NEED TO KNOW
- Pantone named Cloud Dancer, a serene white neutral, as its 2026 Color of the Year
- The shade symbolizes calm, creativity, and renewal, reflecting a cultural shift toward quiet reflection and personal expression
- Pantone’s annual selection involves global experts analyzing trends in design, technology and culture to choose a defining hue.
Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year is here!
On Thursday, Dec. 4, the global color authority officially named Cloud Dancer (PANTONE 11-4201) as the defining shade of the year to come.
“A lofty white neutral whose aerated presence acts as a whisper of calm and peace in a noisy world. PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud Dancer symbolizes a calming influence in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection,” the company wrote on Instagram. “A billowy white imbued with serenity, it invites true relaxation and focus, allowing the mind to wander and creativity to breathe.”
The color, Pantone says, “drifts between light and ethereal, a living calm that invites renewal, vision in serenity and creative release.”
“In a world where color has become synonymous with personal expression, this is a shade that can adapt, harmonize, and create contrast, bringing a feeling of airy lightness to all product applications and environments, whether making a standalone statement or combined with other hues,” the added on their website. “Cloud Dancer gracefully blends into a veiled palette of softened hues that ultimately dissolve into shadowy shades, producing an easy and effortless contrast in color.”
Since 1999, the Pantone Color Institute has selected a hue for its annual Color of the Year announcement. According to an interview with the company’s vice president Laurie Pressman in 2023, the program was intended to “engage the design community and color enthusiasts around the world in a conversation about color.”
Pantone uses a global team of color experts to select each year’s tone. The panel combs through a variety of influences like film and TV production; art, fashion and design trends; new technologies, materials, textures; and even social media or upcoming sporting events.
“Anything and everything taking place in our culture during the year can influence our Pantone Color of the Year selections for the upcoming year and each source carrying a different weight from year to year,” Pressman said. “If you look back to 15 years ago, technology would have played an infinitesimal role. Today that is no longer the case.”
Last year, Pantone named Mocha Mousse (PANTONE 17-1230) as the dominating color of 2025. A press release shared on Dec. 5, 2024, credited the shade’s ability to invoke comforts like “cacao, chocolate and coffee” as well as the “natural world.” The wider world noted its embodiment of the “quiet luxury” trend at the time.
The Pantone Color Institute’s executive director Leatrice Eiseman said the color “expresses a level of thoughtful indulgence” while being “sophisticated and lush, yet at the same time an unpretentious classic.”
For 2024, the winner was Peach Fuzz (PANTONE 13-1023). The organization previously described the “warm and cozy” tone as a “velvety, gentle peach whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body and soul.”
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The rich, berry-hued Viva Magenta defined 2023 with its “vim” and “vigor,” selected because it “revels in pure joy encouraging experimentation and self-expression without restraint,” Pantone said.
The company made history when it announced a newly-created shade for 2022. Very Peri blended blues with a violet-red undertone, creating a deep periwinkle shade.
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