Picking the moments that defined 2025 is no easy feat. It’s been a year of social media posts that dominated group chats, relationships that defied all logic and awkward attempts to dodge kiss cams. There’ve been TV scenes people paused and replayed, celebrity behaviour that’s spawned a thousand opinions, and papal politics that’ve oddly captivated Gen Zs.

These moments range from the impressive to the baffling and the deeply awkward. All of them sparked conversation, speculation and far analysis than anyone planned. Whether you followed them closely or absorbed them by cultural osmosis, they became part of the year’s pop history. These are the things we’ve not been able to stop talking about in 2025.

When Taylor Swift confirmed her engagement to Travis Kelce in August, she did it in the most Taylor way possible: an Instagram post captioned ‘your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married’. The post clocked 38 million likes and a lot of respect for her ring: a very blingy Cartier number. It was proof that when pop culture’s princess finally found her Romeo, it restored a lot of women’s faith in mankind.

In early 2025, Katy Perry joined Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin’s all-female space flight – alongside Lauren Sánchez, Gayle King and a impeccably styled crew – turning a brief suborbital trip into a full-blown internet meltdown. The reaction was brutal: memes, think pieces and accusations of peak tone-deaf celebrity excess followed her back to Earth. Weeks later, news broke that Perry had split from Orlando Bloom – reframing the space trip as the beginning of a very public unravelling. Bloom’s new girlfriend, Rachel Lynn Matthews, dressed as his ex-fiancé in space for Halloween. Classy.

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…then starting dating Justin Trudeau

Just as things seemed to settle, the story took another turn. After months of rumours, restaurant spottings and yacht frolicking, Katy Perry and former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau went Instagram-official in December, prompting a fresh wave of disbelief. What really tipped it into full cultural-moment territory was a now-infamous tweet of Justin and Katy meeting Japanese politician Fumio Kishida: an unexpected ‘hard launch’ for one of the world’s biggest popstars.

Adolescencemade us think

What started as a gritty, quietly devastating drama quickly turned into one of the year’s most talked-about TV events.Adolescencesparked huge conversations about masculinity, violence and what teenage boys are absorbing online – then went on to dominate awards season, scooping up eight Emmys. With over 141 million views globally, Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s series became Netflix’s second most-watched ever.

Having a boyfriend became embarrassing

In late October,British Voguewriter Chanté Joseph asked a simple question that instantly blew up across TikTok and Instagram: Is having a boyfriend embarrassing now? Her essay – arguing that public coupledom feels increasingly uncool and that women are quietly redefining how (and whether) they share their relationships online – became one of the year’s most fought over questions, sparking clapback articles, Reddit threads and Julia Fox saying: ‘Yes.’ Ladies, dump him.

Beyoncé finally won Album of the Year

After years of being nominated and overlooked, Beyoncé finally won Album of the Year at the Grammys forCowboy Carter– and the reaction was part celebration, part collective exhale. The country-leaning, genre-bending record had already sparked months of debate about race, tradition and who gets to define American music; the win turned it into a full musical, and cultural, reckoning. Even the internet, briefly, agreed: it was overdue and plenty emotional to watch the Grammy’s most-awarded artist ever finally received the top gong she so deserved.

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The Summer We Became Obsessed withTSITP

In 2025,The Summer I Turned Prettybecame the TV moment no one expected but absolutely everyone needed. Its third and final season pulled in roughly 70 million viewers within 70 days – and yes, she finally ended up with Conrad in a finale that sent the internet into meltdown. But the story didn’t stop there: creator Jenny Han immediately teased a full-length film continuation to give fans the ‘next chapter’ of Belly and Conrad’s life. We can’t wait.

Let’s have a Conclave

For a few surreal days, the entire internet became obsessed with smoke. White smoke, black smoke, hard-to-distinguish smoke analysis – all watched via a Vatican livestream, following the death of Pope Francis in April, that was oddly gripping. The conclave turned into a global group chat event, complete with memes (‘Let’s have a conclave’) and people pretending they’d always been fascinated by papal procedure. The result? The election of the first American pontiff, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost.

Lily Allen’sWest End Girlended David Harbour

2025 saw Lily Allen speaking with striking openness about the breakdown of her marriage to David Harbour, confirming they had an open relationship and discussing his, ahem, indiscretions. That honesty fed directly intoWest End Girlher first album in seven years, which arrived sharp, self-aware and unflinchingly personal (lyrics referenced everything from Instagram cheating to butt plugs). This month, she performed the trackMadelineonSaturday Night Livewith Dakota Johnson appearing as the title character. Eeek.

The Celebrity Traitorsbroke TV records

WhenTheCelebrity Traitorshit screens in autumn 2025 it quickly became the show everyone couldn’t stop talking about, with its finale pulling in around 15.2 million viewers. Aside from the cloak-and-dagger gameplay, the series served up genuinely unforgettable moments, chief among them Celia Imrie’s audible mishap during a tense mission that instantly went viral. With Alan Carr’s nervous traitor antics and a cavalcade of celebrity mishaps, it kept us glued to the screen all autumn.

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We all ogled Walton Goggins

By the timeThe White Lotusreturned for its third season, the internet was already primed, but it was Walton Goggins who unexpectedly stole the spotlight. His performance triggered a full-blown online fixation, with thirst edits and a viral tweet asking: ‘Is Walton Goggins hot now?’ That obsession quickly widened into speculation about his off-screen dynamic with Aimee Lou Wood, fuelled by interviews, body language scrutiny and some very fast Instagram unfollowing. Very suspicious.

Coldplay caused kiss cam chaos

A routine kiss cam moment at a Coldplay concert spiralled fast when footage appeared to show Andy Byron, the married CEO of Astronomer, getting cosy – and then immediately recoiling when he realised he was being filmed – with the firm’s also-married HR chief, Kristin Cabot. The clip, posted by a fellow concertgoer with the caption: ‘Play stupid games, win stupid prizes’, was watched nearly 150 million times, with the strangest twist coming weeks later, when Astronomer attempted reputational damage control with a tongue-in-cheek ad starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Cabot recently weighed in on the ‘16 seconds that ruined her life’ in interviews with theTimesandNew York Times.

And Just Like That…we said goodbye to Carrie

After three divisive seasons (we’ll never forget you, Che Diaz),And Just Like That…drew to a close, but it was Sarah Jessica Parker’s Instagram post that really marked the end. Writing ‘Carrie Bradshaw has dominated my professional heartbeat for 27 years’ and thanking viewers for ‘loving her, judging her and worrying about her’, Parker’s goodbye was measured and emotional without trying to win anyone over. It was, quite honestly, a satisfying goodbye than the show itself managed to come up with.