends
Tea of the week
“The whole spirit of curling is dead”. The CanadaSweden curling beef
What we’re loving
80-year-old Labi Siffre’s beautiful rendition of his hits at the BBC Radio 2 Piano Room and announces a new album after 28 years!
Hackers are turning dead vapes into musical instruments. Now that’s good for your lungs!
Established trends
Gen Z are using side hustles as a creative outlet, but competition is tough.
Public breakups are good for business. We prefer getting dumped at a park, it’s cheaper.
Insights of the week
An investigation into the toxic side of run clubs.
AI insiders and outsiders are feeling helpless Skynet is inevitable.
On our radar
Scream 7 – 27 February
Scrubs: Season 10 – 25 February
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters – 27 February
BlackPink: Deadline – 27 February
Bruno Mars: The Romantic – 27 February
Gorillaz: The Mountain – 27 February
Mitski: Nothing’s about to happen to me – 27 February
Weekly doses of cute
Pints and ponytails, cute baking, I love you 26 times and Labubu puffers
Rising trend
The intense popularity of fragrances led to perfume clubs Now we can really smell like Nirvana.
The future
The viral AI stunt fight videos all over X. We prefer our fight scenes to have visible stunt doubles.
Stat of the week
One in four people have Achoo syndrome, sneezing from intense sunlight. Good thing we’re in Glasgow! There’s never any sun!
Ones to watch
The Hannah Montana 20th anniversary has been announced. Screaming, crying, throwing up.
Pitbull’s Hyde Park concert will attempt to have the world record of largest gathering of people in bald caps. Dale!
Image: @pereylierge
Image: @pipergilles
Image: BBC Music
TREND TRACKING
How some of the trends we’ve identified have evolved in recent months
Boy kibble
The male version of girl dinner has arrived – dubbed boy kibble – with all the joy removed from it. Tapping into self-optimisation and lockin culture, boy kibble has emerged as the fuel for high performers, rebranding diet culture once primarily aimed at women as a “masculine, desirable behaviour”. Creators share their high-protein boy kibble bro meals, usually comprising some kind of ground meat, rice and veg mixed together and served in a bowl. Semiotics is important here, with one expert noting that; “The use of the word “boy” helps “soften what could be perceived as toxically masculine consumptive behaviours”, bringing a layer of irony and play. For some, boy kibble is just another hack in an increasingly frictionless life, removing the slow pleasure and making eating yet another system to be streamlined.
Dirty fashion AI friction
The recent menswear fashion month showed a move towards more lived-in fabrics and designs. Analysis from Edited found a rise in crushed cottons, unironed fabrics and crinkled textures. Designers like Prada are trying to make stains desirable with dirty-looking cuffs and Nike released a dirtied shoe. With growing pushback against ‘clean girl’ looks and a call for 2026 to be the year of the party’, grungier styles signal a life well lived, not enjoyed through a screen. It chimes with a wider trend that’s been called the anti-algorithm aesthetic’, where handmade embellishment, like needlepoint, is gaining prominence as a hallmark of items that exist “outside the cloud, untouched by algorithms or filters.”
New research from UC Berkeley has found that workplaces which adopted advanced AI technology haven’t liberated employees from tasks, they’ve actually added more intensity instead. Workers are now expected to perform tasks outside their remits, in turn expanding time spent working, increasing multi-tasking and bleeding into personal time – all contributing to fatigue and burnout longer term. The researchers said; ”The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems.” Essentially, AI is making it easier to do more, but harder to stop.
Trend: Gen Z @ Work
Image: @thequadfather03
Image: @bobby_do7777
Image: @iamkylebalmer
This week’s long read
Weber Forecast Insight
The strongest examples come from brands who leverage cultural signals but do it with respect and deep understanding. Surface-level appropriation is obvious but genuine engagement with local practices, language and narratives resonates.
UNDER THE NEW INFLUENCE
The soft power of cultural exports
Monoculture is dead but multiculture is thriving. Non-English cultures are ushering in a new era of trends, influencing everything we’re consuming from music to fashion to habits to language. The English-speaking side of social media has been long dominated by Americans but with recent “turbulences”, the rest of the world is looking elsewhere. Where else but the most spoken languages in the world: Spanish and Mandarin.
All things Chinese are in high demand. The recent trend of “I’m at a very Chinese time of my life” became a wholesome sharing of wellness tips. These mundane habits are a part of the perception change of China Labubus were of course the biggest export but we’re seeing more demand for hyperlocal exports The Adidas Tang jacket was everywhere on our FYPs, with demand being so high that the jacket was released in western markets The animated film Ne Zha 2 made $2.2 billion in box office and became the fifth highest
grossing film of all time. iShowSpeed showed his young viewers new potential holiday destinations. ‘Made in China’ has become a source of pride rather than a slight in quality.
On the other side of the world, in the lead up to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time Show, social media users took the opportunity to learn Spanish alongside his music so to understand the fully Spanish half-time show. Rosalía’s multilingual album Lux, Kneecap’s fully Gaelic rap, and of course K-Pop are evidence that language is no longer a limiting factor and consumers are hungry for cultural authenticity.
However, the line between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation is narrow for non-local consumers – there’s numerous examples of culture being appropriated by ill-informed influencers and ignorant commentators. Don’t be like them, flex your own cultural pride!
Image: independent
Image: jingdaily
Image: @itsjackg
Image: @angelashanhu
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