Web Design & Development Trends in 2026 | Agency Insights

Digital Agency Insights

Author

Stephanie Beasse

Date

December 17, 2025

We asked our team to share their predictions for where website design is headed in 2026. Here’s how they see web design, web development, and content strategy evolving.

Design Team

Playful Colours

Whereas previous colour trends leaned into neutral palettes, we’re seeing more and more colour making its way back into web design.

Despite Pantone’s Colour of the Year, Cloud Dancer, we don’t think 2026 will be defined by soft minimalism. Instead, designers are leaning into intentional and expressive colour palettes.

Playful Colour Palettes in 2026:

Joyful yet sophisticated – bright pastels and soft hues that feel optimistic
Whimsical and expressive – unexpected colour combos and dream-like palettes
Balanced with grounding tones – playful accents paired with earthier or neutral backgrounds
Emotionally engaging – colours chosen not just for looks but for mood, comfort, and personality

Motion Typography

Motion typography, also known as kinetic typography, is the art of animating text to convey a message. Rather than static typography that supports imagery, we are seeing more headlines that have subtle motion. It’s text that is blended directly with images or graphic elements to create hierarchy and rhythm that feels engaging to users.

Typography is no longer just supporting visuals; it is shaping the narrative through animation and composition.

Click the images below to see the typography in action!

Eislab

Stiff Films

Frontend Team

Complex Grids & Nested Grids

As websites move beyond rigid, single-column layouts, complex grids and nested grid systems are taking their place. Designers and developers are using layered layouts that allow smaller grids to exist within larger ones, creating more flexibility for content structures.

This approach is especially relevant to responsive design, where nested grids make it easier for pages to adapt seamlessly across screen sizes and devices while preserving hierarchy and alignment.

Macro Animations

In the coming year, we will see more macro animations emerging instead of a focus on micro animations. Designers and developers are using large-scale animations such as full-screen transitions, animated layout shifts, and scroll-driven sequences to engage with users and create narrative journeys.

These macro animations are incorporated into storytelling websites to create orientation instead of distractions. They intentionally lead users throughout a website or long pages to create a sense of immersion without solely relying on images. In 2026, animations aren’t just stylized touches; they are a part of a site’s structure.

Claremont Graduate University’s 100th anniversary site: The Origin

Backend Team

Performance as a Feature

By the time 2026 is in full swing, users will be tired of bloated interfaces and slow, resource-heavy AI features. A focus on speed and responsiveness will be essential for users. Edge computing and local-first approaches, where processing happens on the user’s device, will play a key role in making web experiences feel reliable and immediate without relying on constant server calls.

A Sustainable Web

A shift towards performance-first architecture aligns closely with a more sustainable web. Reducing unnecessary server requests and running processes locally will contribute to lower energy consumption and a smaller digital carbon footprint.

In 2026, building faster and more efficient websites won’t just benefit users; it will also be a way for organizations to reduce their impact, cut costs, and commit to more eco-friendly digital experiences.

Content Team

SEO & GEO

In 2026, SEO is no longer just about ranking keywords; it’s about structuring content so it can be understood and referenced by search engines and generative AI systems. Strong foundations in SEO are still important, but a clear information architecture, entity-based content, and clear links between topics will be the focus.

As generative queries increase among users, content needs to be authoritative and easy to extract meaning from. This means clear headlines that answer user questions, body text structured using semantic triples (subject-predicate-object), and incorporating schema markup.

Web Accessibility

Web accessibility will always be a foundational pillar of web design and development, as it ensures digital experiences are usable by as many people as possible. With AI tools being used more frequently in design and development, human expertise is crucial to avoid knowledge gaps and reduce potential errors.

AI can assist in testing and improving workflows, but it cannot replace an expert’s nuanced judgment and vast experience. Moving forward, accessible websites will be a collaboration between automation and human expertise.

Strategy Team

Responsive Design

Responsive design and mobile experiences are still a huge focus moving into 2026. Instead of designing a mobile version of a site, web agencies are focusing on how content is prioritized at different breakpoints to ensure performance and accessibility are consistent across all screens and devices.

Storytelling

Again, with generative AI queries increasing and website traffic for informational queries slowly decreasing over the past year, organizations are looking for new ways to get users onto their sites. One way is to create a digital storytelling website that blends narrative and engaging elements such as animations, images, and sound.

By making storytelling experiences accessible to all devices, users are more likely to engage with an organization’s original content.

As these ideas take shape, we’ll be watching how they are incorporated into our projects over the year ahead. Sign up for our newsletter below to stay in the loop!