Low/No Alcohol, RTDs, and Premiumization: Top Alcohol Industry Trends for 2026

The alcohol industry enters 2026 at a clear inflection point. After decades of steady growth, global alcohol consumption is declining, consumer behavior is shifting, and long-held assumptions about premiumization, brand loyalty, and category growth are being challenged.

Three trends have defined the beverage alcohol conversation for the last few years: the rise of low and no-alcohol drinks, the explosion of ready-to-drink cocktails, and the premiumization wave that had everyone trading up.

Moderation stopped being a fad and became a structural shift, helped along by a federal health advisory that put alcohol and cancer in the same sentence on the evening news. The RTD category went through a violent sorting that wiped out one segment and crowned another. And premiumization, the trend that let brands grow value while volumes flattened, finally hit a wall as shoppers started reaching for the cheaper bottle.

Here is what each trend actually looks like heading through 2026, what is driving it, and what it means for the people selling these products on the floor.

2026 Alcohol Industry Trends at a Glance

• Moderation went structural. Global no-alcohol volumes grew about 9% in 2025 and are forecast to expand roughly 36% by 2029.

• Health moved to the center of the decision. A 2025 Surgeon General advisory linking alcohol to cancer pushed public awareness of that link from about 40% to 56% in a month.

• GLP-1 drugs are quietly reshaping demand. Medications like Wegovy and Ozempic are trimming alcohol cravings and discretionary buying, with pill versions widening reach in 2026.

• RTDs sorted into winners and losers. Spirits-based RTDs keep growing while novelty-driven segments cooled, rewarding brands that deliver consistency.

• Premiumization stalled. Shoppers grew selective and traded down, so value and clear justification now win the sale.

• The throughline for the trade: the 2026 customer is more informed than any before, and the teams that keep training are the ones that keep selling.

Moderation Goes Structural: The Low and No-Alcohol Surge

The "sober curious" movement is no longer a lifestyle column. It is a category with its own shelf, its own buyers, and its own growth math.

According to IWSR's No- and Low-Alcohol Strategic Study, global no-alcohol volumes across the ten leading markets are estimated to have grown around 9% in 2025, while traditional beverage alcohol crept along at low single digits. The category is forecast to expand roughly 36% by volume between 2024 and 2029, reaching more than 18 billion servings a year. Between 2022 and 2024 alone, the no-alcohol segment recruited an estimated 61 million new drinkers worldwide. These are not lifelong abstainers. Most are regular drinkers who now reach for a zero-proof option on a Tuesday and a full-strength pour on Saturday.

The United States is one of the engines. IWSR projects the U.S. no-alcohol market to grow at an 18% volume compound annual rate through 2028, putting it close to a $5 billion business by the end of the decade. No-alcohol beer carries most of that volume because it is the most mature segment, but the fastest growth is coming from no-alcohol RTDs and a brand-new shelf neighbor: alcohol adjacents.

The Surgeon General Changed the Conversation

The single biggest accelerant arrived on January 3, 2025, when the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory linking alcohol consumption to at least seven types of cancer and called for updated warning labels. The advisory attributed nearly 100,000 cancer cases and roughly 20,000 deaths a year in the United States to alcohol, naming it the third leading preventable cause of cancer behind tobacco and obesity.

The effect on public awareness was immediate. Surveys showed the share of Americans who understood the alcohol and cancer link jumping from around 40% in late 2024 to 56% within about a month of the advisory. For comparison, Gallup tracking shows the share of U.S. adults under 35 who drink at all has slid from 72% two decades ago to 62% in recent years. That is a generational headwind, and the advisory poured fuel on it.

There is a regulatory wrinkle worth watching. When the USDA released its 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines in January 2026, it left out the specific daily-drink limits that had appeared in prior editions, creating mixed signals from different corners of the federal government. The science did not change. The labeling fight is still live. For anyone training a sales team, the takeaway is that the moderation customer is now informed, intentional, and not going anywhere.

Health, Wellness, and Appetite Suppression Are Changing Consumer Demands

Health awareness has become a dominant force in consumer decision-making, and alcohol is increasingly viewed through a risk lens rather than a reward lens.

Two major forces are accelerating this shift:

GLP-1 Weight Loss Drugs

The expansion of GLP-1 medications such as Wegovy and Ozempic is reducing appetite, impulse consumption, and alcohol cravings for millions of users. With pill-based GLP-1 treatments entering the market in 2026, adoption is expected to accelerate further.

Even modest penetration creates meaningful volume pressure because high-calorie and discretionary categories are affected first. Alcohol sits squarely in that risk zone.

Moderation as a Lifestyle Norm

Dry January, sober-curious behavior, and mindful drinking are no longer fringe trends. They are now mainstream cultural behaviors, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z.

Consumers are not necessarily rejecting alcohol outright. They are drinking less frequently, choosing lower-ABV options, or alternating alcohol with non-alcoholic alternatives.

Non-Alcoholic and Low-ABV Categories Are Real Growth Engines: 2026 Alcohol Industry Insights

Non-alcoholic beer, wine, and spirits have moved from novelty to necessity.

