Happy Tuesday, y’all 👋. Pinterest’s annual trend forecast arrived with 21 signals that map where culture, taste, and consumer intent are moving in 2026. The report shows a market tilting toward tactility, ornamentation, and sensory expression as people push back against digital sameness.

Let’s get into it.

Driving the news: Pinterest released its Pinterest Predicts 2026 Trend Report, a data driven outlook built from two years of global search behavior and early adopter signals across categories including beauty, fashion, home, travel, food, celebrations, and parenting.

• The report highlights a rising preference for textured aesthetics, handcrafted elements, theatrical expression, and identity driven design. It identifies 21 emerging trends and outlines how Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers shape the next aesthetic cycle. Reported by the Pinterest Predicts Team for Pinterest Predicts.

The stakes: If Pinterest’s forecast holds, brands will face a shift in how consumers express identity and evaluate products. The trends point to a move away from flat, minimal, algorithm informed aesthetics and toward richer sensory cues. Texture, craft, and maximalism reenter the mainstream as consumers seek a more physical relationship with the things they buy and the spaces they build.

• This creates meaningful implications for operators. Product teams will need to design for tactility as much as for function. Retailers and platforms will need to support smaller aesthetic clusters and more expressive assortments. Creative teams will face demand for bolder visual language and deeper narrative framing as audiences reject homogeneous digital styles.

Friction: This shift emerges in tension with the industrial and technological systems that defined the past decade. Mass production still prioritizes consistency over variation. Platforms still reward formats that scale quickly and flatten nuance. AI generated content accelerates aesthetic replication at the very moment consumers want differentiation.

• Brands built around minimalism now face the cost and operational complexity of moving toward maximalist expression. Supply chains tuned for uniformity must adapt to smaller runs, richer materials, and more volatile trend cycles. And the rising appetite for analog rituals stands in contrast to a marketplace optimized for digital convenience.

What this means: Brands gain an opportunity to build new value around feel, finish, and form. Operators can use tactility as a strategic wedge in product development. Retailers can diversify offerings to match micro communities with sharper aesthetic identities. Platforms can design discovery around sensory cues rather than uniform content streams.

• For agencies and creators, the trend cycle favors experimentation and theatricality. For consumer goods companies, personalization expands beyond colorways into layered scents, mixed textures, and hybrid materials. And for experience driven categories, from travel to events, the demand for immersion strengthens.

The bigger picture: Pinterest’s report captures a broader cultural correction. After a decade shaped by digital flattening and recommendation engines, people are reasserting taste as an act of autonomy. The rise of theatrical beauty, cosmic palettes, lacework, analog correspondence, maximal home decor, and a return to craft reflects a desire for agency in how identity is constructed and displayed.

• These signals point to a market reorganizing around sensory presence. In an attention driven economy, the next cultural cycle will be defined not by seamless digital flows but by the textures, rituals, and narratives that make expression feel human again.

For everything else, see below 👇:

Hollywood

1. The battle for Warner Bros. Discovery — (Nicole Sperling, Edward Vega, Laura Salaberry, Jon Hazell and Chris Orr for The New York Times) — Link

2. Paramount, Netflix and Warner Bros. Battle Ellison’s Next Move — (Joe Flint for The Wall Street Journal) — Link

3. Netflix and the Hollywood End Game — (Ben Thompson for Stratechery) — Link

Social Media

4. Half of all U.S. consumers say social media is their primary way to learn about brands — (George Winslow for TV Technology) — Link

5. Gen Z And News: Rewriting The Rules — (Rob Williams for MediaPost) — Link

Marketing

6. How Gap’s CMO Is Leveraging Its Katseye Success for the Holiday Season — (Kimeko McCoy for Marketing Dive) — Link

7. How Levi's sells Americana to the world — (Jeff Beer for Fast Company) — Link

AI

8. AI Slop Floods Social Media as Sora-Style Tools Go Mainstream — (Kevin Roose for The New York Times) — Link

Design

9. How Art Is Driving Waymo’s Feel-Good Branding — (Victoria Stapley-Brown for The New York Times) — Link

Commerce

10. Instacart Faces Scrutiny Over Algorithmic Pricing — (Shira Ovide for The New York Times) — Link

Thanks for reading! Enjoyed this edition? Share it with a friend or colleague!

• Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive future editions directly in your inbox.

• Support the Newsletter: If you’d like to support my work, consider contributing via Buy Me a Coffee.

• Stay Connected: For more insights and updates, visit my website or follow me on LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.

• Work with Me: Interested in partnering with me on sponsored content, consulting/advising, or speaking and workshops? Get in touch here.