In this video, I break down the 5 major consumer and cultural trends that will define 2026... If you’re paying attention, these shifts will open up huge doors for entrepreneurs, creators, and anyone looking to stay ahead of culture.
00:00 - 5 trends that will define 2026 00:40 - The rise of the Individual Empire 02:34 - Why Gen Alpha will start unplugging 04:16 - The monetization of random content 10:03 - Africa’s growing global impact 12:52 - The rise of alternative sports 14:22 - What this means for entrepreneurs and creators
Known as "GaryVee," he is described as one of the most forward thinkers in business. He acutely recognizes trends and patterns early to help others understand how shifts in consumer attention impact the realities of the business world today. Gary's approach sits at the intersection of business and pop culture. He keenly understands how to bring brand relevance to the forefront. He is a prolific angel investor with early investments in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, Snapchat, Coinbase, and Uber.
Gary is an entrepreneur at heart – he builds businesses. Today, he helps Fortune 1000 brands leverage consumer attention through his full-service advertising agency, VaynerMedia, which has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Amsterdam, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangkok, Delhi, and Kuala Lumpur. VaynerMedia is part of the VaynerX holding company, which also includes Eva Nosidam Productions, Gallery Media Group, The Sasha Group, VaynerSpeakers, VaynerCommerce, and Tingley Lane Trading. Gary is the Co-Founder of VaynerSports, VCR Group, VaynerWatt, ArtOfficial, Resy, and Empathy Wines. He guided Resy and Empathy to successful exits -- which he later sold to American Express and Constellation Brands, respectively. He also owns a Major League Pickleball team called the 5s, is part owner of a Big3 basketball team, and is an investor in the revival of the SlamBall League.
In 2021, Gary created VeeFriends, an entertainment company that has become a rising powerhouse in modern entertainment and collectibles. Often described as Pokemon meets Sesame Street, the company leverages stories, games, events, collectibles, and technology to scale its character universe. Vaynerchuk also has negotiated partnerships with brand powerhouses such as Crocs, Fanatics, Macy’s/Toys “R” Us, Mattel’s UNO, Mattel’s Masters of the Universe, Moonbug Entertainment, Reebok, Squishmallows, Topps, and more.
Gary is also the founder and creator of VeeCon – a contemporary super conference that converges business and pop culture with innovation and technology. He is a six-time New York Times bestselling author, with titles including Crush It!, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Twelve and a Half and Day Trading Attention. In addition to running multiple businesses, Gary documents his daily life as a CEO through his social media channels, which have more than 45 million followers and garner more than 300 million monthly impressions/views across all platforms. His podcast, "The GaryVee Audio Experience," ranks among the top podcasts globally.
Gary serves on the board of MikMak, Bojangles Restaurants, Global Citizen Forum, The Paley Center, and Pencils of Promise. He is also a longtime Well Member of charity: water.
Gary's life ambition is to buy the New York Jets.
Five trends that are gonna define 2026.
Number one, the individual empire.
As I think about the individual empire,
I think we're at a tipping point
to what my conversation started in 2008 around Crush It!.
Crush It! came out in 2009.
It was like, hey, you can cash in on your passion.
Then there was GrapeStory
when I started the first influencer agency.
Then there was Crushing It!
And now we're in this world where it's very clear to people
that being an influencer is a business
in a way that it wasn't 18 years ago.
But more importantly, I'm using the word empire.
In 2008, I said you, all of you, and this is still real,
can make 50 to $100,000 talking about ALF
and the Smurfs and all that.
Ask yourself, what do I want to do every day
for the rest of my life?
Do that.
I promise you can monetize that ----.
If you love ALF, do an ALF blog.
You collect Smurfs, Smurf it up.
What I'm saying in 2026 is you
can build an empire.
Hey everybody, I know you're a minute
into the video on YouTube.
I'm not gonna keep you long,
but I've gotta tell you about GaryVee.com slash Stan.
