Tumblr

One last note from the Tumblr Team as we close the chapter on this year. If you want to understand where internet culture is going in 2026, start by looking at Tumblr in 2025. Across every chapter of this year’s Tumblr Year in Review, a clear pattern emerged: the ideas, aesthetics, memes, and narratives that start on Tumblr rarely stay there and often go on to shape broader internet culture and behavior. ◘ Nostalgia trends surged on Tumblr long before they moved to more mainstream mega-platforms.    ◘ Tumblr’s girlbloggers and micro-aesthetic communities actively shape moodboard culture and aesthetic-driven identity everywhere. ◘ Comfort posting and “cozy dystopia” memes shaped the emotional language of the year, reflecting how people processed culture in real time  ◘ Independent creators, writers, musicians, and animators continue to find early momentum on Tumblr, where they work within a supportive community before scaling outward. ◘ Fandom communities continuously generate millions of pieces of art, fiction, analysis, and conversation. A level of creativity unmatched anywhere else on the internet. For brands and creators, the message is clear: cultural signals form on Tumblr long before they become trends. If you want to understand what audiences will care about next, Tumblr remains the place to watch. Check out the full Year in Review at https://lnkd.in/gf_Ft8bF. See you next year! 🎊 #Tumblr #SocialMedia #SocialMediaTrends #YearinReview

Happy holidays from all of us at Automattic! 💙 Whether you’re part of our globe-spanning, 110-language-speaking team or one of the millions of people who use and build on our open-source products, we hope the season treats you well. Explore our advent calendar of brands: WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Longreads, WordPress VIP, Day One Journal, Pocket Casts, Beeper, Clay, Newspack, and more. Here’s to another year of democratizing publishing, commerce, messaging, and making the web a better place in 2026. 🎊 🎨 We interviewed Cinta Arribas, the extremely talented WordPress illustration artist who created this positively perfect postcard. Read it now: https://lnkd.in/g66y6wHX

Fandom runs the internet, and Tumblr is where it begins. Today, in our final 2025 Year in Review chapter, we highlight the fandoms, creators, and communities that shaped what the internet talked about this year. Fandom culture has always thrived on #Tumblr, and this year made one thing unmistakable: fandom is mainstream. Recent studies show that more than 70 percent of #GenZ identify as part of at least one fandom, and fandom-driven content accounts for some of the highest engagement across social platforms. These are trends that Tumblr has fueled for more than a decade. This year, fan art and fanfiction defined the conversation: • Artists created more than 1.3 million original posts tagged #fanart, generating 195 million engagements. • Writers posted over 1 million works tagged #fanfic, inspiring more than 40 million notes and sustaining communities between seasons, episodes, and eras. Fandoms across gaming, animation, television, and music commanded enormous attention. From Supernatural to Deltarune, from Arcane to Pokémon, and from Taylor Swift to BTS, fans shaped narratives, invented new interpretations, and kept their favorite worlds alive long after canon ended. Gen Z continues to treat Tumblr as a sanctuary for creativity, storytelling, and community, and the impact now extends well beyond the dashboard. As we look toward 2026, we see the next wave of storytelling, creativity, and internet-native community building already taking shape here. Fandom may show up across the broader internet, but Tumblr is where it gathers, evolves, and thrives. The cultural center of gravity for fans everywhere. Explore the full chapter: https://tumblr.at/fandom25

Creators aren’t just “influencers” on Tumblr. They’re artists, writers, musicians, animators, and storytellers who build worlds, share works in progress, involve their communities, and define the visual language of the platform. Creators make #Tumblr what it is. Today’s 2025 Year in Review highlight shines the spotlight on them. This year, art took center stage: • The tag #artists on tumblr trended at No. 1 two hundred thirty-three times in 2025. • The top five tags on the entire platform were art-related: #my art, #art, #fanart, #artists on tumblr, and #digital art. • Together, these tags generated over ten million posts and nine hundred fifty-eight million notes this year. For this chapter, we spotlight three creators who embody Tumblr’s creative spirit: • Illustrator Kiana Khansmith shared how her project Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want To Be A Magical Girl grew from a single drawing into a full pilot animatic with a dedicated Tumblr following. • Singer-songwriter Sade Olutola discussed how nostalgia and community shape her sound and visual identity. • Chris Torres, creator of Nyancat, reflected on the meme’s origins and its longtime home on Tumblr. These three, and many other like them, illustrate how creativity on Tumblr builds culture that extends far beyond the beloved “blue space” of the platform. Check it all out in our 2025 Year in Review: https://lnkd.in/eWnmkkqQ And tune in tomorrow for our final Year in Review chapter, where we’ll be talking all about fandoms.

