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The calendar has turned to 2026 and it’s time to look at where illustration trends are heading in the coming year. Welcome to our latest quarterly report for the illustration market.
January 2026
What will illustration like in 2026? What kind of look and feel are art directors looking for? And what about consumers? Where are their tastes travelling? Are new creative styles emerging into the public consciousness in 2026?
All of these questions are fairly straightforward, but solid answers to them aren’t all that easy to find. A style forecasting consultant might be able to help… at a cost. Every year around this time there are plenty of creative trend articles to read online, although much of this is based in opinion and speculation.
At IllustrationX, we represent over 220 artists, with a website that attracts more than 100,000 visitors a month. As agencies go, we’re uniquely positioned to consider which artists’ portfolios are seen the most by our web visitors and tally how many enquiries come in for each artist, working in a broad variety of styles. We know which artists are tackling the most projects, and we know what kind of work each of them is doing. There is also the bottom line – who’s generating the most revenue.
Combining the quantitative data we’ve collected between October and December 2025 with qualitative observations from our team of agents, who work with clients and illustrators day in, day out, this report presents a well-informed response to the questions above, based in evidence rather than pure observation.
As well as pointing towards popular styles and the artists creating them, we consider what’s driving these trends. It might help you choose an illustrator or animator that will bring eyeballs to your brand. Equally, we might help you avoid what’s ‘in’ right now, in favour of what’s coming next…
Trending: Traditional realism, with a twist
- Our highest-earning artist for the quarter works in this style
- Two of our top 20 earners work in this style
Many conversations about illustration at the moment begin with those two letters. A and I. Something that trained AI models are particularly good at is producing photorealistic imagery, so it seems counterintuitive that artists who pursue realism are so popular.
However, realism is only part of the formula. Being able to render something realistically – with incredible attention to detail, subtle shading, accurate anatomy and perfect proportions – will wow the viewer only if it feels like the work was created by a human hand. It’s the illustrator’s technique and through that the feeling or atmosphere they bring to that are the clinchers.
Art – even realist art – is about much more than creating representations. This is why illustrators who render realistic images using sublime brush work, astounding pencilling or millions of meticulously applied dots of ink continue to blow our clients’ minds.
Artists to watch
Trending: Live fashion drawing
- Live event drawing is one of our top five categories for online enquiries
- Our fourth busiest artist for the quarter works in this style
- One of our top 20 earners works in this style
- Our fourth most popular online portfolio is in this style
When a new season of garments is released. When an haute couture brand holds a retail event. When a designer jeweller unveils their new collection. You might not think illustration has anything to do with such events.
But times have changed, and fashion illustrators whose work may once have been limited to magazine, newspaper and web pages are now regularly to be found at on the scene when a glamorous new range is announced. Not only do their live painting and drawing skills wow those invited to attend, being part of the creativity brings guests closer to the brands that host them. Seeing yourself reimagined as a model in a luxurious new garment is a thrill difficult to resist, and being able to walk away with the artwork makes people giddy. We’ve seen it happen.
It’s such a powerful way for brands to create engagement with their most loyal customers that live event illustration has become one of our strongest areas over the past two years and both our data and what we see every week in the business tell us it’s set to continue in 2026.
Artists to watch
Emerging: Linocut skills
In our last TrendX report, one of the trends we identified was etching and engraving – artworks created by hand through the application of much-practiced craft skills. Lino cut is a subset within this trend – one that can lead to images with strong graphical impact depending on how the artist uses positive and negative space.
The lino cut aesthetic is easily recognisable and comes with the one-of-a-kind handmade look which clearly separates this style from a digital, computer-generated feel. The human touch, for human communication. With its hand-crafted feel, lino cut artwork is often associated with folkloric and countryside themes; we’d be interested to see if it grows into new areas in the coming year.
In the final quarter of 2025, lino cut specialist Becca Thorne was one of our top 10 artists by revenue and we have just signed a new lino cut artist to our roster – Emily Robertson.
Artists to watch
Changing: Are comic heroes losing their powers?
- Web enquiries for comic art were down by over 40% year-on-year in October, November and December
- Two of our five busiest artists work in the comic art style
- Two of our five top earners work in the comic art style
Normally our TrendX report identifies illustration styles that are on the up, but we can see downward trends too. Our data in relation to the comic art style in the last quarter of 2025 seems to tell two stories.
Over the last few years, interest in the comic art style from clients had been growing. Visits to the portfolios of artists working in comic styles, and enquiries via our website for these artists, were both strong. However, in the final quarter of 2025 this interest waned.
Yet counter to this decline, comic style artists remained among our top 20 in terms of volume of work and revenue. Certain prominent artists in this area have bucked the trend (see below). To understand this, we looked at who these illustrators are and the kind of work they create for clients.
Each of these high-performing comic artists is known for a strong aesthetic individual to themselves, and each brings a strong authorial voice to the work they create. They’re not using the comic form merely as a mode of communication – they treat it as art and put something of themselves, their own ideas and feeling into the work. This is why their work stands apart, and it’s why clients use them.
As AI image making models have been trained using the work of thousands of professional comic artists, AI is fairly good at generating imagery of this type. It’s possible that this is being used for the more prosaic types of communication, whereas artists with a clear point of view are able to maintain their appeal because they bring something that AI can’t.
Artists to watch
Trending: Middle grade learning
- Two artists creating work for middle grade projects were in our top 20 earners
- Two artists in this category were among our 10 busiest artists.
- An artist specialising in this area received the most web enquires in the quarter
- Web enquires for children’s illustration in general were up 33% quarter-on-quarter
Middle grade learning isn’t so much a style of illustration as a category, and artists capable of creating imagery that catches the imagination of middle-grade readers prospered as 2025 came to a close. We expect this to continue.
Commissions for illustrations aimed at learners aged eight to 12 often come from educational publishers. Science, history, geography, languages and more – the full spectrum of subjects can benefit from artwork that engages young minds. Yet the same skills can apply in fiction published for this age group. Many children’s stories aim to help young people understand their feelings, their bodies and the world around them. Learning comes through relating to what the characters face, and great cover and spot illustrations help pull the reader into the work.
Children’s illustration is a very broad category and over the past two years we’ve refined our understanding of its different segments, and the requirements in each of them. To see artists that specialise in middle grade learning surge ahead is testament to the diligence of our agents.
Artists to watch
Trending: Folklore and mysticism
- One of our 10 busiest artists is creating mystical imagery
- One of our 20 top earning artist works in this category
- One artist in our top 10 for web enquiries works in this category
- Our third most-visited artist portfolio for the quarter is in this category
Political, social, economic and technological change during 2025 made the world feel very unpredictable. Perhaps the realms of fantasy provided an escape for people, though not necessarily the type involving annihilation by dragon fire or visits to Mount Doom. We’re thinking of gentler places, catered to by illustrators of fairytales, folklore and mythology, with a little mysticism thrown in to delight rather than to terrify.
At its most effective, artwork in this area often has a traditional look and feel – as though it’s been discovered in an ancient tome or scroll, hidden away on the top shelf in a wizard’s library. This has a comforting effect while at the same time dialling up the intrigue. Artists creating folkloric and mystical pieces have the ability to transport us back to a long-forgotten age when honour meant a little more and good and evil were easier to distinguish.
Folklore has seen a revival in popular culture in 2025, and it will be interesting to see where this leads for illustrators in 2026.
Artists to watch
Words by Garrick Webster
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