Stan's store, an incredible tech stack
for creator entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial creators,
is literally the tech stack based on what I wrote
in Crush It! and Crushing It!
And really the thing almost all of you are trying to build.
So if you are one of those people,
go to the GaryVee challenge that I've partnered up
with this investment I made in Stan's store.
I believe in this.
I believe in it for you.
You'll see why I love it.
GaryVee.com slash Stan.
Go check it out.
Now back to the video.
We are talking about individuals now,
not just making money from brand deals,
but there are two macro things
that are happening that are massive.
The CPG and consumer product opportunity
that the Kelsey brothers just raised
at a $200 million valuation on.
When you look at what's going on with Logan Paul
and Jake Paul and their brands,
especially Prime and KSI's brand.
When you look at Charlie D'Amelio going for a popcorn.
When you look at Emma Chamberlain and her coffee.
When you look at all these,
the Poppy and Liquid Death, which is a little different.
Poppy and Liquid Death were brands
and then the founders themselves went up
and became the individual face.
Similar a little bit to mine.
I'm more business, then I became face.
Then to business with Empathy Wines,
which I did originally back then.
And so it's similar to like building your brand on Instagram
but then going and standing up a Patreon substack.
But in those scenarios,
those platforms still take some of the action.
When that's built on a decentralized server,
not a centralized server
and not done by a platform that owns it,
but by a platform that's decentralized
and you own all the money,
you're maximizing all of your revenue and not sharing it.
You will share with the places
that give you the attention.
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is.
But where you're gonna monetize,
you're gonna monetize in a decentralized way
where you keep 100% of that dollar,
not 90 or 80% of that dollar.
Number two, Gen Alpha Unplugging.
This is so fun for me.
I am completely convinced that young Gen Z,
Gen Alpha that's coming next,
and very honestly, probably all of Gen Z
and maybe even young millennial,
are all understanding this is great,
but, and more importantly, and, this is great.
And by the way, I know you all want to demonize it.
This is great.
It's changed your life.
I know we're all shitting on it,
but like how do you order food?
How do you get a date?
How do you like do a million things?
This is great, but it's not the end all be all
and we don't want to live like this 24, seven, 365.
This and.
So the unplugging is just the pendulum swings.
In 2006, when I'm like this, this, this,
this didn't exist and didn't have any of the market share.
Now it's gotten so much.
And I think within the next decade,
and I think starting in 2026,
you'll see more businesses like this.
I just talked about a business
where you get paid to walk with people,
like literally walk with them.
I think experiential music festivals,
going outside, going to events,
just going out and putting the phone away.
So would everybody else.
So it's here.
If it's here for me,
it's definitely here for the 15 year olds
that are coming up the game.
Number two, biggest trend in 2026,
the unplugging of gen alpha,
which is an indicator to the unplugging of every generation.
Number three, biggest trend of 2026
that no one sees, the underpriced attention,
the monetization of random content.
Let me explain.
This is a weird one.
I'm excited about this.
I think this is gonna be the breakthrough for some people.
When I wrote Crush It in 2009,
or 2008 came out in 09,
it was like, you can cash in on your passion.
So if you're a hardcore Star Trek collector,
if you really go crazy for two years
on your blog at the time,
and on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube at the time,
eventually you'll get to a place
where you can get t-shirts sold, sponsorship,
you can go speak at Star Trek Con and all that stuff.
What I'm saying here is very different.
This is about where we are now in overall marketing
and overall communication,
which is we're now in the interest graph,
not the social graph.
We're now in a place where I, Gary,
could tomorrow make my first ever piece of content
around surfing, ever.
And even though all my followers
do not follow me for surfing,
the way the AI algorithms now work
is when I post about surfing and why surfboards are good
and why you should buy a surfboard from me
or why this is a good surfboard or surf chalk
or whatever the hell I learn about surfboards,
that content is going to reach people
that are in a high propensity interest of surfboards.
Why is this important?
I believe for everybody who's watching right now,
if they started posting content
of everything that they are interested in, everything,
not passion, but passions,
posted everything that's random to them.