Cozy Dystopia = Comfort posting in response to chaos. In a year defined by chaos, uncertainty, and collective coping, #Tumblr turned to comfort posting, dark humor, and dystopian film and television to make sense of the world. Top fandoms that explored workplace unease, apocalypse narratives, and feral girlhood saw major engagement: • The Last of Us reached 9 million engagements • Severance inspired 93 thousand original posts with 8.5 million notes • Yellowjackets led to 114 thousand posts and more than 8 million notes Community-driven memes also shaped the year. #Destiel remained the platforms number one source for real-world news, generating 18 million engagements. #Mamaposting brought comfort across 4.3 million engagements. Even Juggling Lab (iykyk) became a viral moment that reflected the spontaneous creativity that defines the platform. If you saw these on other #social platforms, it’s because they started on Tumblr first!! Check back tomorrow for our next Year in Review update, highlighting the creators that truly make Tumblr thrive. More at: https://tumblr.at/cozy25

Today’s Year in Review highlight explores how #Tumblr users treat their lives as moodboards, using art, fashion, music, and micro-aesthetics to communicate identity and build community. In 2025, this became one of the platform’s biggest cultural signals. Engagements across girlblogging tags passed 105 million, and original posts increased 52% year over year, reflecting a powerful aesthetic language that spans coquette, soft grunge, fairycore, 2014 Tumblr, and more. 🎀 Musicians and creatives also used Tumblr as a visual space for inspiration. Artists such as Halsey, Destroy Lonely, Taylor Swift, and emerging artists shaped worlds around their work through imagery, references, and shared influences. Gen Z leads this movement, using moodboarding not as trend-chasing but as a form of self-expression, worldbuilding, and storytelling. These aesthetics shape how people create online today, and they point to the visual culture we’ll see continue to grow in 2026! Explore Chapter 2: https://lnkd.in/gFb-uDRK #tumblr2025 #socialmedia #socialmediatrends #moodboard

We just launched our 2025 Year in Review, and the first highlight centers around a cornerstone of Tumblr: nostalgia. Millennial #nostalgia is trending everywhere, but on Tumblr, it’s literally part of the culture. The aesthetics and moments users are chasing IRL and across other social platforms first took shape here. In 2025, that influence only intensified: #2010s searches surged 364%, #2015 nostalgia jumped 203%, and Gen Z is driving a full-on return to the eras that defined early Tumblr (and how those revivals will shape online culture in 2026). With 54% of our daily active users belonging to Gen Z, the past and future of online aesthetics meet right here. And what looks “new” everywhere else is just a revival that started on #Tumblr. 🖤 Explore Chapter 1: tumblr.at/nostalgia25 #tumblr2025

Today, Tumblr launches its 2025 Year in Review, a look at the culture, conversations, and communities that defined the platform this year and are already shaping what is bubbling up for 2026. We are highlighting five chapters: nostalgia, moodboard aesthetics, “cozy dystopia,” creator stories, and the fandoms that shaped online discourse in 2025. These trends were not small; 54% of our daily active users were Gen Z, the Destiel tag saw 18 million engagements (what even is a Destiel and why does it have that kind of power), moodboard tags grew 76% year over year, and fandom conversations drove over one-third of all Tumblr engagement! Year after year, Tumblr proves itself as the place where trends start, spread, and take over the internet. Explore the full Year in Review: https://lnkd.in/gf_Ft8bF  Join the conversation using #tumblr2025 on Tumblr!

Honestly? Pretty great. Tumblr taught (and is STILL teaching!!!) a whole generation how to build communities, tell stories, and make people care. We’re proud of you + knew y'all would run the internet one day. 🫶