Google's Top Trending Halloween Costumes for 2026, Explained
Variety has published Google's list of the top trending Halloween costumes for 2026, drawn from the search terms spiking hardest before October 31. It is a list without a single witch, vampire or ghost on it, and one of the ten names belongs to a real person rather than a character.
Credit Variety, NBC Chicago, Google Frightgeist, Billboard, Wikipedia
Variety has published Google's list of the top trending Halloween costumes for 2026, and it does not contain a single witch, vampire, skeleton or ghost.
The list comes from Frightgeist, Google's own Halloween tool, which ranks costume searches by the ones spiking hardest in the weeks before October 31. Variety published it on October 14, and the pop culture account Pop Base carried it to a much larger audience the same day.
The Full List
In the order Variety and the outlets carrying it have given:
Buddy the Unicorn comes from Buddy, a horror film by Casper Kelly. It is a torn, blood-stained unicorn mascot suit, and it has been the image doing most of the travelling as this list spreads.
NeeDoh is the odd one out. It is not a character from anything. It is a squishy stress toy, and people are searching for how to dress as it.
Nikki is from the horror film Obsession, and the look is a red tiger-print dress with blood across the face and shoulder.
Agamemnon is from Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Black and bronze Greek armour with a tall crested helmet.
Lily Love Braids comes from Poppy Playtime, the horror game series.
Oliver Tree is a musician, and the only real person on the list. More on that below.
Verity is from Minecraft, a tall yellow figure with a fixed grin.
Carl is from Dungeon Crawler Carl, the book series.
Disco Scooby-Doo is exactly what it sounds like, a seventies-styled take on a cartoon that first aired in 1969.
Hazel Hook is from Descendants, the Disney franchise.
Where the List Actually Comes From
This part matters more than it sounds, because it changes what the list means.
Frightgeist does not measure how many people will actually wear a costume. It measures which costume searches are rising fastest. A costume that half of America wears every year without looking it up first will not spike, because nobody needs to search for it.
That is why there is no witch on this list. It is not that nobody is dressing as a witch. It is that nobody needs to Google it.
So this is not a list of the most popular costumes of 2026. It is a list of the costumes people do not already know how to make.
How the Story Travelled
| Date and time (UTC) | What happened |
|---|---|
| October 14, 12:18 | Variety posts the list on X |
| October 14, 12:40 | Pop Base posts it on X, where it reaches a far larger audience |
| October 14, 13:16 | Pop Base posts it on Instagram with the full list of ten |
| October 14 | NBC and other US outlets carry the same list |
One Name on This List Is Not a Character
Oliver Tree is the sixth entry, and he is the only entry who is a person rather than something written.
Oliver Tree Nickell was a singer, rapper and producer, born on June 29, 1993. He built an unusually visual career, with a bowl cut that became his signature, scooter stunts in his videos, and a run of songs including "Life Goes On", "Miss You" and "Alien Boy". His fourth album, Love You Madly Hate You Badly, came out this year.
He died on June 14, 2026, aged 32, in a mid-air collision between two helicopters over Rio de Janeiro. Six people were killed.
Google's tool reports what people are searching for. It does not report why, and neither Google nor Variety has offered a reason for his place on this list. Those two facts sit next to each other and the reader can decide what to do with them.
What the List Is Actually Made Of
Broken down by where each costume comes from, the shape of 2026 is clear:
| Source | Count |
|---|---|
| Films released recently | 3 |
| Video games | 2 |
| A book series | 1 |
| A Disney franchise | 1 |
| A cartoon from 1969 | 1 |
| A toy | 1 |
| A real person | 1 |
Nine of the ten are tied to something somebody watched, played or read. Only Scooby-Doo predates this decade, and even that one has been restyled into a disco version to make it current.
JenzNews Take: The interesting thing about this list is everything that is missing from it. No witch. No vampire. No ghost, no skeleton, no zombie, not one of the figures that Halloween actually runs on. That is not because those costumes died this year. It is because Frightgeist only sees the searches, and nobody has needed to look up how to be a ghost since about 1950. What this list really records is the gap between what people wear and what people have to learn. Every name on it is something that did not exist long enough ago for anyone to already know how it is done.
Before October 31
The list is Google's and Variety published it. It is a snapshot of what Americans were searching for in the middle of October, not a prediction and not a ranking of what will actually be worn.
If the pattern of past years holds, most doors on Halloween night will still open to a witch.
