The Soda Flavors Everyone Will Be Trying In 2026

Ever since Coca-Cola and Pepsi emerged in the late 19th century, Americans, and soon thereafter the world at large, couldn't get enough of a magical tasting class of beverages. Combining bubbly, fizzy, carbonated water with thick, heavily sweetened and well flavored syrups made something called soda or pop (the term varies across the U.S.), and it was irresistible. For the last century and then some, soda has become a billion-dollar, global business with many major soft drink companies emerging as the big players. It's both a competitive business and one that's hard to break into, indicating a lot of entrenched tastes. Nevertheless, every year brings with it a bunch of new pops hoping to pull away business from the biggest names.

In late 2025 and throughout 2026, every significant soda manufacturer will roll out new flavors and innovative versions of existing, well-known products. Will they earn a permanent spot on the supermarket shelves and convenience store coolers? Or will these just be the sodas people will drink in 2026 and never again?

A contemporary, updated version of the old-fashioned ice cream soda shops has emerged in the 2020s and turned into one of the biggest food fads in recent memory. Of all the dirty soda combinations one should try, sweetened, vanilla-flavored cream added to a beverage is among the most popular, and in the coming months, the trend and that style in particular are scheduled to reach the mass-produced soda market. In summer 2026, Pepsi plans to spin off its main root beer brand, Mug, with Mug Floats Vanilla Howler.

Mug Root Beer already has a pronounced and prominent vanilla flavor, and the Vanilla Howler should take that over the top. Imitating a dirty soda, the Vanilla Howler is more akin to a root beer float made with melted vanilla ice cream, with plenty of that sweet and distinct taste mingling with the gentle spice of the root beer. Mug Floats Vanilla Howler will hit stores in both regular and zero-sugar options.

Just a couple of years ago, PepsiCo encouraged customers to put a little milk in their Pepsi, so it should come as no surprise that the soda conglomerate is voraciously embracing the dirty soda phenomenon. Mixing dairy products with effervescent and sugary pop — and avoiding the problem of dirty soda curdling — is the best-known option, and Pepsi is adding a shelf-stable sweet cream that mixes well to many of its products in 2026. Following the rollout of Pepsi Wild Cherry & Cream in 2025, and in addition to the upcoming Mug Vanilla Howler, the new year will bring Dirty Dew.

That vaguely gross and unfortunate sounding name will appear on cans and bottles that marry the flavor of original Mountain Dew (whatever it is) with a sweet and luscious vanilla flavoring to make for a citrus-forward cream soda. It remains to be seen if this combination of various sharp fruit flavors with an approximation of vanilla ice cream will win longtime fans or wind up on the long list of discontinued Mountain Dew flavors.

Not to be outdone by the likes of Swig and other chains offering pop-based concoctions and injecting new life into a long moribund soft drink scene, or its canned and bottled competitor Pepsi doing the same, Coca-Cola wants in on the lucrative dirty soda market. The best way in for a soda manufacturer to get people interested in grocery store and convenience store products made by a giant of the industry is through the familiar float format, and soon, the first canned Coke float will be available for mass consumption.

Looking to produce a self-contained version of what can be found in dirty soda shops now, or soda fountains in the 1950s, Coke will introduce the Coca-Cola Cherry Float in February 2026. This soda is something of a return to the market for Cherry Vanilla Coke, which ended production in 2024 due to poor sales. Cherry Float Coca-Cola starts with that classic Coke taste and adds ample vanilla flavor to get that ice cream sensibility along with a very sweet hit of cherry syrup. Coca-Cola Cherry Float will be sold in full-sugar and sugar-free versions, and in bottles and cans, including in individually priced 7.5-ounce containers.

Dr Pepper is made from one of the most famous secret recipes in food and drink history, and its producers won't even identify what goes into the extremely sweet and sort of spicy soda even 140 years after its invention beyond that 23 different flavoring agents are used. Regardless, it's one of the most consumed soft drinks in America and has been for some time, prompting Coca-Cola to develop a replica to pull away Dr Pepper drinkers and a portion of market share. The similarly and evocatively named Mr. Pibb reached consumers back in 1972, and sold relatively well until 2001, when Coca-Cola renamed it the more exciting Pibb Extra.

In late 2025, The Coca-Cola Company reversed the name change and altered the formula. Pibb Extra was discontinued, and Mr. Pibb came back to the soda shelf. But it's not the same Pibb from the 2000s or the 1970s. The new and possibly improved Mr. Pibb contains 30% more caffeine than did the final formulation of Pibb Extra. It's going to taste somewhat different, too, with additional notes of heat and caramel and a wallop of sweetened cherry. In the final months of 2025, Mr. Pibb slowly appeared in stores in Florida, Michigan, California, Chicago, and Las Vegas, with a full national presence planned for 2026.

Way back in April of 2025, PepsiCo unveiled another entry in its seemingly always expanding line of fruity Mountain Dew variants. Sold in grocery and convenience store settings, Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus was a spinoff of a spinoff, a new take on Mountain Dew Baja Blast, a majorly lime flavored soft drink available only at Taco Bell upon its creation in 2004 and made a permanently available bottled and canned choice 20 years later. With the Baja Blast sensibility firmly entrenched, then came Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus, a mixture of tropical punch dominated by lime and mandarin orange flavors with a hue resembling the latter fruit. Sold in 20-ounce bottles and 12-packs of 12-ounce cans, and in regular and zero-sugar, Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus was a seasonal option, disappearing in mid-2025.

