Pantone announces white as color of 2026

The company seems to get how this looks, especially given some of the year’s other advertising that sparked a battle in our never-ending culture war. “Skin tones did not factor into this at all,” Pantone president Laurie Pressman told the Post. Pressman says that the question of skin tone also came up with the company’s previous two colors: 2024’s Peach Fuzz and 2025’s Mocha Mousse. But those were not intended to reflect anything racial, and neither is white—er, Cloud Dancer. “It’s not a pristine white, it’s not a technical white, it’s not a white that if we think about when we came out of covid, where people were looking for these very optically brightened white,” Pressman continues. “This is intentionally a softer white, a white that is not bleached, a very natural-looking white.” 

Of course, there are plenty of other connotations to the color: peace, virginity, marriage, or, at least in Korean culture, death. Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, tells the Post that the decision is less about “defaulting to white” than about “opening up new avenues and ways of thinking.” Perhaps the blank canvas is a good idea coming out of the years of brainrot and rage bait.