Trends
The biggest Etsy trend of 2026 is not a colour or an aesthetic. It is that the classic handmade staples are losing search demand fast while kits, collectibles and personalised digital goods take their place. "Handmade bracelet" is down 89% in a year and "handmade candles" down 88%, both measured in our database in August 2026, while "coloring blanket" is up 3,671% and "squishies" up 2,377%. Below is what moved, what it means for what you list next, and how to check any trend before you tool up for it.
Key takeaways:
- Six classic Etsy categories are down 55% to 89% in a year, including scented candles (-80%), custom engagement jewellery (-80%) and handmade jewellery (-76%), all as of August 2026.
- What replaced them is not handmade at all. Kits, sensory toys, fandom collectibles and personalised digital files are the categories adding volume.
- "Etsy witches" is a real search term, at 33,100 monthly searches and up 234% in a year, which tells you how much of Etsy's pull is now aesthetic and subcultural rather than craft.
- The one-year number will get you in at the top. "World cup stickers" grew 8,606% in a year and still fell 87% in three months after peaking in June 2026.
- Etsy itself is growing slowly, not collapsing: marketplace GMS was $2.58 billion in Q2 2026, up 7.5%, with buyers roughly flat at about 87 million.
- Etsy's take rate is 25.9% of GMS across all fees including ads, up 130 basis points year over year, so price for it.
Let's get into it.
What the search data says about Etsy categories in 2026
Every "Etsy trends" article tells you what is popular. Almost none tells you what is falling, which is the expensive half. If you spend the winter making something whose demand halved while you were making it, the trend report did you harm.
So here is the falling half first. These are real US search terms with their monthly volume and one-year change, pulled from our database in August 2026.
The scale of some of those drops is worth sitting with. "Scented candles" peaked at 135,000 monthly searches in July 2025 and is at 22,200 now. "Personalized jewelry" peaked at 165,000 in December 2025 and is at 27,100. "Crochet blanket pattern" went from 74,000 in January 2026 to 27,100.
This is where measured volume beats an index. Google Trends would show you the same shapes on a 0 to 100 scale, but it would not tell you that one of those categories still has 27,100 real searches behind it and another has 1,600. Rising Trends stores the absolute monthly volume and the 3-month, 1-year and 2-year growth for every term, which is the difference between "this is declining" and "this is declining and still ten times bigger than the thing you were going to switch to". The jewellery category page is a good place to see that for yourself.
What Etsy buyers moved to instead
The money did not leave Etsy. It moved to a different kind of object.
Four patterns run through the rising list.
- Kits and unfinished things beat finished things. "Coloring blanket" at 18,100 searches and +3,671%, "embroidery kit" at 22,200 and up 23% in three months. The buyer wants to do the craft, not own the result.
- Sensory and collectible toys are enormous. "Squishies" sits at 550,000 monthly searches, up 2,377% in a year, which is larger than every handmade category on this page combined. We went into the wider shift in the sensory toy boom, and the toy category page tracks the rest.
- Personalised digital goods are rising while personalised physical goods fall. "Personalized meal planner" is at 6,600 and up 408% in a year, with the three-month figure at +1,019%. "Personalized stories" is up 222%. Meanwhile personalised greeting cards are down 80%.
- Aesthetic and subculture terms pull hard. "Etsy witches" at 33,100 searches and +234% is the clearest example, and it is one of the few terms in our whole database with Etsy in the name.
One honest caveat on the biggest number. "Squishies" is a general consumer search, not an Etsy-only one, and much of that volume goes to mass retail. It still tells you the category has pull, and the handmade angle on it (custom, collectible, made-to-order) is what an Etsy shop can actually win.
