Summer 2026 has, so far, not been defined by one pop star taking over. The songs of the summer haven't been new releases, they've been from the Great British Songbook; 'Wonderwall' and 'Hey Jude' bellowing out of pubs up and down the country. We're wearing England shirts and waving the same flags that, just twelve months ago, were hoisted as a loaded anti-immigration symbol. But as thirty years of hurt becomes sixty for the Three Lions, there's a sense that the enduring hope we have for both England and the UK at large doesn't end where the World Cup tournament does.
While the Union Jack currently stands as a symbol of fascism rather than fashion, it feels like the pendulum is ready to swing again. We want to be proud to be British, the 2020s definition of that phrase detaching itself from empire and politics and going all in on lifting up the nation's cultural exports instead. Call it Britpoptimism.
It takes what Cool Britannia started and removes the party politics; in 2026, the most fluent, most affectionate, most accurate expressions of Britishness are coming from a wave of young artists, many of whom are the second and third generations of immigrant families who were told, sometimes to their faces, that this wasn't their country. This isn't to entirely dismiss the working-class white boys with guitars who've so prominently defined British music since the 60s, but to recognise that they're just a part of something much more diverse than that. British excellence, when defined properly, is wider than that lane and always was, capturing soundsystem culture, pirate radio, and council estate communities as integral pillars of British musical history.
In 1966, England won the World Cup (who knew?). The win arrived at the end of a particularly impactful period for British culture that saw The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, and so on, rise to prominence in the United States. Thirty years later, in 1996, England hosted the UEFA European Championship, adopting "football comes home" as the slogan for the tournament, which, thanks to comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and indie group The Lightning Seeds, would become a mainstay at every major football event forevermore. Meanwhile, Britpop was at peak dominance.
The British flag was a symbol of pure toxicity at the start of the 90s: Morrissey was booed off stage at Madness' Madstock festival at Finsbury Park in 1992 for draping one around himself. But it soon became the lightning rod for a new British invasion: by 1993, it was printed behind Brett Anderson on the cover of Select alongside the phrase "Yanks go home!". Come 1997, Cool Britannia had been commodified and repackaged by corporations, so by the time Geri Halliwell was donning a Union Jack dress at the Brits, Britpop's biggest expats were running from it.
The people flying flags on lampposts want the past restored. The people making the actual culture treat the past as material: sample it, wear it ironically, love it in the moment, and build something that reflects where we are, not somewhere we should never be dragged back to. Against the hostile environment, British artists are bringing back the flag in more unexpected ways, because this wave of acts doesn't just stick two fingers up at other nations, it sticks them up at our own government. When Stormzy headlined Glastonbury in 2019, he wore a Banksy-designed stab vest emblazoned with the Union Jack while calling out then-Prime Minister Theresa May for her lack of compassion following the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster.
British artists are bringing back the flag in more unexpected ways.
The best British music right now is being made by the children and grandchildren of people who were told to "go home". It's something Olivia Dean, whose grandmother came to the UK from the Caribbean as part of the Windrush generation, addressed directly in her Grammy's acceptance speech for Best New Artist, describing herself as a product of bravery and noting that those people deserve to be celebrated. It's a thread she'd already pulled on in these pages: "When my granny was 18, four years younger than I am now, she just changed her whole life," she told Dork in 2023. "She said I'm going to move to the UK; I've never been on a plane before. I'm going to come with my little sister, and I'm going to just start again. Her bravery has created this whole other path, and it's so beautiful." That same sentiment is everywhere across the British cultural landscape in more covert ways.
It's in Rachel Chinouriri hanging St George's Cross bunting on her debut album cover, a record about growing up feeling unseen ("I wrote 'The Hills' about the feeling of not belonging and being out of place," she said of its lead single). It's in Nia Archives fusing indie-rock and jungle music to create a truer representation of the 90s, and in Jim Legxacy doing a FIFA-esque indie track called '06 Wayne Rooney'. It's Central Cee wearing a Union Jack beanie while taking UK rap to the US charts, and EsDeeKid flaunting the most recognisable Scouse accent since the Fab Four. They're artists who understand the iconography, the irony, the caricature better than the people who claim to own it, because loving something you were excluded from requires paying closer attention.
Serving as the poster girl for this revolution is PinkPantheress. Her USP, categorised by classically British motifs (Union Jacks, crowns, crockery, red postboxes and buses, black cabs, tartan and Royal guards) and unspecified nostalgia (bolstered by an array of samples grabbed from the 90s onwards), is a case study for how this generation holds the past; it's reflective, not restorative. Asked by Dork in 2021 whether the garage and drum'n'bass she pulls from was something she grew up with, her answer proved how our shared musical legacy is an inheritance: "I think every British person grew up with it in some form." The Brit-topia she collages in her 'Girl Like Me' video is knowingly unreal; she's in on it along with everyone else, and that knowingness is the part the cynicism misses.
They're artists who understand the iconography.
We've tried before. In the wake of Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn's youth-focused policies and dreams of a socialist Labour Party connected with British 18-25 year olds in 2017 in ways politics hadn't for a very long time. Corbyn turned up at Glastonbury, covered NME, posed with rappers who offered free tickets to grime events if fans registered to vote. #Grime4Corbyn was genuinely successful, and it still didn't work. By 2019, the dream had died, as Corbyn lost another General Election and the Tories powered on with their reign of austerity and exclusion.
But despite it all, the hope has always been there, even when hitching the culture to a party fails. The 2012 Olympic opening ceremony in London boasted the best of Britain, from the Sex Pistols to the Sugababes and the Industrial Revolution to the NHS, proving our values hold up where major party politics don't. Likewise, Gareth Southgate breathed new life into the England squad when he took over in 2016, giving us a team - which wouldn't exist without immigration - to believe in, whether they were taking us through to the World Cup semi-finals or delivering free meals to school kids in the pandemic.
Now, Jude Bellingham is the hero of the year, his come-up soundtracked by the Beatles' classic that features his name; 60,000 people singing 'Hey Jude' is almost a full circle back to the original British Invasion of the 1960s. The England team's adoption of 'Wonderwall' as a celebratory anthem brings us back to the 90s spirit of collective identity, too, with Noel Gallagher long since insisting the song was never about a relationship anyway.
Now, former PM Keir Starmer may have said he believes in a Britain with the "swagger of Oasis" (Somewhat ironic as he's displaced by a man coming down from Manchester - Ed), but the new generation of British cultural figureheads aren't cosying up to politicians at all. "I don't see myself as a political oracle," Olivia Dean told us back in 2021, still working out how to write about race and Black Lives Matter. "I'm just little old me." Britpoptimism shouldn't be watered down or reduced to corporate fodder in the way Cool Britannia was. We have artists with credibility - "I've not compromised with anything," as Chinouriri put it to us in 2024 - and they should be celebrated and protected.
Back in 2021, we asked PinkPantheress whether British pop was due a renaissance. "I haven't thought about this much," she said. "I don't want to say yes, but I would like to hear something a little crazier once in a while." Consider it heard.
