Will 2026 Be The Year Of Nostalgia?

I recently saw an article about a Japanese woman who “married” an AI-generated boyfriend. The story detailed the white dress the bride wore as well as the “groom’s” vows about loving his bride so deeply, even inside a screen.

AI relationships are not new and have been growing in both popularity and acceptance for years. The same article mentions a study that found nearly a quarter of middle-school aged girls in Japan expressed an openness to such relationships.

But the rise of AI relationships has not been without backlash and criticism, as we’ve seen in other spaces where AI has a stronghold. As much as AI may be here to stay, so are the warnings and questions that many have (rightly) raised.

I’m wondering if in the near future there might be some kind of tipping point, where enough people will feel disturbed enough about the reaches of new technology that the backlash will be fiercer, not just against AI, but other technologies that bring us further from what many people see as a natural state of human beings.

What I mean is, will people feel a yearning for the past, or the “old way” of doing things, like meeting romantic partners in-person (rather than on apps) or prioritizing face-to-face communication with other people?

I see a longing, a desire to return to more basic ways of living in the world, not just in personal relationships, but in other realms too. I recently worked on a project that involved parents of young children and what was important to them in a daycare provider. Outside time for the children was a top consideration, along with opportunities for unstructured play. I see this in my own community as well—a nostalgia parents feel for the way they grew up—without the distractions of phones and technology, and with plenty of time and space for play, for risk-taking, for the development of independence that kids need but often don’t receive. Parents are asking for longer recesses, for movement breaks, for time where kids can be kids.

On the product side, there’s a nostalgia for simplicity, especially in the food/beverage space, where “clean” ingredients are strongly demanded. I remember in one focus group, a woman said he looks for food labels that include ingredients that her grandmother used. Indeed, some brands are starting to capitalize on consumer food nostalgia, naming their products after “Grandma” or “Mama,” emphasizing fewer ingredients and ones that are recognizable to consumers, easy-to-pronounce.

Of course, nostalgia can gild things and make them seem more beautiful than they are. There are lots of behaviors and ways of the past that are categorically worse than what we do and know now, and the world will always be moving forward. But I do think we may be at an inflection point, one where consumers are actively negotiating how much progress they want, and in what form.

For brands, this presents an opportunity. Not to romanticize the past without reflection, but to understand what consumers feel they’ve lost—connection, simplicity, presence—and to thoughtfully reintroduce those qualities in modern, relevant ways. The brands that win won’t reject innovation; they’ll humanize it.

Will 2026 be the year of nostalgia? Maybe. Or maybe it’s the year brands finally realize that moving forward doesn’t always mean moving farther away.