I just took up checkers
and the first video is them learning how to play checkers.
So not only their passions, but their curiosities.
The rise of curiosity content.
You're curious, you're exploring,
you're on training wheels, but you're learning.
My brother, AJ, does not know how to ride a bike.
I probably said that because I think it's funny,
but if he started making content as a 39-year-old man
about his journey on learning how to ride a bike,
here is my belief of the world we now live in.
For many of you, these random, random pieces
of social content become the first indicator
to a massive financial and happiness opportunity.
The monetization of random content.
You post something funny about sunflower seeds
because you spit one out on your friend
and you're like, that's funny, let's make another one.
And you find yourself six months later
getting $5,000 from a sunflower seed brand to do content.
It's about a very simple concept, which is why not?
Why not post something random all the time
that you're genuinely interested in?
You're not watching this video and you're just going random
for the sake of random because you believe I'm right.
Though, honestly, that's probably not a bad idea either.
But obviously, if it's grounded in truth and authenticity,
it's gonna work better.
When all of you start putting out more random content,
when that post gets three million views,
it opens up the opportunity for you to build on top of it.
Now, you might not be able to.
You get inspired by me in this video and you eat a pickle
and you put out a video about pickles and it hits
and it gets ******* three million views.
And now you're even getting DMs from people like,
what do you know about pickles?
And do you wanna do a pickle?
And do you wanna come to the pickle festival?
You might be like, I don't.
And honestly, I don't care.
And honestly, I have nothing else to contribute.
Like, I'm very surface level, I just eat pickles.
A, the Rizzler just says ridiculous things
and makes a face.
Like, there's a lot of people that have made full careers
about ridiculous things.
The where's the beef lady in the 80s was like,
she said, where's the beef?
That was her career.
So you could be a random spokesman
or something of that nature.
But if you keep it authentic,
if it's something you really know about,
or it's something you want to know about,
it actually allows you to build in depth,
not just randomness.
And so your random thing becomes the documentation
of your journey, which then becomes your monetizable
framework of content.
It's a left field thought that I think a lot of people
are gonna struggle with grasping.
I myself am in my journey of like really getting
this narrative down, but it's very clear to me.
Do I believe it's an invested interest of all of you
posting way more often on TikTok,
completely random stuff that is grounded
in things that you really know about
or things that you're curious about?
The answer is yes.
Let me give you, if you just got motivated by that,
let me give you the list of what you need to do.
You know, if you're gonna go down the random play
in social, make sure your bios in your TikTok and Instagram
are really tight and awesome.
Meaning email, phone number, like knowing that people
are gonna randomly see something.
Cause don't forget, there's a whole left field thing here.
You're a lawyer that wants, or you're a golf trainer.
You train people, golf lessons.
You give golf lessons.
You start putting out things about pumpkins.
You start putting out things about wet hair.
You start putting out things about porcupines.
This is random ass ----.
When your porcupine video gets 3 million,
people are gonna land on your account.
If they see that you're a professional golf expert
and you do golf lessons and you have an email there
and a phone number, of the 3 million people
that see your porcupine video,
nine of them are looking for golf lessons.
So this gets very practical of just general awareness,
relevance on an individual thing you connect on.
Some of you like me cause we're both sad Jet fans, right?
But then when you needed four years later some wine
or you needed an agency, you went to me
cause we're Jet fans.
Somebody loves porcupines, they love your video,
they may choose you to do the golf lesson.
So there's two things.
Your career might be about porcupines
cause you decided to go down that path
or it became a gateway drug to your service
or your business cause you want on interest
in a micro moment, not a macro moment.
Your profile's gotta be tight.
Number four on my 2026 trends underpriced opportunities.
The rise and continued rise of the content of Africa.
The numbers are staggering.
When you look at how much youth of our overall population
in a decade will be in the content of Africa.
When you're worldly enough to interact
with many of the incredible young talent
from these countries.
