What’s next for “Gen Z’s internet sanctuary?” Tumblr’s resurgence proves what we’ve always known: fandom culture is pop culture. In 2026, we’ll keep pushing it forward, sustaining Tumblr as a deeply loved space for fandom, where the next wave of creativity takes shape.
How was your 2025 on Tumblr? What were your fandom highlights? Add your voice to Year in Review by using #tumblr 2025.
Some of Tumblr’s favorite TV shows of 2025 really leaned into the chaos of the world, and fan artists, GIF editors, meme creators, and text posters were so here for it. Apocalyptic The Last of Us—a longtime Tumblr favorite due to the popularity of the games, its queer love story, and the show’s leading man—had you making 78k original posts with 9 million notes. Severance’s stylish, surreal workplace unease struck a chord, making you question the very nature of work, across over 93k original posts that garnered over 8.5 million notes.
And the feral survivor thriller Yellowjackets had the sapphics living out their girlrage fantasies in over 114k original posts with over 8 million notes. An honorable mention goes to #conclave and #the pope, which together garnered almost 3.5 million notes across 27k original posts as the death of Pope Francis this year brought about a resurgence of GIFs, art, and fanfic from the 2024 film Conclave.
Wow. When the world is in disarray, sometimes all you can do is watch fictional chaos on the screen (which sometimes bleeds into IRL chaos anyway, sigh), and then stick a GIF on your blog like you’re collecting them for later.
How was your 2025 on Tumblr? What were your dystopian TV highlights? Add your voice to Year in Review by using #tumblr 2025.
Sometimes, a weird meme just...happens, and no one quite knows why. In September, you discovered Juggling Lab, an app for devising and animating juggling patterns to help people learn them. Suddenly, our dashboards were filled with stick figures and red balls. #Juggling lab spiked and became a silly little source of joy on Tumblr for a moment there—with folks using the software to create GIFs and memes, and sending little red balls into each other’s ask boxes. The tag made it into the top trending topics on Tumblr in September and generated over 2 million notes in its short period of infamy, prompting Juggling Lab’s main developer to take to Reddit: “for some reason known only to the internet gods, Juggling Lab has been trending lately on Tumblr. The creativity of people astounds me.”
@lolmatdi1: "You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of master."
@foone: "Tumblr right now"
@lun4cat: please, please help, they’re going everywhere
@fireball-me: Boxing
How was your 2025 on Tumblr? Did you catch Juggling Lab as it was happening? Have a favorite GIF to remember it by? Add your voice to Year in Review by using #tumblr 2025.
2025 has also been a year of wholesome memes spreading comfort and humor. On January 2, an image of the solar system with the caption “let’s orbit around mama” launched our year of memes with the Mamaposting meme trend, which quickly spread across Tumblr and, well, everywhere else. Blogs were created, and posts were made, garnering over 4 million notes. Folks found “whimsy in the innumerable qualities of mama” and solace in the warm, fuzzy feeling of being under the care of a maternal being, be that the sun, a luminous lion, or a traffic cone.
My luminous mama (@cognitohazardous):
let's overthrow mama (@mutt-boy):
Being nefarious with mama (@moonshineshrew):
curled up with mama.... protected by mama.... let's be warm with mama... (@fatalisticme):
let’s lay flat on our ovoidal mama (@riqthegoofygoober):
My ancient mama (@im-out-of-the-blues):
How was your 2025 on Tumblr? What were your mamaposting highlights? Add your voice to Year in Review by using #tumblr 2025.
2025 has been a year with no shortage of good and bad, dystopian, bizarre, and outright outrageous occurrences. Whether the death of the Pope, Taylor Swift’s ownership of all her masters, or the decade-long search for a 2m long worm in an aquarium—the Destiel meme was there for us throughout, with Supernatural trending on Tumblr in February, March, April, May, August, and September, and over 188k original posts created to overwhelming approval, evident in almost 19 million engagements.
@pangirl-fangirl:
How was your 2025 on Tumblr? What were your Destiel news highlights? Add your voice to Year in Review by using #tumblr 2025.
HELLO TUMBLR.
Wow, we made it. 2025. One of the years of all time.
And, speaking of time, it's that time of year again when we reflect on the Times™ we've had: Welcome to Year in Review.
This year, we’re doing something new: Instead of the usual fandom data list drop, we took a closer look at the culture bubbling up through tag data and across your dashboards in 2025—the communities, aesthetics, and micro-moments that shaped the year.
We’ve broken it down into five chapters, each one illustrated by the posts that best capture the moment, because Tumblr is you, and the posts you make along the way.
