Most Popular Memes Trending on Social Right Now (Updated Monthly)

While product launches, promotions, and announcements are important, memes remain one of the most effective ways to drive engagement on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter). Memes offer fast, entertaining content that resonates with audiences and encourages sharing, interaction, and conversation.

Beyond engagement, memes help brands express personality, strengthen brand voice, and feel more human on social. When used strategically, trending memes can help brands build community, stay culturally relevant, and connect with audiences in a way traditional marketing content often can’t.

This blog highlights trending memes by month, explains what memes are and why they work, and shares practical tips for finding and using memes as part of a successful social media strategy.

As of January 2026, several viral memes are trending across social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). These memes are driven by pop culture moments, relatable humor, and repeatable formats that creators and brands are quickly adopting.

Here are the top trending memes on social media in January 2026:

• “365 Buttons” Meme: The “365 buttons” meme originated on TikTok after creator Tamara shared her decision to buy 365 buttons as a way to stay mindful of time. The trend went viral as a reaction to vague-posting, with her quote: “It only has to make sense for me to do it and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else”, now widely used to humorously justify personal decisions and boundaries.

• Leonardo DiCaprio Golden Globes Reaction Memes: During the 2026 Golden Globes, Leonardo DiCaprio’s expressive reactions in the audience were captured on camera and quickly transformed into reaction memes. These clips are now commonly used across Instagram and X to convey disbelief, awkwardness, or subtle amusement.

• Jon Hamm Dancing Meme: A viral clip of Jon Hamm dancing in an Apple TV+ series has become one of January’s most popular memes. The clip is frequently used to represent pure joy, confidence, or celebratory moments, making it a versatile meme format that transcends its original context.

• “Day 1 as a Spy” Meme: Inspired by the film Dhurandhar, the “Day 1 as a spy” meme features creators humorously documenting their first day undercover. Often ending with their cover being comically blown. The format has gained traction for its exaggerated storytelling and situational humor.

Memes are pieces of digital content such as images, videos, text, or audio that are shared, adapted, and replicated across the internet, often for humor or commentary. On social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and X, memes typically spread quickly as users recreate the same format, joke, or trend in their own way.

What makes something a meme isn’t just that it’s funny or viral, but that it’s easily repeatable and evolves as more people put their own spin on it. This adaptability is what allows memes to reflect cultural moments, online conversations, and shared experiences in real time.

Memes earned their name from Richard Dawkins, who used the term in his book 'The Selfish Gene'. The word ‘meme’ is derived from the Greek word ‘mimema’, which means ‘imitated’. This name fits memes perfectly, as they transcend a joke when they become duplicated, edited and widely shared.

If a meme is something used and widely spread, is a GIF a meme? Not necessarily. GIFs could be derived from a popular meme, but since users can’t edit GIFs for reproduction in the same way they can text and video, GIFs aren’t the exact same as memes. 

Because meme trends move quickly, staying up to date is essential. Using outdated memes, even ones that are only a month old, can make brands appear out of touch. To keep your content relevant, your social media marketing strategy should allow room for flexibility rather than relying solely on pre-scheduled posts.

To find trending memes, social marketers should:

• Follow popular meme and aggregator accounts (such as @daquan or @epicfunnypage) to spot emerging formats early.
• Bookmark blogs and trend roundups, like this one, that are updated regularly with current memes.
• Monitor Reddit communities, where many memes gain traction before spreading to mainstream social platforms.
• Use social listening tools to track recurring phrases, visuals, and formats gaining momentum across platforms.

Overall, depending on your industry and audience, entertaining content can help drive conversions and engagement, but this isn’t always the case. One way to discover if memes would resonate with your audience include creating buyer personas. Buyer personas involve diving into existing and target audience demographics, researching their likes, dislikes, online habits and more to help inform your content marketing strategy. For example, if you plan to target Gen Z, including memes is likely beneficial for your content mix. Insider Intelligence reports Gen Z is more likely to stay on platforms that embrace memes, illustrated by just 2.4% of Gen Z planning to leave Twitter (or X), compared to 9% of users from other generations.

Why are memes so popular?

Memes are so popular because they’re a form of social entertainment that’s quick and easy to read and digest. Entertaining audiences is paramount to attracting them and engaging on social media, and memes are one of the most common ways to do this, that also let social marketers express their brand’s humor and personality. 

How to make a meme popular?

It can be challenging to make an original meme popular, as the nature of memes are quite organic. 

However, there are some tips you can use to increase your chances of creating popular content: 

• Dive into competitive insights and use custom reporting to discover what memes competitors share and set benchmarks for your own meme performance. 
• Revisit your buyer personas biannually or annually in case the content your target demographic engages with has changed.
• Take time weekly to explore what memes are taking over TikTok and Instagram. Even if you don’t incorporate these into your content schedule, it’s helpful to know what type of humor and jokes resonate with a wide range of users. 

What is the most popular meme ever? 

When it comes to determining the most popular meme, this is a little tricky as the platforms and type of memes commonly shared have changed over time.

Some of the most popular memes of all time include: 

• Keep calm. 
• Woman yelling at a cat during dinner. ‍
• Troll-face meme.