Whether you were having any or not, 2025 was a big year for sex. Over the last 12 months, the landscape of desire was reshaped in ways most of us are still catching up to. We saw age-verification walls appear like tragic little chastity belts across the internet — laws that pushed porn behind locked doors overnight (ostensibly to try and keep out under 18s, but affecting adults, too). Social media tightened the screws on anyone speaking openly about sex. Dating apps continued their slow drift into irrelevancy as more people admitted they were (still) burnt out by endless swipes and dead-end chats. All in all, it’s been a pretty unsexy time.
As the founder of Lover Management, a talent agency specialising in intimacy and the erotic, I’m immersed in the state of sex, desire, sex work, dating, and more, and even I’ve found it hard to keep up with our changing sexual climate. So, where will our romantic lives go in 2026?
At a time of dating app fatigue and growing online censorship, and with our erotic autonomy increasingly shaped by systems completely outside our control, you’d think offline, right? In this future tech-free utopia, we’d get back into offline pornography, meet sexual partners spontaneously in person, and start having more actual sex than virtual sex.
And, while some of this might come true (we hope!), it probably won’t be quite as simple as that. A couple of years ago, something called the ‘Stripper Index’ — a term that emerged via viral social media posts from sex workers — became a cultural pulse check. The idea is simple: how much money people are spending in strip clubs is a leading indicator of economic confidence. When tips are flowing, people feel flush; when they dry up, it often signals financial anxiety before it shows up elsewhere.
This index can also be applied to dating more generally — no money? Less dates — as well as to our prioritisation of physical intimacy in hard economic times. And in 2025, the ‘Stripper Index’ showed that IRL intimacy wasn’t booming in the way you perhaps initially would’ve thought. If anything, it actually painted a picture of a population craving connection — but too tired, too broke, too anxious, and too overstretched to seek it out physically. Desire was shifting, yes, but not in the simple ‘we’re all going out again’ arc you might expect.
That’s not to say sex and dating will cease this year — far from it. But, in such a turbulent time, what exactly will happen to it? According to Tinder’s annual Year in Swipe report, we’re going to be prioritising clarity, confidence, and honest self-expression this year, while Lovehoney predicts that we’ll be seeking out more meaningful connections instead of casual sex.
Now, I’m lucky enough to work with some of the most influential sex educators, dominatrixes, porn directors, intimacy coaches, erotic artists, sex therapists, and relationship innovators in the UK and beyond, who sit at the coalface of modern desire. If anyone can predict what relationships and intimacy will actually look like in 2026, it’s them. And if anyone has a front-row seat to this shift, it’s me. So I asked them one simple question: ‘What will sex and dating look like for women in 2026?’
What follows is a speakerbox of grounded, unexpected predictions about porn, dating, sex parties, intimacy, censorship, and the future of desire — from the people shaping it every day.
“I think we’re going to see a further push to the return to in-person dating. Apps like Breeze — where there’s no chat function and the app simply arranges a date for you — signal a desire for less emotional admin and fewer dead-end conversations. Or the app Thursday’s singles mixers, too. People are tired of the scroll, the ghosting, the unreliability. Apps that promise the opposite will do well in 2026.
I also think many people will deprioritise dating altogether, putting more energy into friendships or things that feel nourishing and reciprocal. I’ve noticed there’s a collective craving for yearning — we’re seeing it in media like Bridgerton, in on-screen rivalries, in will-they-won’t-they tension. It’s a backlash to instant gratification culture.
We’ll likely also see more portrayals of polyamory in mainstream media — but I want to see not just throuples, but metamours, networks, the full range. Good or bad, representation is still representation. At the same time, with the rising popularity of polyamory, I’m noticing people using poly terms like ‘relationship anarchy’ to mask bad behaviour — almost an extension of fuckboy dating. These concepts are easily misunderstood and easily abused.”
“Sex and dating in 2026 may drift toward something slower and more deliberate, simply because people seem exhausted by the noise — the gated porn, the moderation, the endless app admin. I have a sense that desire could become more context-driven again: less about overstimulation, more about voice, tension, and the small psychological signals that make intimacy feel alive. And while dating apps won’t disappear, I imagine they’ll take up less emotional real estate as people look for connections that feel less managed by algorithms. I also wonder if we’ll see sex parties and IRL intimacy spaces become more curated and community-led, partly because people want safety and depth rather than pure spectacle.
If I could give women one thought for 2026, it’s that wanting what you want isn’t unreasonable; standards aren’t a burden, they’re a compass. Overall, when I look at the landscape, I don’t see a culture collapsing — just one rearranging itself around privacy, intention, and the kind of intimacy that can’t be automated.”
