From dish soap to baked bread, these are the fragrance trends set to waft through 2026

“It’s not a time for quiet vanillas.”

Last month, I asked some fragrance founders, buyers and perfumers about the scents that defined 2025. While gourmands once again dominated the market in terms of popularity, most of the experts hinted (or hoped) that the new year would welcome some niche notes that are less, well, vanilla.

2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse, after all, so it makes sense that we’ll be craving something a little more dynamic, perfumer Callum Rory Mitchell tells me. As the founder of Melbourne-based fragrance brand Perdrisât, Callum assures me “it’s not a time for quiet vanillas. People are ready to get messy again… Run wild if you will.”

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To his expert nose, that looks like more olfactory clashes; florals with sweat, or gourmands with more salt than sugar. There were definitely a lot of food-inspired notes flying around in the focus group, which brings us to our first trend prediction of 2026.

Edible notes

Several fragrance founders, including Sophie Marcoux of Ficifolia, agree that our desire to smell edible isn’t going anywhere this year, but it’ll smell more savoury than saccharine. “I think traditional gourmand notes like coffee and chocolate will be more commonly used within non-gourmand compositions in 2026,” she tells me.

Others predicted more fruity, nostalgic notes. “I wouldn’t be surprised if banana had a second chance,” Callum adds. “But hopefully, we’ll have way more lateral thinking when it comes to the listed notes, like honey-roasted carrots.”

Mina Gorman, creative director of Odesse is calling 2026 the era of the ‘grown-up gourmand’. “Sweetness will become more subtle, refined with woods, citrus and spice. Still indulgent but more complex, elevated and quietly chic,” she says. Jessica Tate, director of Lore Perfumery predicts a similar trajectory, with gourmands taking on “more salty, sour, tart, burnt kind of forms.”

Domestic comforts

Dish soap, clean laundry, buttered baguettes and full-fat milk. We might not want to embody the tradwife in 2026, but apparently we’d like to smell like one. Clean scents like Laundry Day by Abel have become increasingly popular, along with subtle, musky ‘skin’ scents, according to Abel founder Frances Shoemack. “We’ll see a rise in intimate, skin-led ‘come closer’ fragrances, and a decline in the louder, ‘beast mode’ styles that now feel almost impolite,” she predicts.

Big bold florals

Floral notes in perfumery isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but some experts are expecting a return of white florals and herbaceous notes like lavender. “I would love to see a return of the big, heavy floral fragrance,” Jessica tells me.

“Personally, I’ve recently discovered that white rhododendrons have a hypnotic scent, like a mix of tuberose and white champaca,” says Callum. “So maybe 2026 is the year we take rhododendron out of her comfort zone and bring her into the conversation once and for all, whether she likes it or not.”

Fragrance wardrobes and single-note scents

Expect perfume layering to become increasingly mainstream this year, driven largely by TikTok and the sharing of secret combinations. According to Sophie, “this will likely result in a rise of less complex fragrances, designed specifically to layer. That shift really builds on the skin scent trend we saw gaining momentum throughout 2025.”

Other experts are co-signing the layering trend. Emma Hogan, Makeup and Fragrance Category Manager at Adore Beauty says its customers are becoming more discerning and  looking to layer scents to create their own signature scent, “even layering a body lotion, fragrance, body mist and hair mist for the ultimate fragrance ‘outfit’,” she says. “We’re also seeing people curating their own fragrance wardrobes, wearing different scents to match their different moods.”

Overall, 2026 is shaping up to have a little something for everyone.

For more on scent layering, try this.