Dec. 28, 2025, 11:07 p.m. ET
We’re a few days away from 2026, and it’s time to take stock of all the wonderful, wild, whirlwind, and downright ridiculous pop culture moments that defined the year.
Outside of the bonkers, the year was filled with the kind of pop culture stories that travel far outside entertainment news circles. From internet-breaking celebrity engagements, a jeans ad that may well have come up during Christmas dinner, or celebrities literally leaving planet Earth, 2025 was a doozy.
In the past year, we saw JoJo Siwa find love on “Big Brother,” a Mormon wife find redemption on the “Dancing with the Stars” ballroom, Taylor Swift go a little TMI on “Wood” and Jeff Bezos go all out at a foam party palooza ahead of his wedding to Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
We’ve also looked back on the anthems that defined 2026, the reality TV shows that tore the internet in two, the best TV shows of the year and our favorite books that hit our shelves.
Now it’s time to look at the moments that made us scratch our heads and do a double-take.
JoJo Siwa finds love on ‘Big Brother’ with Chris Hughes
After months of swirling rumors, children’s entertainer turned queer icon JoJo Siwa went public with her relationship with Chris Hughes.
The two starred alongside each other in Season 24 of “Celebrity Big Brother UK,” forming a tight friendship that many speculated bordered on romantic. Siwa, at the time, was in a relationship with Australian influencer Kath Ebbs.
On the other hand, Hughes was best known for his appearance on “Love Island UK” Season 3, during which he fostered a tumultuous tie to co-star Olivia Attwood. Despite the dogged speculation, news that Hughes and Siwa were officially an item still shocked fans.
For now, the pair appear to be taking it in stride, however, posting happily on social media and appearing to shine on any think pieces on sexuality, age gap relationships, or anything in between.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s foam wedding party palooza
Before renting out a large chunk of Venice for his Gilded Age-style wedding, Jeff Bezos proved the billionaire class need not be classy with a foam party on his 417-foot mega yacht.
On June 22, before the formal festivities kicked off, media outlets, including Fox News and People, published photos of Bezos, Sánchez, and their guests in swimsuits, playing with foam that bubbled up on the deck. The images, shared widely on social media, served as a lightning rod for an already sparking class anger over the lavishness of the affair.
How much Tayvis is too much? For some fans, Taylor Swift delivered an answer on her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” With “Wood,” a thinly veiled opus to Travis Kelce’s, ahem, manhood, Swift reached a new level of intimacy with fans.
Known for her no-holds-barred approach to songwriting, her latest romance is not immune, though some fans were shocked by the raunchiness of the track, given Swift’s penchant for a PG-tone.
With lyrics like “Redwood tree, it ain’t hard to see/His love was the key that opened my thighs” and “Girls, I don’t need to catch the bouquet mm/To know a hard rock is on the way,” Swift broke the bedroom wall, and let listeners know like it or not, they would be getting all the dirty deets.
NicOlandria truthers win vindication
Season 7 of “Love Island USA” was choc-full of memorable and viral moments, from Huda Mustafa’s “I’m a mommy” to Amaya Espinal’s colorful wordplay. Perhaps most memorable, though, were the legions of fans who became obsessed about a potential pairing between contestants Nic Vansand Olandria Carthen.
Coupled with different partners for the majority of the show’s run, couch-bound quarterbacks insisted that they were fated and − a shock elimination, a racism scandal, and claims of producer meddling later – that wish came true.
While they did not win the show, they certainly won the invisible competition for influence, as their early supporters doggedly (sometimes parasocially) tracked their romantic progress.
A Mormon wife’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ redemption
Defying the network television odds, “Dancing with the Stars” rose to new heights of popularity in 2025, drawing in a young fanbase with celebrities they recognized from their TV screens and a seemingly endless stream of TikTok content.
And, at the center of it all? The stars of Hulu’s “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
While Jen Affleck was eliminated mid-season, Whitney Leavitt made it almost to the finals, impressing judges with her ballroom chops and dividing the internet over her reality TV villain status. When it turned out her detractors outnumbered her fans, and she was eliminated alongside partner Mark Ballas, “Call Her Daddy’s” Alex Cooper stepped in as a de facto fairy godmother.
Producing their finale dance on her own and airing it with a blockbuster interview, Cooper gave Leavitt a second chance. Now, she’s got a guest role on Broadway and, perhaps, the last laugh.
Katy Perry leaves Earth − and Orlando Bloom
The “Firework” singer, 41, delighted some fans and drew mocking from others when she kissed the dirt after a brief trip to space alongside television host Gayle King and Jeff Bezos’s then-fiancée Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
The trip, billed as a salute to feminism, was made up of all female astronauts and “astronaut” stars who boarded a Blue Origin capsule for an 11-minute flight. The group of six women, which included Gayle King and Katy Perry, was also carrying astronauts Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyen and Kerianne Flynn.
Blue Origin’s Mission NS-31 is the first all-female astronaut crew since 1963.
Perry’s jaunt kicked off a tumultuous year for the pop star. Months after she was spotted floating in zero-gravity, she drew middling reviews for her “Woman’s World” tour, then shocked fans by splitting from longtime partner Orlando Bloom and rebounding with a former Canadian Prime Minister. Perry and Justin Trudeau went Instagram official in December.
