What do the kids who have decided to believe in something believe in in the middle of 2026?

If social media and pop culture are anything to go by, it might seem like religion crosses a second coming among young people. Several signs would point in that direction: the success of ‘The Sundays’Rosalía with her continuous Christian referencesphenomena like Hakuna Group Music capable of fill venues with thousands of people thanks to his Catholic pop…

Apparently, all this sends signals: something is happening with religion, the long and inevitable path towards secularization has stopped. However, beyond the headlines and TikTok, it is the data that sheds light on what is really happening and, despite all the noise of full stadiums and online bustle, we come across the loneliness of the chapels.

The truth is that the secularization has not slowed down, according to the barometer on religion and beliefs in Spain, carried out by the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation. Approximately one in three young Spaniards is defined as spiritualbut 61% do not practice any official religion. Among 18-24 year olds, only 15% say that religion gives a lot or quite a bit of meaning to their life, far below factors such as family or friends. And, within the 54% of the population that does identify with a religion, only 17% maintain a regular practice.

What is clear in this study is that growing interest in the spiritualbut not institutionally: 31% of young people believe in some type of spiritual reality or vital force, 29% say they believe a lot or quite a lot in astrology and 23% in clairvoyance. So there is not a massive return to faith, but rather a cultural visibility of the religious that is in full effervescence.

Religion on demand

We can say that the religious identity of Gen Z is a totum revolutum. More than a specific doctrine or religion, what many young people are looking for is that spiritual or even mystical experience. For them, the lines that separate Christian traditions – Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox or Catholic – are blurred and give way directly to an emotional search and belonging in favor of a common religious experience.

As an example, what was possible to experience at the beginning of the year at the Movistar Arena.

“Let all of Spain hear it, let the name of Christ be heard!” It could be Nacho Cano opening a show in the middle of 2026 but no, we are talking about the opening of ‘Calls‘, a prayer meeting that brought together about 6000 people mixing music from evangelical groups like Hillsong, talks influencers Catholics and a final ceremony culminated with the prayer of the Lord’s Prayer. And a few days before, Catholic pop triumphed Hakuna Music Group in Vistalegre.

There are also trends that are more in communion with what we know as traditional Catholicism adapted to modern times. For example: Eucharistic adoration and the prayer meeting focused on the real presence of Christ, something very Catholic and that distances itself from that evangelical approach where the power of the Bible takes center stage. Likewise, retreats and spiritual camps with renewed music and aesthetics but that follow traditional meditation and confession practices; or the prayer of the rosary that today are also reinterpreted through TikTok, YouTube or apps of prayer.

All this clearly shows the hybrid nature of this youthful spirituality and its distance from religious traditions. But if young people do not go en masse to church and the data do not show the rise of Catholicism, how then is this new impulse for a transversal spirituality explained? Full stadiums, music, shared Christian symbols… Signs of a religiosity that moves in the cultural space more than in the parish.

We have the answer on our phone

One hypothesis is that most young people discover Christianity on TikTok before in church. On platforms like Instagram or YouTube you can follow homilies, songs of faith or prayers. They are the new modern temples, adapted to the pace of digital life.

And the imaginary of the sacred has always had great cultural force, although religious practice decreases. Religious aesthetics have not appeared in recent years thanks to Rosalía, Los Javis or Alauda Ruíz de Azúa; Centuries ago it was already used as a tool of the Church to communicate and move.

The ultimate end of baroque art It was to materialize the divine in images. It is true that in a dramatic way, with that dark and solemn aura to transmit the transcendent dimension of Catholicism, but in reality it was still pedagogical, a tool to reinforce the Catholic faith. In the Renaissance these Christian symbols were also used, but there they sought to humanize the divine and escape from the dark; or even in Surrealism, artists opted more for the dreamlike nature and the exploration of the subconscious.

And now, in the digital age, the tools are different but the Christian symbology is still present. From Madonna to Lady Gaga, passing through the parade ‘Alta Sartoria’ by Dolce&Gabbana paying homage to ecclesiastical tailoring, Lux or the influencers Christians who circulate on social networks. Screens serve as a meeting place, algorithms determine the psalms, and the spiritual dictates our mood of the day.

A generation that wants to believe in something

An increasingly dissatisfied and exhausted generation Z finds in those videos of influencers Christians and in Hakuna music something exotic, something that gives them a feeling of togetherness and community. The sacred is the new Valencia filter and when faith is not only commercialized by the Church, phenomena such as Christiancore ―turning Christian symbols, such as robes or crosses, into visual language that seeks to offer meaning― find in this jaded and lonely your perfect niche.

In the midst of this saturation of visual stimuli, to some young people it may seem demodé Palm Sunday mass, but his outfit with crucifix and T-shirt ‘God is Dope’ gives them the illusion of a new spirituality heterogeneous and digital. Generation Z tends to replace traditional liturgical practice with large events in pavilions where doctrine disappears and the collective is the experience, building identity and community.

“There has been a very strong experience of emptiness on the part of young people. They have a deep longing that the postmodern cultural proposal has not been able to satisfy and that generates in them a feeling of emptiness, of absurdity, of overflow, of overwhelm, of anxiety, which leads them to search for proposals within spirituality,” YouTuber theologian and former friar Abel de Jesús for EFE

If the millennialin the face of social and economic uncertainty, we sought comfort by building our personality based on our horoscopeself-help and a path to more self-reflective, introspective and individual self-discovery; Part of Generation Z seems to take refuge in a reinvented cultural Catholicism that combines tradition and spectacle, and that with spiritual retreats, Eucharistic adorations and musical encounters finds an emotional and collective connection in person or on screens, coining a generational reinvention of the sacred.

Image | hakuna

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