YouTube trends 2026: Key predictions for the year
Discover the latest YouTube trends and make your content shine in 2026.
Click any of the topics below to jump to specific trends, or keep reading for a quick introduction.
Here are YouTube’s worldwide trend predictions for 2026:
- YouTubers have embraced traditional, TV-style formats
- Direct-to-fan content remains popular
- Relationships with creators last a lifetime — and beyond
- Authenticity is the one true currency
- …but fictional personas are taking hold
- Viewers value effort
- Fans want to connect offline
- Subscribers crave real-life, real-time moments
- Local viewers reward local content
- Boxing content is big business
- Creator crossovers really work
- Livestreamed reality shows rival traditional media
- Dubbed videos produce results
- Non-verbal YouTube Shorts help creators break through
- Memes still make content pop
- Content creators bring the news to younger generations
- Niches like gaming are used as launchpads
- Busy on-screen content is on the rise
- Brainrot feels weirdly inspiring
- Hipdut is a red-hot genre
- Long-form content isn’t going anywhere
- Creators’ lives are gamified
The trends in this article come from YouTube’s blockbuster Culture & Trends Report. This year, the platform widened its scope and analyzed data from hundreds of the world’s most-subscribed creators. Brands, artists, media companies, and children’s channels were excluded, which sidelines many of the ten most-subscribed and -viewed YouTube channels.
That doesn’t mean the YouTube trends listed here don’t apply to brands, though. There’s usually a healthy crossover between creators’ and business’ audiences — whether you’re a solo YouTuber or part of a wider team, these trends are for you.
Let’s take a look.
United States of America
1. YouTubers have embraced traditional, TV-style formats
In last year’s YouTube trends round-up, the platform noted that nostalgic content formats were enjoying a comeback. That shows no signs of slowing down, as creators embrace serialized videos in keeping with traditional TV.
YouTube’s Culture & Trends Report highlights creators like Quenlin Blackwell, the creator of Feeding Starving Celebrities. FSC has grown from ten-minute slots to hour-long episodes, skewering the age-old “celebrity cooking show” format with light-hearted conversations and fun dishes.
For those who grew up with these kinds of shows, it’s a welcome dose of nostalgia. For younger viewers with less context, it’s a fresh, entertaining way to engage with their role models. Regardless, brands and creators have plenty of room to experiment.
2. Direct-to-fan content remains popular
Over the last few years, businesses like Patreon have made direct-to-fan content more accessible. Not bound to other platforms’ monetization programs, creators have the chance to offer fans more of what they want, on their terms.
Indie studio Glitch featured heavily in last year’s YouTube trend round-up, thanks to its runaway animated hit, The Amazing Digital Circus. Even after The Amazing Digital Circus was picked up by Netflix, Glitch didn’t rest on its laurels.
Rather, the studio launched Glitch Direct: a video forum in which Glitch’s founders outline upcoming projects. Fans can also pay to join the Glitch Inn, which offers more community benefits. The studio is moving ahead, and the audience has no trouble following.
According to Epidemic Sound’s own research, 95% of creators engage with their audience through direct-to-fan models. That’s a sector brands and influencers alike can’t afford to miss.
3. Relationships with creators last a lifetime — and beyond
Minecraft YouTuber Technoblade passed away in 2022, but that doesn’t mean his channel’s been forgotten. In fact, it’s the opposite. His loved ones have kept his memory alive through regular subscription drives and live streams, attracting millions of new fans.
Korea
4. Authenticity is the one true currency
Market research routinely finds that newer generations crave authenticity, but what does that actually look like? It looks like Choo Sung-hoon. The MMA fighter scored the highest subscriber growth in Korea during 2025, by being…well, honest.
YouTube cites the below video as a prime example, during which Sung-hoon takes viewers through his apartment. It’s a little messy, and that’s what folks latched onto — he wasn’t pretending to be something or someone else. He’s a guy who just leaves random cardboard boxes in the hallway, like the rest of us.
