Every year, the HdK team comes together in the final webinar of the year to share their trends and predictions for the year ahead. These are taken from our insights in the arts and culture sector, as well as across the digital world in design, websites, and digital marketing.
Here’s what we said for 2026. And if you want the full rundown, check out the webinar recording for all of the conversation.
Living in the present
A few of our trends explored the shift towards a more intentional, calm, and joyful online experience. Although the first few weeks have not exactly felt calm in relation to global politics, this means that there is even more desire for creators, organisations, and brands to offer a more meaningful connection with their audiences in the present moment.
“In an era of sustained uncertainty, long-term goals are losing power.” – Pablo Perez, Senior Marketing Research and Insights Manager, Google
This also relates to a lot of the trends we’ve been seeing online from creators encouraging others to live in a more present, mindful (and often, offline) way.
‘Analogue bags’ (bags in which you put objects that can replace using your phone, e.g. a book, magazine or crossword instead of watching reels; a physical camera instead of your phone); long-form reads like Substacks; and the rise in the popularity of brick phones are all indicators that people are seeking a more connected and conscious style of living.
In light of this, Phoebe (Partnerships and Events Manager) suggests that brands will be incorporating more pockets of joy and interaction into their everyday content. For example, responding to a comment on a post not just with text, but with a whole new video in relation to the comment, in turn rewarding the audience’s engagement and fostering loyalty.
Raf (Creative Director) spoke about calm design, and how cultural organisations can create clarity, safety and emotional space for audiences in 2026.
Our audiences are feeling overwhelmed: in a busy and complex online world with crises at every turn, arts and culture should be a refuge, embodying the values that we wish to see in the world. Calm design – through clear and simple navigation and hierarchy, minimal visual language and clutter, and emotion-led rather than information-led storytelling – can also help to improve accessibility, allowing the arts to reach people more widely.
As Raf points out, Pantone’s colour of the year also reflects this trend: “Cloud dancer”, in their words, is a lofty, billowy white that is a “whisper of tranquility and peace in a noisy world”.
Shifting search behaviours
Human behaviour has always changed based on the tools we have at our disposal. With an evolution in online search, audiences are increasingly behaving in new ways, and organisations need to respond to this rather than try to do things the same way as has historically worked.
Some of these new tools are, of course, AI summaries (the short text at the top of a Google search) and AI overviews (Google’s question-led chatbot).
These have thrown the established SEO playbook up in the air and are also causing huge fluctuations of visitor numbers, with some organisations seeing year-on-year improvements while some have fallen drastically. This ‘zero-click’ approach – where users have the information they need at their fingertips, without going on to a website – means that organisations have to work a lot harder to get people to click through.
While Google has been elusive about helping users understand how these changes will affect their audience numbers and how they can improve their standing, Hans (Founder and Director) offers a few tidbits that could help you gain visibility in the new AI age of search.
Making sure your content is well-structured, in a way that an AI can easily scan and ‘read’ in order to present that information back to audiences, is one way to help. You could use AI to help you set up this structure, but don’t be tempted to let AI write all of your content, because another tip is that your content needs to feel human. That means human-written text, with a unique perspective and insights that only you and your organisation could provide; plus, clear attribution to a person, like with a name and a headshot. This will help the AI search tools see that they are not regurgitating AI content and that it is an authoritative piece of text.
“Almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.” – Google USA research among 18-24 year olds
By observing user behaviour online, it’s clear that social media is also being used as a fully-fledged search engine. In particular, younger users are typing search phrases into social media: these could be anything from “live music events in [town]” to “fantasy books to read 2026” to “vegan recipes with butternut squash”.
Fizz (Digital Marketing) notes that this can easily be translated into arts, culture and entertainment, like “free museum events” or “art in Edinburgh this week”. It’s a quick win for arts marketers. Her top tips are: write captions in the way that your audience might speak; say your keywords early on in a video; and use keywords on your video thumbnail.
In addition to this, social media posts can now appear in Google search – so you should be aligning your social media and website SEO as much as possible to keep your results high.
A more human approach to content
A few of the team also spoke about how users are increasingly seeking out human-made content in a world where AI is indistinguishable from reality.
Jannick (Tech Lead) notes that improvements in AI models have made AI-generated content virtually impossible to detect, even by the most eagle-eyed viewers. AI content is no longer just sleek and polished with blurry backgrounds and garbled speech; it copies trends, formats, and can present made-up images that look like the genuine article. And it’s not only content, but AI is becoming more ingrained in our everyday lives through chatbots, FAQs, text and regular ideation, which means users will increasingly seek out “human-finished” content that feels genuine and authentic.
What does that “human-finished” content look like? It might be low-quality videos filmed outside, messaging that isn’t polished, or answering user questions with honesty and a new perspective.
Molly (Marketing Executive) suggests that niche micro-influencers (and nano-influencers) – of anywhere between 1,000 and 100,000 followers – could play a role in this. Users follow creators who they feel reflect their interests, whether that’s a food vlogger, a book reviewer or someone recommending art events to visit around the city. There’s a connection built through trust and time between creator and audience, and organisations that tap into this could boost the credibility of their marketing.
“Nearly 60% of Gen Z and 44% of Millennials spend more time watching social media videos than streaming services.” – Deloitte’s Digital Media Trends study, 2025
Bella (Digital Marketing) notes that there has been a rise in creators developing their own mini-series; in essence, creating their own worlds or TV shows in-platform. This form of episodic content, where formats are repeated across many short-form, attention-grabbing ‘episodes’, shows that users are turning away from longer formats and more towards online content that is easily consumed and fosters familiarity through repetition. Like micro-influencers, this familiarity and trust between creator and audience could be invaluable to organisations throughout 2026, where viewers are trying to find ways to connect at a human level with content they see online.
Website technology and user experience
Lavita (Project Manager), Kay (Project Manager) and Linus (Web Support Manager) each shared thoughts on how brands and organisations will be using their websites going into 2026.
Lavita pointed out the shift from ‘user experience’ to ‘multi experience’, meaning a move away from just one interface towards multiple touchpoints across web, mobile, voice, chat, wearables, and AR/VR. Going into the future, creating digital experiences shouldn’t focus on just one platform, but should consider the journey that a user could take across multiple interfaces to reach their desired information or product.
Linus focused on sustainable design, proving that in the coming year, more and more importance will be placed on the environmental impact of our online activities. He suggests that this will also become more visible such as placing a carbon calculator in the footer of your website.
Finally, Kay notes a change in how cookies might be presented on websites. Under proposed EU and UK legislation reforms, it might be possible to let users select one singular preference to be applied across all the sites they visit – whether that’s to allow all cookies, some, or only the essentials. Gone would be the days of cookie banners popping up on every site entry; we’re sure this would be a welcome change both for organisations and users alike.