You can jump into any chapter using the links below, or head here for the full experience.
Like the look? You can grab the theme for your blog here.
Alright. Let’s get into it:
This Isn’t Nostalgia, It’s Tumblr Dive into popular nostalgia tags and the conversations around them that have become part of our today on Tumblr in 2025. Call it nostalgia if you want. We’ll call it Tumblr in 2025.
Your Life as a Moodboard Jump into moodboard aesthetics and the astronomic rise of girlblogging in this year of our Lana, 2025.
Cozy Dystopia Re-discover all the elements that, along with r e a l i t y, co-created the cozy dystopia we’ve all been basking in on Tumblr in 2025.
Age of the Creator Hear from some of our favorite creators on Tumblr and how they’re using their blogs to create exciting projects and build community around their craft.
Fandom: The New Mainstream A look back at some of the biggest fandoms of 2025 through the lens of fan art, fanfic, and fandom discourse.
We hope you enjoy this little slice of Tumblr in 2025. How was your 2025 on Tumblr? What did you create, join, celebrate, lose your mind over? Add your own Year in Review to the tag by using #tumblr 2025.
It finally happened. After some romancing in the ballpit, we popped the question and, folks, THEY SAID YES.
In short, we're in love! Now, we're in need of a ship name. Can you help? Vote below, or let us know if you come up with something better. This is now a matter of grave importance.
(Thanks to all the folks on X who added some excellent (& some funny) suggestions to our little list)
Anyway, the fan art is already absolutely incredible, thank you for celebrating with us:
@blakeisspacing:
@peppercornyy:
TagTeam or ao3blr? You've got 3ish hours to vote! How will you choose?
Well, it was a good old week for fans of tomfoolery, as April Fool's came and went with some accurate and some less accurate guessing at the number of toys in a pit. Friday brought the penultimate episode of Yellowjackets' third season, with many mixed feelings. The newest episode of 9-1-1 aired with some heartwarming moments in Texas and some...less heartwarming moments in LA. Sunrise on the Reaping is breathing new life into the Hunger Games fandom on Tumblr. Your love for video games is ever-present, with Tomodachi Life, Sonic & Shadow, Pokémon, Cookie Run: Kingdom, and Love and Deepspace all in this week's list. Meanwhile, the artists keep on arting, Jujutsu Kaisen makes an appearance, and Jayvik is still hanging onto the last place. This is Tumblr's Week in Review.
ever wondered how many crabs might fit in a confined space? what number of horses might go into a padded pool? what quantity of paws might populate a pit typically filled with colorful plastic balls? well, you’re in luck.
for no reason at all, we have decided to make you do some math: we have filled a ball pit measuring exactly 32” x 8" with some true tumblr icons. more pics below (including, of course, a banana for scale). you have 24 hours to guess how many of each toy appears. good luck!
but that's not all—we have more polls for your guessing pleasure:
poll 1: how many crabs have infested the pool? poll 2: what number of mini horse friends? poll 3: how many tiny toe beans are contained within?
happy voting!
well folks, after 24 hours in the ball toy pit and a total of 219,643 total votes across the polls, it's time to find out who was right!
there were a total of 773 toys in the pit, making 30.1% of the 79,326 people who voted correct! as far as individual toys go, here's the breakdown:
crabs: 239 (19.6% of the 44,845 votes) horses: 299 (27.5% of the 45,270 votes) paws: 235 (27.7% of the 50,202 votes)
we had a blast looking through the notes at all your very complicated math—truly impressive!
ever wondered how many crabs might fit in a confined space? what number of horses might go into a padded pool? what quantity of paws might populate a pit typically filled with colorful plastic balls? well, you’re in luck.
for no reason at all, we have decided to make you do some math: we have filled a ball pit measuring exactly 32” x 8" with some true tumblr icons. more pics below (including, of course, a banana for scale). you have 24 hours to guess how many of each toy appears. good luck!
but that's not all—we have more polls for your guessing pleasure:
poll 1: how many crabs have infested the pool? poll 2: what number of mini horse friends? poll 3: how many tiny toe beans are contained within?
happy voting!
Week Ending March 31st, 2025
The number in italics indicates how many spots a ship moved up or down from the previous week. Bolded ships weren’t on the list last week.
Week Ending March 31st, 2025
The number in italics indicates how many spots a title moved up or down from the previous week. Bolded titles weren’t on the list last week.
Week Ending March 31st, 2025
The number in italics indicates how many spots a title moved up or down from the previous week. Bolded titles weren’t on the list last week.
