Beer's Refreshing 2026 Refresh

Heading into 2025, a common sentiment around beer’s struggles was that it has been lacking in the fun department. To combat this notion, a number of Super Bowl commercials followed in mid-February that tried to inject a little bit of that old school, light beer energy back into the narrative.

Bud Light, for example, paired breakout comedy star Shane Gillis and his deliberately awkward delivery with star musician Post Malone’s affable, everyman persona. The over-the-top, neighborhood BBQ-themed spectacle sought to reclaim the brand’s approachability and cultural relevance.

Around the same time that these commercial plans were beginning to leak, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy dropped a much more serious bombshell. He released an advisory cautioning that drinking alcohol raises the risk of cancer and urged alcoholic beverages to carry an updated health warning label. By September 2025, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services withdrew these warnings, but the damage was done through falling sales, algorithms feeding the negative sentiment, and the narrative playing out through social media commentary. Thankfully, similar to the early scan data reports, 2026 is off to a much more promising start.