There is a shared feeling moving through culture right now. You hear it in passing comments, see it in TikTok, Instagram etc, you feel it in the way people are laughing louder, travelling more and choosing to show up for themselves this year.
People keep saying the same thing: 2026 has that 2016 energy. And it is being embraced.
This is not about chokers, playlists, or Snapchat filters. It is about a feeling many of us have been trying to find our way back to. 2016 felt expansive. Possibility was not something you had to intellectualise, manifest, or plan within an inch of its life. It was just there. People said yes more easily.
The future felt open rather than foreboding. Life had momentum.
For many of us, that year sits in memory as a time before things hardened. Before everything became optimised, monetised, traumatised, and analysed. Before burnout became a personality trait and healing became a full-time job.
Then came the years that followed. Global uncertainty. A pandemic that reshaped how we live, relate, touch, plan, and trust. Lockdowns did not just pause life, they rewired it. The world felt smaller, narrower, heavier.
So now, years later, what we are seeing is not nostalgia for 2016 itself. It is nostalgia for how it felt to be in the world then, more fun and free.
2016 carried a sense of freedom many people did not realise they had until it was gone. The freedom to gather without thinking twice. To make plans without contingency clauses. To meet people without suspicion. To live without constantly scanning for risk. There was also a distinct energy at that time. Social media had not yet tipped fully into performance and pressure. It still felt playful. Chaotic, yes, but human.
People shared moments, not strategies. There was less obsession with productivity, routines, and optimisation. Life was allowed to be messy and still meaningful.
Post-COVID, we live in a world that asks us to be responsible, informed, and resilient at all times. Those qualities matter. But they are not the same as aliveness.
What people are yearning for now is not ignorance. It is lightness.
You can see it in how people are approaching 2026. People are changing careers, moving cities, travelling for months instead of weeks. They are saying no to jobs that drain them, even when money feels tight. They are choosing experiences over optics, presence over performance. Even the way people talk about the future has shifted.
Less catastrophic language. Less waiting for life to begin. More emphasis on now. On making this year count. On building a life that feels worth showing up for.
2016 was not perfect. No year is. But it represented a moment before disillusionment became dominant. Before exhaustion became the baseline. Before everything felt like a negotiation with reality.
2026 feels like a cultural exhale.
Not a return to who we were, but a remembering of what matters. Connection. Movement. Play. Risk. Hope.
This is not about pretending the last decade did not happen. It did. We are different because of it. Wiser, more discerning, more aware of fragility. But perhaps that is exactly why this longing exists. We now understand how quickly life can shrink. So we are choosing to expand it again.
If 2026 feels like 2016, it is because people are done with surviving. They want to live.
They want memories that are not curated for an algorithm. Stories felt in the body. Laughter that interrupts thought. Plans that excite rather than exhaust.
This moment is not a trend. It is a correction. A shared agreement that life is meant to be experienced, not just endured. Maybe that is the real reason this year feels familiar. Not because time is repeating itself, but because we are finally remembering ourselves.
Anu Aborisade
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