When you understand that the way the world turns
is every continent gets its time.
Many of us who are in my age group
watched the rise of Asia and the rise of the Middle East.
It is very clear that Africa as a continent
is absolutely the big winner of the next 20, 30, 40 years
and for many of you watching,
this should open up the aperture.
Do you have relatives there and you're like,
wait a minute Gary, you're saying that I can actually grow
my, like my professional careers growth
is actually from my grandparents and cousins
that live in Kenya or Nigeria.
I'm like, yes, that is exactly what I'm saying.
The opportunity there is extraordinary,
both doing business there and two,
understanding how amazing the raw firepower
of the young talent is in that country
from an intellect and hunger standpoint.
Again, follow what I'm saying here.
Similar to what we saw in India, in Japan and China
and overall Asia and the Middle East
over the last 25, 30, 40 years here in the West
in Europe and the US.
So huge opportunities, the cultural impact.
I don't have to tell anybody that follows music,
we've already seen the early indications
just like we saw Latin music massively impact the US
over the last 25 years, we've already been seeing
African music impact top hits in the US.
African influencers, the culture, the food, the sport
and it goes both ways.
Just like you're seeing manga and anime
and Asian culture massively impact the West,
the West is massively always,
because of the Hollywood machine in America,
impacted the East.
The opportunity in Africa is very clear,
you have to understand it, it's either direction.
You're 23 and you want an adventure
and forget about even relatives,
you're like a white boy in Kansas
and you're like, I'm an entrepreneur.
Wait, Gary's saying Africa, I'm saying Africa.
So doing business and obviously,
Africa's a massive continent.
In fact, it's so much bigger than you think
because it's misrepresented on the globe
and obviously, every country has its geopolitical stuff,
its entrepreneurial opportunities.
Some are great, some are not great,
really no different than Europe or anywhere else
but overall, the impact's enormous.
The basketball culture, both the African Basketball League
but the talent coming, Nigeria's athletes
starting to penetrate the NFL in a massive way.
Like, do I believe that?
Yes, I do.
Does it take patience?
Yes, it does.
Is that how great businesses are sometimes built?
For damn sure.
Africa's impact, massive.
Opportunity's massive in both directions.
Number five on big opportunities in 2026,
alternative sports.
This has been massive for me.
I've been following e-sports for a long time.
We represent a bunch of e-sports,
Mongrel Clicks and all these great athletes
in VaynerSports.
Obviously, I got involved in pickleball early on.
That's been very fruitful.
I'm obsessed with what's going on with wiffleball,
padel, three on three, the big three
and rivaled basketball, both men's and women's.
I've had my hands deep in this.
Obviously, many of you know my long-term ambition
to own the New York Jets.
Mondays in the fall are tough for me.
I'm very upset right now.
I'm filming this on a Monday after a tough loss.
But what's very clear to me
is that this is gonna keep going.
I'm involved in slam ball as well.
Like, this is gonna keep going.
I had a conversation a few months ago about bowling.
Like, I'm like, ooh, I like that.
The rise of UFC and e-sports in the last 30 years,
very clear.
Do you think these exhibition fighting matches
between Tyson and Jake Paul and Mayweather and Paul
and Paul and Paul, like, do you think these things
would work if social and YouTube didn't exist?
Nobody would care.
Nobody would watch.
So it goes from YouTube to Netflix.
This is gonna continue to happen.
This is the device that's changed the world
as we talked about.
And there's going to be room for more sports, more sports.
And basketball and football and baseball and soccer
were invented by human beings.
There's a kid right now watching this.
Right now on YouTube.
Who actually got inspired by my rant
and is going to actually invent
the next hockey, basketball and football.
And in 53 years, we'll reference this video
and that makes me feel good.
I hope I'm alive to get those flowers.
The rise of alternative sports
because of how the media landscape has changed is firm.
All of you need to look into it
and it changes absolutely everything.
And number six for 2026,
because I decided you'll have to wait
for a special video in the future.
Thanks for watching.
