Each season has its own drink – a cocktail that has appeared everywhere. Often, these take-out orders aren’t actual concoctions but, rather, revamps of drinks that already exist. In a way, they show the vicissitudes of culture and prove the old adage that everything old becomes new again. Take the renaissance of the espresso martini, for example: the drink, invented in the 1980s, spent decades as a punchline before reemerging as a staple of the post-pandemic bar scene across the US.
Sometimes, the choice is obvious in retrospect: frosé took over bars (and Instagram feeds) in the summer of 2016, although Aperol spritz, which held the unofficial title for years since the early 2010s, quickly returned to the top spot. The Negroni Sbagliato broke into the cultural zeitgeist after an October 2022 promo interview featuring Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, and quickly found the drink on fall menu iterations across the country.
There are no official rules governing the drink that define the drink of the season, but recent history suggests that a few forces consistently shape one: nostalgia, renaissance, social media buzz, and, sometimes, a cultural moment too big to ignore. Bartenders across the country think this summer could deliver just that combination. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to spread across North America, the cocktail that first became popular in 2023 and steadily gained popularity in 2024 and 2025 may be poised to fully dominate our bar orders this summer. Industry insiders predict the Hugo spritz—a traditional northern Italian aperitivo made with prosecco, soda water, fresh mint and lime that’s already been hailed as a simpler, more floral alternative to the Aperol spritz—could find itself the subject of yet another round of viral fame.
Bartenders point to several different reasons when it comes to understanding the (current) virality of the Hugo spritz: first, the European cocktail is designed for daytime drinking and outdoor gatherings, which is what summer in the US is all about.
But there is more to the story: these days, consumers are much more ingredient-conscious than they were five years ago, and they tend to rely on light drinks that aren’t too heavy on the spirit. Hugo spritz fits the bill.
“Hugo spritz has a real image of being one of the defining drinks of summer,” Harrison Ginsbergbar director of the Saga Hospitality Group in New York, tells the Observer. “It hits on a lot of things that people are gravitating towards right now: low ABV, refreshing, easy to drink, and attractive without feeling overly precious.”
The expert also admits that major international sporting events tend to raise interest in non-alcoholic beverages that people can drink during long afternoon team gatherings, such as the World Cup, which is on American soil this summer for the first time since 1994.
“Hugo spritz will be the most popular drink this summer,” it said an award-winning New Orleans bartender Chris Hannah. But don’t expect to drink a classic version of the popular cocktail. According to experts, the Hugo spritz of the summer of 2026 will be a different version of itself – the main feature of the “itness” of the cocktail.
Marketers seem to be already working on riffs on the classic, perhaps using basil instead of mint or sparkling rosé instead of prosecco. Hannah actually sees the broader category as the real deal this season: “House aperitivo and amaro spritzes will be the focus, and ‘select spritzes’ will be a thing soon,” she told the Observer.
The Mixologist Meaghan Dormanbar director at Raines Law Room in New York City and Dear Irving, approaches the same ground from a different angle. And he believes that a variation of the classic spritz will be the most popular order this summer, but not because of football’s credibility.
“For a cocktail to really spread and become ubiquitous, it has to be fun and crowd-pleasing at the same time,” he says. For example, Hugo spritz is very sweet. You can’t deny it, and it looks great in pictures.
He also watches the lychee martini quietly travel the country and the cosmopolitan make a complete comeback, two trends he believes are associated with the power of nostalgia. “Those drinks remind me of a time to go out, be happy and energetic without phones around,” he notes.
For Dorman, what separates a true summer hit from a passing novelty comes down to a few negotiable factors. It should photograph well, be reproducible with widely available ingredients, and probably help a celebrity or cultural moment to suppress it.
He points directly Mad Men refreshing the Old Fashioned, and The White Lotus’ in Sicily the season that sparks the spritz frenzy. “You can see that things are going well in the most popular shows,” he admitted. The spritz fad, in particular, grew exponentially during the 2010s The New York Times published an essay questioning whether the cocktail really deserves the hype, arguing that its cultural cachet has surpassed its merits as a drink itself. But remember: what’s old is new again—then it’s new again.
Because Lou Bernardbeverage director at the Michelin-starred restaurant Mita in Washington, DC, the drink to watch out for this summer is actually the mojito, which is poised to make a refreshing, uplifting comeback. “I believe a riff on the mojito will be popular again this summer, perhaps made with juice instead of soda water, for example,” he said, pointing out that many seasonal cocktails end up being remakes of classics.
The basic idea reflects what’s happening in all menus right now: take a visual layout and tweak one or two exceptions—approachable enough to make the first edit, interesting enough to repeat. According to Bernard, everyone knows what a mojito is, but tweaking the recipe a bit will renew interest in it, with a touch of something new.
That accessibility piece is important Kenzo Hanbar director at Los Angeles restaurant Firstborn, who sees social media as the engine that turns a good cocktail into a cultural moment, especially for younger drinkers who might feel out of depth at the bar.
“Seeing something on social media gives young people and unusual people an opportunity to go to them,” he told the Observer. He points to Negroni Sbagliato’s post-The House of the Beast The explosion as an example is a lesson: people are prone to it because they already knew what they were ordering before they entered.
There is another force shaping all of this: money. According to the WSJ’s Technomic survey, the the average cocktail is now expensive $13.61 in all major US cities (beating $19 in New York and $22 in Miami), but alcohol consumption in the US dropped to a record low of 54 percent of adults, the lowest in 90 years of Gallup tracking. The winning drinks this summer will need to feel right. A spritz—whether it’s a Hugo, a house amaro riff or something in French national colors—has the benefit of feeling festive and light without carrying a hefty price tag.
It turns out that this summer’s “eye” drink isn’t a single cocktail as a category, and it’s one that we’ve been building for a long time. The spritz, which is photogenic, vaguely European and priced to go, is positioned as a summer drink in a way that feels very obvious. And who says the obvious is a bad thing when it tastes this good?
