The Global Wellness Summit (GWS) this week released its annual Future of Wellness report.
The longest-running report of its kind in the wellness industry, it takes an in-depth look at what is, and what will be, making waves in the health and wellness categories. In 2024, the report showed that contradictory mindsets – hardcare (high-tech, hyper-optimizing, expensive) versus softcare (simple, low-tech, affordable) – were defining the market, and forecast that the polarities would only widen. The 2025 report provides evidence that those divisions have deepened.
The 2025 trends are:
- Analog Wellness – This trend reflects the demand for slower, low-tech lives, and a broad societal realization that the manipulations, disinformation campaigns, and general brain and culture “rotting” of the online world have gone too far. GSW predicts that this year more people will aggressively log off and “analog on,” seizing retro, pre-digital – even pre-industrial – tech, hobbies and experiences. This will shake up everything from travel to government policy to home design.
- Sauna Reimagined – This trend investigates the boom in, and reinvention of, one of the most ancient and social types of wellness.
- Wellness on the Line – Powered by the hunger for slower, more mindful travel, this trend centers on the explosion of creative wellness experiences on cruises and rail journeys.
- Augmented Biology – This trend details how the new fusion of body and machine is pushing the potential of people’s brains and bodies to superhuman levels.
- The Supplement Paradox – This trend explores new science-grounded and high-tech directions in the vast supplement market, which look to help the major trust issues plaguing that industry.
- Teen Wellness – This trend explores how the wellness industry is finally getting serious about the wellbeing of teens, a segment that is experiencing a skyrocketing mental health crisis.
- Wellness Tackles Addiction – This new wellness category is poised to further topple taboos around addiction, and covers everything from new wellness-focused packaged goods brands targeting harm reduction, to medical treatment centers offering programming worthy of a five-star wellness resort, to new sober-curious retreats.
- Watershed Wellness – This trend reveals how more wellness destinations will preserve and renew our water supplies.
- Longevity Redefines Work – This trend explores the radical changes that are coming to work and workplaces as the number of younger workers decreases and the over-65 workforce explodes, and how the wellness industry will be a key player in helping employees work longer and better.
- The Middle East’s Wellness Ambitions – This trend looks at the emergence of the region as a wellness leader, driven by wellness-focused national “vision” plans in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations, and huge investments in cutting-edge preventative healthcare and sustainability, wellness tourism destinations, and sports-meets-wellness concepts.
The report is available for purchase HERE.