How to Go Viral This Winter 2025-2026: Short Video Trends to Follow
Looking for winter content ideas? Explore the top short video trends for 2025-26 for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, plus creative ideas for creators.
Winter is the most emotional time of year, and social media knows it. As temperatures drop and the outside becomes unwelcoming, social media use rises. People spend more time indoors, scrolling under blankets and seeking comfort, nostalgia, and inspiration. It is also a great time to share holiday spirit and festive ideas. This means higher engagement, faster audience growth, and greater opportunities to sell, promote, and build community for creators and marketers.
To help you stay ahead, we’ve analysed current trends and the platforms gaining popularity this season. Here are the short video trends for winter 2025-26to take into account, along with actionable ideas to turn them into viral content.
Cozy & Aesthetic Winter Vibes
Content that evokes a sense of comfort has always been popular, but this season it's becoming even more sentimental. Content creators are embracing comforting narratives featuring warm lights, chunky blankets, snowy streets, soft music, cinnamon, candles, and pyjamas. Everything that evokes a sense of peace will do. Viewers want content they can relax into, something like the digital equivalent of a lazy Sunday morning.
Common vibes this season:
- Hot cocoa recipes, baking, and comforting winter meals.
- Reading spots, home libraries, and board game nights.
- Snowy window views, nature walks, and city lights in winter.
- Quiet decorating, gift wrapping, and home upgrades.
- "Spend a cosy day with me" mini-vlogs.
Seasonal TV Show Clips & Christmas Episodes
Nostalgia plus iconic holiday moments equals guaranteed engagement!
The festive season has its own TV tradition, with shows such as Friends, Gilmore Girls, The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Home Alone, and Harry Potter marathons bringing people back to shared memories.
What to post:
- Funny moments from classic holiday episodes.
- Reaction videos to old sitcom scenes
- 'This is my emotional support Christmas show' edits.
- Lists of what to watch this winter.
Many creators cut clips from long videos or screen recordings, which can be time-consuming to do manually.
This is where AI Video Cut can help. Just upload your long content and instantly receive the best short segments, formatted for Reels, TikTok, and Shorts. But our tool does more than that! It also generates titles, descriptions, and captions for your videos, so your short clips are ready to post right away.
Wishlists & New Year Bucket Lists
Manifesting the season... but make it content! It's both inspiring and entertaining. What's more, it's perfect for affiliate marketing, creator-brand collaboration, and social commerce integration. This trend blends creativity and shopping, serving as the winter equivalent of a digital vision board.
Instead of dull shopping lists, you can share a piece of personal aspirations:
- “'My dream Christmas tree” with ornaments replaced by desired gifts.
- “What I want to achieve in 2026” with aesthetic handwriting and photos.
- Interactive wishlists that people can vote on, such as “Should I buy this?”
“In My 20s/30s/40s” Life Parallels
This trend grows every winter because the festive season naturally prompts people to reflect on how they’ve changed. Creators compare their current lives to how things were in their 20s, 30s, or 40s.
Here are some examples:
- Partying in your 20s versus cosy nights in your 30s.
- Cheap, random gifts vs. thoughtful gift-giving.
- High expectations vs. acceptance of real life.
- Changes in career or family life.
Storytelling makes this trend personal and relatable for your audience. Old photos and clips are mixed with today’s reality to create a direct, personal contrast. People love sharing this type of content because it sparks conversation in the comments and encourages them to tag friends. For brands, this trend can serve as a basis for messaging around life changes, such as how tastes mature, how holiday traditions evolve, and how products support different life stages.
“Give This to Kevin” Trend
This is a very well-known sound from Home Alone that can transform holiday chaos into quick and entertaining videos. It can serve as a video idea for last-minute gift panic, messy decorating, and any other moments when things go wrong, all in a humorous way. The key is to exaggerate the stress and laughter of the festive season.
Humour trends spread quickly, and this one has the added advantage of nostalgia. Almost everyone will recognise the film reference.
Year Recaps, Flashbacks & “Wrapped” Moments
Every December, people want to look back. Platforms promote recap formats because they encourage strong engagement and interaction. Short videos showing “My 2025 in 10 clips” that highlight significant moments perform very well. Brands can use the same format to recap product launches, community achievements, or fun internal moments. People enjoy watching these videos because they feel like a shared ritual, and everyone is ending the year together.
This trend can take many forms:
- Photo slideshows.
- The best highlights of the year.
- Voiceovers detailing what has changed in 2025.
- “Then vs. now” transformations
This is also the perfect opportunity to repurpose long-form footage, and this is where AI Video Cut comes in. Rather than spending hours editing, you can automatically identify the best short clips and generate multiple, platform-ready versions from a single source video.
The “Princess & Knight” Trend
This winter, one of the most popular (and surprisingly funny) short video trends is the “Princess & Knight” storyline. The format is simple: a princess marries a nobleman while a loyal knight looks on, heartbroken. The scene is dramatic and cinematic, and creators love turning it into themed variations. The Internet has already seen different interpretations set in the Shrek universe, the world of Harry Potter, medieval fantasy worlds, and modern high school storylines. Some creators use actual film clips, while others stage the scene with friends or rely on their own art.
Although nothing about the trend is tied initially to Christmas, you can always re-interpret this scene, giving it a winter twist. This trend offers a great opportunity to experiment with storytelling, costumes, filters, and music. For marketers, it can be used for campaigns.
Music: The Stranglers - Golden Brown (Slowed Down Version)
This winter, trends are not being followed for their own sake; emotions like comfort, nostalgia, excitement, romance, and a touch of cinematic drama should be evoked. While high-volume production is still essential, overly polished videos are no longer the winning formula.
AI Video Cut can significantly speed up your workflow. It helps you:
- Turn long videos into multiple Shorts, Reels, and TikToks.
- Instantly pick out the strongest moments.
- Generate captions, titles, and descriptions.
- Make platform-ready versions in different aspect ratios.
Start your winter discount today and create holiday content with less effort.