2026 Predictions Guaranteed or Your Money Back

 

End of year means time to revisit last year's predictions and make some new ones for 2026. First, what I thought might happen in 2025:

1. Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads all fail to get traction, and X continues to stand alone.

A recent Pew survey shows that  21% of U.S. adults said they have used X, compared with only 8% who have used Threads, 4% who have used Bluesky, and 3% who have used Truth Social. So that's a pretty commanding lead, but nice to see that there are alternatives to X for those who want that, since the point of a social media is gaining enough critical mass to reach the masses.

2. Bucking the previous consolidation of AI efforts within large-scale and largely white-owned tech firms, the field democratizes considerably as lower barriers to entry create an innovative environment into which many diverse voices gain popularity.

Maybe I've missed the million flowers blowing, it seems the preponderance of media attention has been devoted to the big tech companies getting bigger. Perhaps this prediction of mine was more of a wish, for more experimentation leading to more lightning in a bottle from new sources.

3. Despite (or perhaps because of) a broad spectrum of opposition to incoming President Trump, the Democratic Party splinters, as far-left and moderate-middle are unable to reconcile themselves as being in the same group.

It seems like there's a lot of splintering going on in both the Democratic and Republican parties, with the D's struggling to find a tent big enough for left and middle and the R's jockeying for proximity to Trump and power for '28.

4. For the first time ever, a major US professional sports team names a female head coach.

Another aspiration dressed as a prediction. I'm not aware this has happened yet. Shouldn't it have by now?

5. Once left for dead and featuring noticeably homogenous casts, soap operas make a spirited comeback, updated for modern sensibilities with more multi-ethnicity in cast and content.

I think "Beyond the Gates" qualifies as this? Did I get one at least partially right?

And now onto 2026:

1. R's retain the Senate, D's take back the House, and the lessons the two parties derive from these results is that the R's need to run to the middle and the D's need to run to the left.

2. AI tools proliferate in accessibility and intricacy, driving production costs down significantly and leading to a proliferation of original content, which chips away at the oligopoly of entertainment content providers, including big award wins and commercial success for relative unknowns.

3. Despite the hand-wringing from Philly sports talk radio and national pundits, the Eagles repeat as Super Bowl champs and do so quite handily just like last season.

4. Significant breakthroughs in gene-level health remedies spark major ethical dilemmas around equity of access and privacy of identity.