10 things to sell on Etsy right now, by measured demand
Ranked by August 2026 US monthly search volume, with the one-year change.
| # | What to sell | Search term | Monthly searches | 1-year change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Collectible and custom squishies | squishies | 550,000 | +2,377% |
| 2 | Digital gift cards for your shop | digital gift card | 40,500 | +82% |
| 3 | Witchy and occult decor | etsy witches | 33,100 | +234% |
| 4 | Embroidery and craft kits | embroidery kit | 22,200 | 0% |
| 5 | Colouring blankets and colour-in textiles | coloring blanket | 18,100 | +3,671% |
| 6 | Body jewellery for specific piercings | vch piercing jewelry | 14,800 | +236% |
| 7 | Custom LEGO builds and kits | custom lego | 12,100 | +22% |
| 8 | Custom bobbleheads and figurines | custom bobblehead | 12,100 | +22% |
| 9 | Personalised meal planners | personalized meal planner | 6,600 | +408% |
| 10 | Shadow work and prompt journals | shadow work journal prompts | 3,600 | +89% |
Two of those deserve a note. Body jewellery for a specific piercing is a good example of how narrow you should go: the generic term is falling while the specific one is up 236%. And custom LEGO and bobbleheads are flat-to-slightly-up rather than exploding, which is often what a durable category looks like.
If you want the same treatment for physical products on the bigger marketplaces, our trending products list carries price, rating and monthly sales per item, and how to find products to sell with Google Trends covers the manual version of this research.
Digital products to sell on Etsy
Digital is the part of Etsy where the search data has turned most clearly positive, and it is also where the margin is.
- Personalised meal planners. 6,600 monthly searches, up 408% in a year and up 1,019% in the last three months, which is the strongest short-term acceleration on this page.
- Personalised stories. 1,900 searches, up 222% in a year. Children's books with a name in them, printed or delivered as a file.
- Printable files. 2,400 searches, up 140% in a year and 85% in three months. The generic term, useful as a category health check rather than a product.
- Journal and prompt packs. "Shadow work journal prompts" at 3,600 searches, up 89%, is the specific version that sells.
- Digital gift cards. 40,500 searches and up 82%. Not a product you make, but the highest-volume digital term here, and shops that offer one capture the last-minute buyer.
Notice that none of these is "a planner". Every rising digital term has a qualifier in front of it. The generic digital products on Etsy are commodity, and the ones with a specific job attached are the ones growing.
Why the one-year number will get you in at the top
Here is the most useful chart on this page. It is the biggest mover in our whole toy dataset, and it is also a warning.
"Dumpling squishy" went from almost nothing in late 2025 to 1,830,000 monthly searches in May 2026, then gave back more than half of it by August. It still sits at 673,000, which is a real market. But a seller who read the +67,200% year-over-year figure in June and ordered a pallet was buying four months after the top.
The three-month column is what catches it: dumpling squishy is at -63% over three months while the yearly number still reads in five figures. The same pattern hit tournament merch this summer, which we broke down in the print-on-demand market guide.
Run these five checks before you commit materials or time.
The event check is the one sellers skip. If the demand is attached to a date, your window closed before the data showed it.
Is Etsy oversaturated?
The honest answer from Etsy's own filings: the marketplace is growing slowly, and the growth is coming from existing buyers spending a little more rather than from new buyers arriving.
In the Q2 2026 shareholder letter, for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, Etsy reported marketplace GMS of $2.58 billion, up 7.5% year over year, the third consecutive quarter of growth. Active buyers were about 87 million on a trailing twelve-month basis, roughly flat year over year, up around 350 thousand on the previous quarter. GMS per active buyer was $124, up 2.8%.
Flat buyers with rising spend is not a collapsing marketplace. It is a mature one, where your growth has to come from taking share rather than riding the platform.
That is worth comparing with the channel overall. US retail e-commerce was $340.2 billion in Q2 2026, 17.1% of all retail sales and up 12.2% year over year, against 6.7% for total retail, in the Census Bureau release of 18 August 2026.
