2026

2026 vs 2016

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Side by side photos of me in 2016 and 2026 (almost)

There seems to be some nostalgia for 2016 at the moment. It mostly seems to be about the music of 2016, but apparently it’s also because people have started putting filters on their TikTok videos like we used to with Instagram photos in 2016.

I did a review of 2016 at the time, so you can read that, I suppose. 10 years ago, our 10-year-old was, well, a newborn baby, and so whilst they were born in 2015, most of the first year of their life fell in 2016. So it was quite a memorable year for us in that sense.

2015 had been a big year – we’d bought a house, I passed my driving test and bought a car, and we became a family of three. So 2016 was more of a consolidation year, with Christine on maternity leave for the first half (and me having the whole of January off on paternity and annual leave). I changed jobs twice – securing a secondment doing timetabling in early February, and then moving to a new permanent role in August. I’m (essentially) still in that role now.

Our house that we bought in 2015 was (and to some extent still is) a work in progress, and so in 2016 we had a downstairs bathroom installed, along with a new boiler and a Nest thermostat – our first piece of smart home technology. And despite having a small child, we did manage some trips – I went to London twice, we had an overnight trip to Liverpool, we went to see two friends get married up near Durham and had a day out in Oxford.

The photo at the top is a then-and-now comparison; not having a newborn means I’m less tired, but I’m a little wider nowadays and need to wear glasses. Also, there’s quite the difference between the front facing camera on the iPhone 5S (2016) and the iPhone 13 Mini (2026).

So on the whole, at least for us, it was a good year. Although the Brexit referendum, Trump’s first election and all the celebrities who died that year were less good outcomes.

Some predictions for 2026

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As per the past couple of years, I try to channel my inner Mystic Meg, and come up with some predictions for the new year. Last year’s were mostly on target, although some were rather low-ball predictions.

Bradford City will win promotion

I don’t really follow football or support a team, but as my employer currently sponsors their stadium, I check up on how Bradford City AFC are doing on a regular basis. And at the moment, they’re doing quite well; I’m writing this ahead of time but they’re currently third in League One. If they managed to finish the season as one of the top two teams, or win the playoffs, then they’ll win promotion to the Championship, having only been promoted to League One last season. The last time they were in the second tier of English football was in 2003-4.

A big AI firm will go bust

There have been warning signs that the AI ‘bubble’ will burst soon. I certainly think that a ‘market correction’ is likely, and one of the big AI firms will go bust. Indeed, there’s a web site called Pop The Bubble which asks Google Gemini each day when the bubble will burst. At one point, on the 19th December, it predicted the bubble would burst the very next day, but more recently it has revised its projections to some time around September.

Certainly OpenAI, probably the best known AI company, is in trouble – its operating costs far exceed its income. So much so that answers may start including sponsored content. I wouldn’t be surprised that it reaches a point where it runs out of money and its investors get cold feet. That could happen this year, but we’ll see.

There will be some kind of ceasefire in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine will have been running for four years by next month, and both sides have suffered heavy losses. The BBC estimate that 160,000 Russians have been killed, and the real total may be double that. Overall, something like half a million people have lost their lives in the war across both sides.

What the ceasefire will look like remains to be seen. I see Russia as very much the aggressor here, and rewarding it with territory that was part of Ukraine doesn’t seem just, in my mind. Certainly, Ukraine hasn’t wanted to cede territory, but to stop the war it may have to – at least, for now.

The World Cup will be overshadowed by politics

Hosting of this year’s Men’s Association Football World Cup is split between Mexico, Canada and the USA this year, with the USA hosting the majority of games. However, I expect the USA’s new immigration rules for people applying for ESTA could backfire. I expect a tense political situation as various celebrities or politicians find themselves turned away at US airports or denied visas, and the diplomatic fallout that this could create.

I’m pleased that Scotland qualified as well as England this time, and Wales and the Republic of Ireland are potentially still in the running. I doubt I’ll be watching the matches – as mentioned, football isn’t really my thing and the time difference means that some of the matches are likely to be late at night UK time.

Rolled over predictions

I’m also going to roll over a couple of previous predictions:

  • Labour will do poorly in local elections
  • Twitter/X won’t become an ‘everything app’

As a member of the Labour party, I hope it turns a corner this year, but I doubt it’ll manage it in time for the local elections in late spring. As for Twitter/X, I expect it’ll stagnate and Elon Musk will continue to be a terrible person, but it’ll neither shut down, be sold off or launch any major new features.

Happy New Year!

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Welcome to 2026! I hope you are having a good new year.

As in previous years, we didn’t stay up until midnight to see in the new year. However, our reason for an early night this time is that Christine is working today. So, we had what would have been our New Year’s Day meal yesterday. Christine pressure-cooked a gammon joint with pineapple juice (here’s a recipe that’s a close match) and we had the namesake trifle from Robert Owen Brown’s Crispy Squirrel and Vimto Trifle book (also available on Amazon via this affiliate link, but for about 10 times the price so buy it from the publisher).

2026 holidays

We have a couple of trips away already planned for 2026. As usual, we’re going to Sci-Fi Weekender in Great Yarmouth in March, and having enjoyed last year’s holiday in North Wales, we’re going back there this year. There were lots of places that we wanted to go to, but couldn’t fit into the week, so we already have several ideas of places to visit.

I’m not expecting any other trips away, although we may be in London at some point. Christine is starting her studies for another qualification at one of the London universities, and whilst it’s primarily a distance learning course, there are some in-person teaching events. Depending on when they are, it may be that we can go down as a family. As it was, I didn’t get to visit London last year; Christine did, but only for work-related reasons.

New tech

As Christine will be starting a new course, we’re using it as an excuse to replace the laptop that we share at home. We currently have a Lenovo Ideapad 320S, which was bought in 2018 when Christine started a previous course, so it’s eight years old now and positively ancient in laptop terms. I upgraded the RAM to 16 GB in 2022 (previously it had just 4 GB), which goes some way to explain its longevity, but it can’t be (easily) upgraded to Windows 11. And as Windows 10 is literally on borrowed time, it’s about time for an update. I’ll write more once we’ve got it.

Home renovation

We’ve owned our house for 10 years (11 this summer). We bought it with the intention of renovating it, and before we moved in we renovated most of the downstairs. At the end of 2020, we had our (then) four-year-old’s bedroom renovated, followed by our kitchen in 2022.

The next big project is the bathroom. We’d planned to start looking at this in 2026-27, but for various reasons we’re probably going to bring this forward to the first half of 2026.

So that’s some of the things that I expect we’ll get up to this year. There will always be things that happen that I never expect – like last year’s work trip to Athens – but it looks to be a busy, and hopefully productive year.