Is the Guinness hype here to stay?

Having gained many new fans over recent years, Guinness' connection with community, heritage and authenticity will allow its popularity to outlive the algorithm.

I’m trying to remember when I first started drinking Guinness. My dad always drank it, so I used to try a few sips of his when I was younger, but hated it. “It tastes like coffee and alcohol!” I complained – ironically, now, two of my favourite things these days. And then, around Christmas 2023, I began to switch out my usual larger order for the Irish stout, apparently around the same time everyone else did…

Before it became ‘trendy’, Guinness had long been a firm favourite amongst pub-goers, particularly old men and within Irish, Jamaican and Nigerian communities. But over the past few years, its popularity has risen drastically, gaining new fans from younger and female demographics.

In the year ending June 30, 2025, Guinness’s global sales rose by 13% in value, and in the six months ending December 31 Dec 2024, its net sales grew an impressive 13%, demonstrating a year-on-year growth. As mentioned, this is largely to do with its uptake by younger and female audiences and, according to a report by Brand Finance, 67% of 18-25 year olds now think Guinness is a “cool” brand, up from just 22% in 2023, while Guinness’s “penetration among women” rose by 86% in a year.

Being a 25-year-old woman, I can count myself as part of these statistics.

On the surface, Guinness’ exponential rise fits the criteria of a trend…. What started as an iykyk drink suddenly became so popular that we experienced a drought last year. Like Aperol before it, this success was spurred on by social media, with tilt tests and long debates over “the best Guinness in London”, making it a viral sensation. In a way, drinking Guinness became a lifestyle choice, an aesthetic, loaded with connotations about who you are – or who you’re trying to be. (It has definitely been featured on the_real_housewives_of_clapton Instagram a fair few times.)

Hinge profiles were filled with people boasting or asking if you could “split the g”, and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kate Middleton were papped sipping the stuff. It may also chime with a more general global interest in Irish culture, with artists such as Kneecap and The Fontaines DC becoming popular, while actors such as Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan are frequently cast in films. Meanwhile, Irish pubs in general have been gaining popularity across London, as one glance at The Times’ list of Top 100 demonstrates. Perhaps the culmination of all this Guinness hype was Netflix’s ‘House of Guinness’ series, a highly dramatised TV programme documenting the history of the original brewing family.

Under this logic, Guinness is due for a downfall pretty soon; overexposure will make it ‘uncool’, and it should experience a natural dip as the next latest drink fad takes its place. After all, does anything signal the end of a trend cycle better than Netflix jumping on it?

But I don’t think that’s going to happen. While Guinness has certainly been the drink on everybody’s lips in recent years (quite literally), I think it has gained fans for life – unlike Buzzballz or espresso martinis, which enjoyed a brief time in the sun before sinking back to the shadows.

It is Guinness’s connection with tradition and heritage that both made it so popular in the first place and will ensure its relevancy going forward. At a time when consumers (particularly young consumers) were looking for authentic values they could attach themselves to, Guinness presented itself as a solid choice with its legacy in Irish, Nigerian and Jamaican culture connecting it with the values of community, friendship and shared experience, a legacy that other popular drinks could never claim to and one that is not going anywhere. It is also a history that is complicated and deeply entwined with the history of British imperialism and colonisation, but from within this context came to represent something entirely different.

While craft beers (which really hit mainstream popularity in the 2010s) were all about reinvention, each one a new flavour with a new ridiculous name, Guinness represented stability, simplicity and consistency – qualities in high demand amidst the post-pandemic uncertainty that young people were coming of age in. This was reflected and leveraged in its marketing campaigns, which leaned on Guinness’ distinctive colours and long-standing tradition to evoke a strong brand identity and secure the drink’s longevity in people’s minds. And now the official drink of the Premier League, Guinness has positioned itself with tradition and ritual even further.

And so it is that Guinness has come to represent friendship, community and shared experience for many more consumers outside of its traditional market – myself included. These are values that will outlive the algorithm, so that even after ‘split the g’ and tilt tests have died down on Instagram and TikTok, Guinness will remain the drink of choice for those it has come to signify much more for.

Unlike other brands, particularly in fashion, Guinness doesn’t sell nostalgia, it sells heritage, something we can all rely on and something that has a much longer shelf life, especially in times of uncertainty.