Scroll through Instagram this month and the calendar seems to have glitched a decade backward. A wave of “2016” throwbacks — posted by the actual celebrities who lived them, not fan edits — has pushed TikTok searches for the year up 452 percent and turned “2026 is the new 2016” into the caption everyone’s using, according to Pedestrian.tv’s rundown of the trend.

Hailey Bieber got the ball rolling with an old snapshot captioned “Bad Bitches link up 2016,” while Emily Ratajkowski dug up an archival set with the caption “I was naked a lot.” Both are first-party posts from their own accounts, not paparazzi shots or fan reposts, which is exactly why this cycle has legs where a hundred other “remember when” hashtags fizzled.

Charlie Puth joined the pile-on too, resurfacing his 2016 duet with Selena Gomez. That callback lines up with a real chart resurgence: Zara Larsson’s decade-old single “Lush Life” has climbed back to No. 8 on the U.K. singles chart and re-entered the Billboard Hot 100, according to Forbes. The Chainsmokers reshared a clip set to “Paris” with the caption “2016 nostalgia getting out of hand,” and Demi Lovato posted a video simply wishing followers “happy 2016.”

Karlie Kloss went full method, breaking out the old Snapchat dog filter for her post, while Claire Holt revisited her peak-era run on The Originals. Even Amy Schumer, Mindy Kaling, Melissa McCarthy, Billie Eilish and Kendall Jenner have gotten in on it, resharing grainy selfies and lo-fi filter photos under the same “2026 is the new 2016” banner.

Key Points

• TikTok searches for “2016” surged 452 percent in the trend’s first week, per Pedestrian.tv
• Hailey Bieber’s own caption: “Bad Bitches link up 2016”
• Emily Ratajkowski’s own caption: “I was naked a lot,” on a set of archival photos
• Charlie Puth resurfaced his 2016 duet with Selena Gomez; The Chainsmokers, Demi Lovato, Karlie Kloss and Claire Holt posted their own throwbacks
• Zara Larsson’s 2015 track “Lush Life” has re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 as the trend fuels a real streaming bump, according to Forbes
• Searches for “2016 makeup” are up 600 percent and “2016 songs” up 290 percent over the same window, per Forbes

Ten years is apparently the exact distance nostalgia needs to stop feeling embarrassing and start feeling golden — long enough that Snapchat dog ears read as vintage, short enough that the people in the photos are still posting from the same accounts. With a wink and a wiggle, an entire generation of A-listers has decided their most-hinged era deserves a victory lap, and the algorithm is only too happy to oblige.