The Drink of Summer Is Looking Bright, Bubbly and a Little Predictable
The Hugo spritz may be leading the charge, but bartenders say the bigger summer trend is light, low-ABV cocktails built for repeat orders.
Every season has its drink—a cocktail that is suddenly everywhere. Usually, these breakout orders aren’t entirely original concoctions but, rather, reinventions of pre-existing drinks. In a way, they reflect a culture’s adaptability and prove the old adage that everything old eventually becomes new again. Take the espresso martini revival, for example: the drink, invented in the 1980s, spent decades as a punchline before resurfacing as the definitive order of the post-pandemic bar scene across the U.S.
Sometimes, the pick is obvious in retrospect: frosé took over bars (and Instagram feeds) in summer 2016, though the Aperol spritz, which held the unofficial title for years starting in the early 2010s, returned to the top spot rather quickly. The Negroni Sbagliato broke into the cultural zeitgeist after a viral October 2022 promo interview featuring Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, and promptly landed the drink on fall menu iterations across the nation.
There are no official rules governing a season’s defining drink, but recent history suggests that a few forces consistently shape one: nostalgia, reinvention, social media buzz and, sometimes, a cultural moment too big to ignore. Bartenders across the country think this summer may deliver exactly that combination. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to unfold across North America, a cocktail that first gained traction in 2023 and steadily built momentum through 2024 and 2025 may be poised to take full control of our bar orders this summer. Industry insiders predict the Hugo spritz—a northern Italian aperitivo traditionally made with prosecco, soda water, fresh mint and lime that is already embraced as a lighter, more floral alternative to the Aperol spritz—could find itself the subject of yet another round of viral fame.
Bartenders point to a few different reasons when it comes to understanding the virality (yet again) of the Hugo spritz: first, the European cocktail was built for daytime sipping and outdoor gatherings, which is exactly what summer in the U.S. is all about.
But there’s more to the story: these days, consumers are far more ingredient-aware than they were even just five years ago, and tend to lean toward lighter drinks that aren’t necessarily spirit-heavy. The Hugo spritz fits the bill.
“The Hugo spritz has a real shot at being one of the defining drinks of the summer,” Harrison Ginsberg, the bar director for Saga Hospitality Group in New York, tells Observer. “It hits a lot of the things people are gravitating toward right now: lower ABV, refreshing, easy to drink, and appealing without feeling overly precious.”
The pro also agrees that big international sporting events tend to elevate interest in the sort of sessionable drinks that folks can sip on during group gatherings over long afternoons, just like the World Cup, which is on American soil this summer for the first time since 1994.
“The Hugo spritz will be the most popular drink this summer,” says award-winning New Orleans-based bartender Chris Hannah. But don’t expect to drink a classic version of the popular cocktail. According to experts, the Hugo spritz of the summer of 2026 will be a different version of itself—a key aspect of the “itness” of a cocktail.
Bartenders seem to already be working on riffs on the classic, perhaps using basil instead of mint or sparkling rosé in lieu of prosecco. Hannah actually sees the broader category as the real story this season: “House aperitivo and amaro spritzes will be the focus, and ‘dealer’s choice spritzes’ will soon be a thing,” he tells Observer.
Mixologist Meaghan Dorman, the bar director at New York City’s Raines Law Room and Dear Irving, arrives at the same destination from a different direction. She also believes that a variation on a classic spritz will be this summer’s most popular order, but not because of football allegiances.
“For a cocktail to really spread and be everywhere, it has to be pretty interesting and crowd-pleasing at the same time,” she says. “The Hugo spritz, for example, is pretty delicious. You can’t deny it, and it looks good in pictures.”
She’s also watching the lychee martini quietly go national and the cosmopolitan staging a full comeback, two trends that she believes are associated with the power of nostalgia. “Those drinks remind me of a time of going out, being fun and energetic without any phones around,” she notes.
For Dorman, what separates a genuine summer hit from a fleeting novelty comes down to a few non-negotiables. It has to photograph well, be repeatable with widely available ingredients, and it would probably help for a celebrity or a cultural moment to give it a push.
She specifically points to Mad Men reviving the Old Fashioned, and The White Lotus’ Sicily season sparking a spritz frenzy. “You do see things take off from very popular shows,” she acknowledges. The spritz fad, in particular, grew so pronounced during the mid-2010s that The New York Times published a story questioning whether the cocktail actually deserved all the hype, arguing that its cultural cachet had outpaced its merits as a drink itself. But remember: what’s old is new again—and then new again once more.
For Lou Bernard, the beverage director at Michelin-starred Washington, D.C. restaurant Mita, the drink to pay attention to this summer is actually the mojito, poised to make a quieter, more incremental comeback. “I believe that a riff on a mojito is going to be popular again this summer, perhaps made with juice instead of soda water, for example,” he says, pointing out that most “go-to” seasonal cocktails end up being reinventions of classics.
The underlying logic mirrors what’s happening across menus right now: take a recognizable structure and adjust one or two variables—approachable enough for a first-time order, interesting enough for a repeat. According to Bernard, everyone knows what a mojito is, but slightly tweaking the recipe will reignite interest in it, with a touch of novelty.
That accessibility piece matters to Kenzo Han, bar director at Los Angeles restaurant Firstborn, who sees social media as the engine turning a good cocktail into a cultural moment, especially for younger drinkers who might feel out of their depth at a bar.
“Seeing something on social media gives the younger crowd and people who aren’t regulars a go-to,” he tells Observer. He points to the Negroni Sbagliato’s post-House of the Dragon explosion as a case study: people gravitated toward it because they already knew what they were ordering before they walked in.
There’s one more force shaping all of this: money. According to a Technomic study for the WSJ, the average cocktail now costs $13.61 across major U.S. cities (hitting $19 in New York and $22 in Miami), but alcohol consumption in the U.S. has fallen to a record low of 54 percent of adults, which is the lowest in Gallup’s 90 years of tracking. The drinks that win this summer will need to feel worth it. A spritz—whether it’s a Hugo, a house amaro riff or something in French national colors—has the advantage of feeling festive and light without carrying a top-shelf price tag.
Turns out that this summer’s “it” drink isn’t a single cocktail so much as a category, and it’s one that’s been building for a while. The spritz, which is photogenic, vaguely European and priced to move, is positioned as the drink of summer in a way that feels almost too obvious. And who says obvious is a bad thing when it tastes this good?