Apparently the soda was so well-received that Pepsi will return the drink to stores in January 2026. Mountain Dew Baja Cabo Citrus will look and taste almost the same, except the food scientists at Pepsi altered the formula in a couple of small but important ways. Both the full-calorie and low-calorie options of the new Baja Cabo Citrus will be made without artificial food dyes and with a bit more lime flavor.

The really big soda companies tend to just add to the lineup of bestsellers, rather than take much away, preferring to serve as many different niches as possible. For example, Coca-Cola didn't immediately get rid of Tab with the birth of Diet Coke, nor did it eliminate Diet Coke with the arrival of Coke Zero. Flavored beverages found room in the supermarket, too: Cherry Coke has remained in production since 1985, and cherry Coke Zero, and vanilla Coke Zero continue to move units in significant numbers. Probably the most fondly remembered Coca-Cola product that quietly disappeared: Diet Cherry Coke. Coca-Cola stopped making it in the mid-2010s, but the company brought it back on a limited-edition basis in the summer of 2025, packaging the powerfully flavored but sugar-free soft drink in nostalgic cans that looked like they came straight out of the 1980s or early 1990s.

Diet Cherry Coke was so thoroughly welcomed by the nation's soda fans that it's coming back in 2026 — and not for just a few months. It will be a permanent addition (or return) to the Coca-Cola product lineup.

Full-sugar soft drinks and zero-sugar offshoots aren't going anywhere, because they still sell billions of dollars worth of product each year. But, the noise over the healthiness of these sodas has gotten a lot louder and harder to ignore for a lot of people. Facing health concerns and guilt over consuming either nutritionally vacant sodas sweetened with high calorie sugar or high-fructose corn syrup or completely artificial diet soft drinks with their own potential ramifications, many consumers in the last half-decade or so adopted prebiotic sodas. Made with fruit juice and cider along with a bit of prebiotic substances that encourage better digestion and gut health, brands like Poppi cut into the market of the big brands. PepsiCo, either feeling threatened or seeing where the industry could be going, purchased Poppi — launched in 2016 — in March 2025 for about $2 billion.

While PepsiCo continues to stock Poppi in more and more retail locations around the U.S., it's also using the prebiotic soda-manufacturing technology it bought to make a possibly potentially healthier edition of its signature traditional soft drink. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola will first be available for purchase as an online-only item in the fall of 2025 before reaching stores in early 2026. The Prebiotic Pepsi Cola will taste like cola-flavored Pepsi, and a cherry vanilla offshoot as such. The difference will be seen on the nutritional facts label. One can will carry 3 grams of prebiotic fiber, 5 grams of real cane sugar, and only 30 calories.

Less than a decade old, Ghost Energy Drinks brought new levels of sweetness and fruitiness to a soft drink sub-genre that historically and unfortunately bore a medicinal quality. With its creamy, fruity, dessert-like flavors served in jumbo, 16-ounce cans that tasted more like old-fashioned sodas than the heavily caffeinated and nutritionally enhanced performance boosters they claimed to be, Ghost sold enough product that Keurig Dr Pepper acquired the company in 2024.

About a year later, Ghost's new owner is looking to position the beverage even more prominently in the world of energy drinks. It announced at late 2025 trade shows that two new Ghost varieties would be available soon. In a rare departure from the 16-ounce size, two new Ghost flavors will be sold in 8.4-ounce cans, each with zero sugar and 100 milligrams of caffeine. The new products are Ghost Strawberry Watermelon and Ghost Original Colada. The former is a light, fruity blend while the latter is a spin on the flagship Ghost energy drink, but with a bit of a tropical beverage influence.

As if a standard Dr Pepper doesn't have enough layers of taste, the most enigmatic name in soda has leaned into special flavors and offshoots in recent years. Cherry Vanilla, Vanilla, Cherry, Dark Berry, Strawberries and Cream, Blackberry, and Fantastic Chocolate, along with zero-sugar versions, have all made plays for the hearts and minds of Dr Pepper die-hards. One such variety was Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut (and Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut Zero Sugar), which blended the dynamic fruitiness and gentle spice of original Dr Pepper with the unmistakable taste of sweet and milky coconut.

Dr Pepper Creamy Coconut was first available for purchase in wide release in the summer of 2024, and it sold in such good numbers that it came back for the warm months of 2025, albeit in only a handful of far-flung markets. While Dr Pepper drinkers in Idaho, Arizona, Missouri, Utah, and New Mexico got to have some of the coconut drink for a little bit, it should once again be sold throughout the country. It should arrive sometime in 2026.

C4 Energy is manufactured by Nutrabolt, and its products are distributed by co-owner Keurig Dr Pepper. The brand offers more than a dozen highly-caffeinated and nutrient-fortified energy drinks sold in 16-ounce cans. Made in the style of soda — carbonated and artificially sweetened — C4 Energy found a niche in the crowded energy drink market by co-branding products. Joining the lineup of Jolly Rancher, Starburst, and Popsicle flavored beverages in late 2025 and early 2026 is the Sour Blue Razzilla C4 Ultimate Energy Drink. That name is a mashup of the soft drink's flavor and marketing subject: sour blue raspberry, and Godzilla, the giant lizard monster from Japanese and American cinema. Sour Blue Razzilla C4 Ultimate Energy Drink stands to be one of the strongest in its category, too. It's made with an eye-opening 300 milligrams of caffeine as well as the traditional energy drink stimulants of taurine and a suite of B vitamins along with the little-seen boosters TeaCrine and Dynamine. Sour Blue Razilla isn't made with sugar, however.

Also on the way from C4 is another flavor made all by its producers with no input from other brands. It does, however, chase some recent trends in food and drink. Mango Fuego offers both sweetness and spiciness, combining the sugary and tangy taste of mango with the heat of a spicy chili pepper.