I just finished reviewing my 2025 predictions (how do you think I did grading myself?) www.timothychambers.net/2024/12/2…
Now it’s time to make some bets for 2026. I do this not to prove how great my prognostication muscles are, but to shine a spotlight on trends I think are vital, spur discussions, and give some attention to projects that have earned it. As always, I try to make these as quantifiable, verifiable and crisp as I can. Here goes:
🌱 MILD
Safe bets — would be surprising if these DON’T happen.
▶️ Bluesky will cross 60 million registered users in 2026. Growth will slow from 2024’s explosive pace but remain steady, driven by continued X dissatisfaction and improved features.
▶️ The ActivityPub Fediverse (excluding Threads) will cross 15 million registered users, monthly active users (excluding will plateau around 2-3 million. Another good year in terms of stable base, but no big waves of new users. Both Bluesky and Fediverse growth won’t come from big waves of migration this year.
▶️ Any smaller waves from X/Twitter or from a newly bought TikTok will benefit Meta (Threads/IG), BlueSky, and Fediverse in that order. I see nothing that would change that prediction that was true last year, too.
▶️ Threads will pass 500 million monthly active users and remain the largest ActivityPub-adjacent platform by a wide margin. But see the next prediction:
▶️ Threads federation will remain partial, and opt-in through all of 2026. Full two-way federation will NOT ship in 2026 but may move from about 90 percent there, to 95 percent done, inching forward but not finalized and prioritized as a feature. As Manton wrote, that’s better than fully closed, and better than them stripping it out. (which they might do but I’m predicting not) My bet: the status quo continues. www.manton.org/2025/12/1…
▶️ Ghost’s ActivityPub integration will bring 75,000+ new federated accounts to the Fediverse and Ghost will finish 2026 in the top 10 Fediverse server software by MAU.
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