5. …but fictional personas are taking hold
While Sung-hoon’s honest, warts-and-all approach saw the highest subscriber growth in 2025, Korea’s second-most-subscribed creator took a different angle. Comedian Lee Su-ji invented a host of different personas, ranging from a rich mother to a clueless influencer.
Su-ji’s character work was praised for its nuance and realism, but elsewhere, things got weird. Anxious Kim Hamzzi made waves with an AI-built hamster persona, which she then personalized with her own voice. It’s strange, it’s novel, and it opens up the market for more VTubers and faceless YouTube channels going forward.
6. Viewers value effort
MrBeast is the world’s most-subscribed YouTube channel because people want to see what Jimmy Donaldson does and how he does it. The endless hours, the lateral thinking, the next-level execution — it’s a pure, human approach.
Korean YouTuber Go Jae-young embodies this spirit, tackling massive challenges like walking a million steps in 30 days. As AI advances and helps YouTubers streamline their workflows, content like this shows the real value of next-level tech: it frees up time for creators to create.
Germany
7. Fans want to connect offline
German culture is big on “third places”: neutral hubs where people can meet outside of work and their homes. That’s something The Real Life Guys have tapped into.
Every year, they host the DIY-centric Macher Festival, which thousands of their fans attend. It’s an opportunity for subscribers to meet like-minded people, and a chance for The Real Life Guys to step off the screen and into their fans’ real lives.
8. Subscribers crave real-life, real-time moments
Summer road trips have become a trend for German-speaking YouTubers. Creators vlog as they go along, ask their followers for local recommendations, and set up opportunities along the way.
Gaming creator HandOfBlood did the latter with a flea market in Berlin, selling one-of-a-kind props and costumes. Proceeds went to a local animal shelter, fans got to meet their idol, and HandOfBlood’s reputation only improved. These experiential, pop-up moments have worked wonders for brands in the past — why not creators?
9. Local viewers reward local content
Delay Sports Berlin is a football club on the way up. Content creation has played a huge role in its popularity, using behind-the-scenes vlogs, recruitment pipelines, and more to hook viewers. The club itself is the “third place” we mentioned earlier, tapping into a pivotal piece of German culture.
Mexico
10. Boxing content is big business
Social-first boxing matches have been around for a while — Ibai, one of Twitch’s most-followed accounts, has held such events since 2021. Last year saw a real breakthrough for Supernova Strikers, which pitted influencers against each other in the ring. The high-octane fights, plus pre- and post-match content, held two million concurrent viewers at its peak.
11. Creator crossovers really work
Creators don’t need to punch each other in the face to make great content, though. YouTuber and musician Fede Vigevani organized a Spanish-language vs. English-language basketball match, which scored over a million concurrent stream viewers.
Headlining the English-language team was the most-subscribed YouTuber of all time, MrBeast. Both teams were backed by hugely popular YouTubers and musicians, cross-pollinating audiences and giving everyone what they wanted.
12. Livestreamed reality shows rival traditional media
Livestreamed content isn’t new. However, livestreamed, YouTube-first, 24/7 reality content? That’s a little fresher. La Casa de Alofoke took the Big Brother model one step further, giving viewers constant access to ten influencers stuck inside a house.
At its most popular, La Casa de Alofoke netted two million concurrent viewers, and has already influenced a new wave of YouTube-first reality series. Moreover, the program raked in over 300 million views, of which 70 million came from the US. The interest isn’t just local to Mexico — it’s worldwide.
India
13. Dubbed videos produce results
It’s understandable that MrBeast appears regularly in an article about YouTube trends…but what does he have to do with India? It turns out that his content is dubbed in seven different Indian languages, and has been for years.
The result? 47 million new subscribers from India in 2025 alone. If there’s ever been an argument for dubbing content, that’s it.
14. Non-verbal YouTube Shorts help creators break through
Since its global rollout five years ago, YouTube Shorts has helped viewers appreciate content in a different way. Bite-sized clips gave creators more leeway to express themselves, exploring the visual and musical cues that popularized film over a century ago.
