Halloween 2026
Erobella Research · Halloween 2026

Has Britain gone off the sexy Halloween costume?

Every dot is a Halloween costume search. Pink ones are searches for a sexy costume. Scroll to watch what happened.

2007

For every six Halloween costume searches in the UK, there was one for a sexy costume.

2025

Last Halloween it was one in 24. The lowest in 22 years of data.

Britain is falling out of love with the sexy costume.

One

The rise and the fall

Twenty-two Halloweens of UK Google searches. Keep scrolling and the line draws itself.

2004
1 in 10
sexy costume searches for every Halloween costume search
Source: Google Trends, United Kingdom, September and October of each year, 2004 to 2025. "Sexy costume" covers sexy costume(s), sexy fancy dress and sexy Halloween costume(s). Erobella analysis.
Two

Halloween's quieter. Sexy's quieter still.

0%

Halloween costumes

Searches, 2025 against 2021

0%

Sexy costumes

Searches, 2025 against 2021

Dashed circle: 2021. Filled circle: 2025, sized by search volume. Google Trends, United Kingdom, September and October.
Change in UK searches for each sexy costume, Halloween seasons 2023 to 2025 against 2016 to 2019. "Costume overall" is the same change for all searches for that costume. Google Trends, Erobella analysis.
Four

The gender gap is closing

2021
3.9to 1

Sexy women's costume searches for every sexy men's costume search.

Magic
Mike

Hardly anyone searches for a sexy fireman. They search for Magic Mike.

Source: Google Trends, United Kingdom. Searches naming the gender ("women's", "ladies", "men's", "male") with costume or fancy dress.
Five

The shops didn't get the memo

Adult costume listings at Jokers' Masquerade, Smiffys, Escapade, Party Delights, Mega Fancy Dress and Ann Summers, 12 October 2026. Each icon is one in a hundred costumes. White ones have "sexy" in the name.
Six

It was only ever a fad

Mentions of "sexy nurse" per billion words in English-language books, three-year average. Google Books Ngram, 1980 to 2022.
Seven

So, why?

The data shows what changed, not why. These are the explanations that fit it best.

Inspiration moved off Google

Characters took over

Men joined in

For journalists · The key numbers
How we measured it

We compared UK Google searches for sexy costumes with searches for Halloween costumes, every month since 2004, using Google Trends. The headline figure divides sexy costume searches by Halloween costume searches for September and October each year. "One in six" means there was roughly one search for a sexy costume for every six searches for a Halloween costume. Not every sexy costume search is for Halloween (some are for hen dos or parties), so it is a ratio rather than a strict share.

Google Trends scales each query 0 to 100. We ran the two terms on their own, for full detail, and together, to fix the ratio between them. Google changed how Trends collects data in 2011 and 2016; comparing two terms in the same query is less affected than raw volumes, but figures before 2011 come from a smaller sample and are approximate.

Costumes, gender, books and shops

The costume cards chain 40 costumes through a shared reference term ("sexy nurse costume") so they share one scale, and compare September and October 2023 to 2025 with 2016 to 2019. Gender figures use searches that name the gender ("women's", "ladies", "men's", "male"), a small slice of all costume searches. Books data is Google Books Ngram, English corpus, case-insensitive, to 2022. Retail figures cover adult men's and women's costume listings at six UK retailers on 12 October 2026, with accessories, single garments and children's items removed.