So online retail grew about 12% while Etsy's marketplace grew 7.5%. Etsy is losing a little share of a growing channel. For a seller that means the platform will not carry you, but it also means the demand is there if your listing is the one that matches what people are searching for.
How to check an Etsy trend yourself
The method is the same every time, and it takes about ten minutes per idea.
- Start with the term a buyer would type, not the term you use. "Coloring blanket", not "hand-illustrated colour-in throw".
- Get the absolute volume and the 1-year change. This tells you if a market exists and which way it is going.
- Check the 3-month change against the 1-year change. Falling three-month with rising one-year means you missed it.
- Find the peak month and how far below it you are. A category at a third of its peak is in decline no matter how the yearly number reads.
- Look at the family of related terms. One term rising alone is noise. Five rising together is a trend.
Steps two to four are what Rising Trends is for. Every tracked term carries its monthly volume history, its peak and its 3-month, 1-year and 2-year growth, so the check is a lookup rather than a research project. Terms also get added while they are still rising: "etsy witches" was added in June 2026 and "coloring blanket" in October 2025, both well before either showed up in a trend roundup.
If you want to run the scan on a schedule instead of by hand, the Rising Trends API returns the whole list in one request:
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer rt_live_..." \
"https://www.risingtrends.co/api/v1/trends?category=Art%20%26%20Design&min_search_volume=1000&min_growth_pct=100&timeframe=1y&sort=growth&order=desc"
API access is included in the Pro plan. For the full method beyond search data, see validating market demand and our guide to trend forecasting.
Frequently asked questions
Can you make 10k a month on Etsy?
Some shops do, but the platform average says it is rare. Etsy's own Q2 2026 figures put GMS per active buyer at $124 a year, so $10,000 a month means capturing roughly 970 buyers a month at that average spend. It is achievable in a high-ticket category with repeat customers, and very hard with $15 printables.
Is Etsy oversaturated?
Buyers are roughly flat at about 87 million while spend per buyer rises slowly, so the pie is growing by single digits. Saturation is category-specific rather than platform-wide: handmade jewellery and candles are crowded and shrinking in demand, while the kit, collectible and personalised-digital categories above are growing faster than supply has caught up.
Is Etsy still worth it in 2026?
Yes, with a condition. Etsy's marketplace grew 7.5% while US e-commerce overall grew 12.2%, so the platform is not where the fastest growth is. It is still worth it if your product suits a search-led marketplace and you choose a category by data rather than by what is pleasant to make.
How much does Etsy take from a $100 sale?
Etsy's reported take rate was 25.9% of GMS in Q2 2026, up 130 basis points year over year. That is the all-in platform average across fees, payment processing and advertising, so roughly $26 of a $100 sale on average. Your own number depends on how much you spend on ads, and it will be lower if you spend nothing and higher if you lean on Etsy Ads and Offsite Ads.
What are the newest changes to Etsy?
The structural one is that Etsy sold Depop to eBay, completing on 30 July 2026, and now reports it as a discontinued operation in its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. The reported take rate also rose 130 basis points year over year, with Etsy Ads the main driver on the marketplace itself, which means advertising is a larger share of what a seller pays than it was a year ago.
What can't I sell on Etsy?
Etsy's marketplace is limited to handmade items, vintage goods at least 20 years old, and craft supplies, and mass-produced resale falls outside that. Beyond the structural rule there is a prohibited items policy covering categories like weapons and hazardous materials. Read the current policy on Etsy before you list anything near a line, since the detail changes.
How often does this data change?
Our search volumes update monthly and everything on this page is as of August 2026. Young categories move fastest, so a term like "coloring blanket" can look materially different in a quarter. For the method behind reading those changes, see trend analysis, and for the non-Etsy version of this ranking, the best businesses to start in 2026 and 25 AI business ideas use the same approach.
Ready to find the next category before it fills up? Start with how to identify market trends, then see what is climbing this month in trending topics and finding trending ecommerce products.