KL BRO Biju Rithvik, a family-friendly channel with more than 80 million subscribers, even describes its content as “Tom & Jerry”-style. Relying on large gestures and facial expressions, the channel bridges language barriers.
15. Memes still make content pop
When in doubt, just meme. Internet phenomena transcend language and make content relatable to audiences local and global. Ayush More’s perfected the art, peppering Italian brainrot memes — Google that phrase for a wild ride — throughout his Roblox-based content.
France
16. Content creators bring the news to younger generations
HugoDécrypte is a YouTube-based reporter whose coverage serves under-35s to a similar level as mainstream French news organizations. It’s unbelievably impressive, and signals a shift from traditional media.
17. Niches like gaming are used as launchpads
Having joined YouTube in late 2024, Anyme TV already boasts more than one million subscribers. What was once a gaming channel fanned out into skits, challenges, and other non-game content. Anyme TV is now an extension of its host’s personality, rather than a pure gaming channel.
Middle East & North Africa
18. Busy on-screen content is on the rise
Mina Ashraf’s YouTube thumbnails laugh in the face of “less is more.” His preference for garish filters and Italian brainrot lends his content an overstimulating, almost exhausting quality. Given the popularity of maximalist music genres like hyperpop and always-on content from platforms like TikTok, it’s clear to see why Ashraf’s a hit.
Indonesia
19. Brainrot feels weirdly inspiring
Italian brainrot is the internet’s weirdest trend in a hot minute, partly because it rallies against the idea of “real” brainrot. It’s forcing people to come up with new, interesting ways to capitalize on trends without feeling unnatural.
Indonesian memes like Tung Tung Tung Sahur have spread like wildfire — only one fifth of videos containing the meme actually come from Indonesia. We doubt many people had “log with a human face dominates the discourse” on their 2025 bingo card, but the proof’s right there.
20. Hipdut is a red-hot genre
Dangdut is an established Indonesian folk genre…but did you ever think it needed a side of hip-hop? Introducing hipdut: the cross-genre style charting on top-ten lists all over YouTube Shorts. By mixing the local sound of dangdut with hip-hop’s global appeal, artists like Tenxi, Naykilla, and Jemsii have all broken out in 2025.
United Kingdom
21. Long-form content isn’t going anywhere
Long-form content isn’t dead, nor was it sleeping. It never really went away. While short-form has understandably blossomed over the last few years, there’s always been a place at the table for in-depth YouTube videos.
That’s why Gary’s Economics has more than a million subscribers. It’s why short-form YouTubers like Madeline Argy have made the jump to long-form. There’s space for both formats, and in 2026, more brands and creators may take that idea and run with it.
Brazil
22. Creators’ lives are gamified
Brazil’s most-subscribed YouTubers don’t stick to one format, one storyline, one timeframe. They build sprawling shared universes — often collaborating within creator houses — to give viewers more content than they could dream of.
To piece everything together, viewers usually need to hop between channels and platforms, following various storylines, beefs, and developments. This crossover appeal makes viewers feel like they’re part of the story, like they have to watch everything to “complete” the narrative. It’s a halfway house between a sitcom and a game, and audiences can’t get enough of it.
YouTube trends 2026: Wrapping up
Now that we’ve gone through the key YouTube trends for 2026, it’s time to prepare your content for the year ahead. Whether you’re a solo creator or part of an in-house team, these trends can help capture your audience’s attention and loyalty.
And music can help. 94% of professional creators say music contributes to their content’s success — that’s too large a figure to ignore. If you want the music, tools, and choice to take your content to the next level, Epidemic Sound’s got you covered.
A catalog of more than 50,000 world-class tracks and 200,000 Hollywood-grade sound effects. Advanced search functions. AI-powered voiceovers and editing tools. Affordable, legally watertight, industry-leading — finding the right sound’s never been easier.
An Epidemic Sound subscription goes beyond royalty-free music, removing the headache of licensing and freeing you up to do what you do best.
It’s better than royalty-free. It’s worry-free. Get started with Epidemic Sound today.
Related posts: