Every year, Halloween doubles as an unofficial poll on what actually mattered in pop culture — and this year’s costume data has some clear favorites.
The Characters Everyone’s Dressing As
Spirit Halloween’s annual costume trend report, released earlier this month, put pop culture squarely at the center of 2026’s choices. Film and show tie-in costumes dominated once again, confirming that whatever’s dominating the group chat in October is also what’s showing up at the door on the 31st — Halloween has become less about generic spooky archetypes and more a live snapshot of the year’s most-watched screens.
Music’s Biggest Year
On the music side, 2026 delivered one of the year’s more talked-about releases when Miley Cyrus dropped her tenth studio album. A decade-spanning catalog hitting double digits is the kind of milestone that tends to ripple outward — expect the costume and lip-sync-video influence to stretch well past October.
Streaming Wars, Costume Edition
Behind the scenes, the entertainment industry itself has been part of this year’s pop culture story. Hollywood guilds have been vocal about a reported Netflix–Warner Bros. deal and what it could mean for the industry’s balance of power, while Disney+ has been rolling out a TikTok-style short-form video feed aimed at mobile-first viewers. Both are quiet signals of where the next wave of “what everyone’s watching” — and dressing up as — is likely to come from.
Costumes are a strange but reliable cultural thermometer. If this year’s lineup is any indication, 2026 will be remembered less for one dominant franchise and more for just how many different screens people were actually paying attention to.