Key drivers include:

• Social inclusion without intoxication

• Health and fitness alignment

• Professional and weekday consumption occasions

• Improved taste and branding compared to early NA offerings

Retail data shows double-digit growth in non-alcoholic beverages while traditional alcohol categories decline. Importantly, NA products are no longer limited to specialty retailers. They are now core SKUs in grocery, convenience, and liquor stores.

For the alcohol industry, this creates both risk and opportunity. Brands that treat NA as a defensive hedge will fall behind. Brands that build it as a parallel growth platform will capture new consumers and new occasions.

Learn Brands Is Hosting AFNA

As part of our commitment to meeting the industry where it's heading, Learn Brands is the official LMS host for the Adult Free-From and Non-Alcoholic (AFNA) Association. Hosting AFNA's education and certification programs on our platform reflects how seriously we take the non-alcoholic shift.

This category isn't a side conversation in beverage anymore, and the retailers, distributors, and brand reps who sell it need real training built specifically for free-from and NA products. By housing AFNA's curriculum alongside our beverage alcohol and hospitality programs, we're giving the trade one place to build fluency across the full spectrum of what consumers are actually reaching for.

Ready to get ahead of the category? Start with the fundamentals.

Master the fastest-growing segment in beer. From dealcoholization methods to flavor profiles and the brands defining the space, the NA Beer course gives your team the vocabulary and product knowledge to sell with confidence.

Enroll in AFNA Beer

Build expertise in the next frontier of wine. Non-alcoholic wine has come a long way from grape juice in a fancy bottle. Learn how it's made, how to taste it, and how to position it for guests and shoppers who expect a real wine experience without the alcohol.

Alcohol Adjacents Are the New Frontier

The most interesting movement is in products that are not alcohol-free versions of anything. Alcohol adjacents, the category that includes drinks built around CBD, nootropics, adaptogens, and hemp-derived cannabinoids, grew an estimated 11% in 2025 and are being adopted by younger drinkers for what they do rather than what they avoid. Millennials and Gen Z make up more than three-quarters of that consumer base.

This is the trend that should have every retailer and distributor paying attention, because it brings a whole new product type into the cold case that your staff has never been trained to sell. We built Functional Beverages Certified and Hemp Bev Certified specifically because this set moved faster than the training did. A budtender or a beverage clerk who can explain the difference between a CBD seltzer, an adaptogenic soda, and a hemp-derived THC drink is worth more on the floor than one who points and shrugs.

Ready-to-Drink Beverages are Redefining Convenience in On & Off Premise Retail

Ready-to-drink is still the strongest growth story in beverage alcohol, but the cast has changed completely.

For years, RTD meant hard seltzer. Not anymore. Hard seltzers have fallen hard, down roughly 7% in volume in the latest period with values dropping more than 15% as flavor fatigue and category saturation set in. In their place, spirits-based RTDs have taken over. Per the Distilled Spirits Council's 2025 economic briefing, premixed cocktails including spirits RTDs reached $3.8 billion in U.S. sales, up more than 16% in a single year. Spirits RTDs have more than doubled their market share since 2021 and picked up 11 share points in 2025 alone, while malt-based seltzers shed 14 points.

The shift tells you exactly what the consumer wants. They moved from lightly flavored sparkling water with a buzz to genuine cocktails in a can: the espresso martini, the margarita, the spirit-forward classics made with real liquor and real ingredients. Around 60% of new RTD launches now carry a premium or wellness positioning. Lower-ABV and better-for-you options sit right next to barrel-aged canned old fashioneds.

There is also a discipline that did not exist before. RTD new-product launches peaked globally above 3,300 in 2021 and fell to fewer than 1,000 in the first half of 2024. Fewer products are hitting the shelf, but the ones that do are sharper, better made, and more likely to earn repeat purchase. For retailers, that means less clutter and a higher bar for every facing you give up. For brands, it means a forgettable can no longer survives on novelty alone.

The practical problem is the same one functional beverages created. The category your staff needs to understand keeps expanding, and the customer often knows the product better than the person ringing it up. Training closes that gap, which is part of why we keep the Professional's Guide to Alcohol Tasting and our core spirits courses current.

Premiumization Hits a Wall: "Drink Better" Meets "Watch the Price"

For most of the last decade, premiumization was the safest bet in the business. Volumes could flatten and the industry still grew because shoppers kept trading up to nicer bottles. That assumption broke in 2025.

The Distilled Spirits Council reported total U.S. spirits sales of $36.4 billion in 2025, down 2.2% in value even though volume actually rose 1.9% to 318.1 million cases. Read those two numbers together and you get the headline of the year: Americans are still drinking, but they are trading down, choosing lower-priced bottles and pulling back on premium splurges. By value, vodka slipped 3%, tequila and mezcal fell about 4%, and American whiskey landed just under 1% lower. Spirits still hold the category lead at 42.4% share, ahead of beer and wine for the fourth straight year, but the easy premium growth that brands leaned on has stalled.

Two forces are squeezing at once. Inflation and general economic caution have made shoppers more price-aware, especially on the "affordable luxury" purchases that used to be automatic. On top of that, trade tensions and tariff uncertainty, including the removal of American spirits from many Canadian shelves, have hit producers and clouded long-term planning.

This does not mean premiumization is dead. It means it got selective. Premium positioning still drives the most resilient pockets of the market, from premium-and-above no-alcohol products to the spirit-based RTDs where most launches are deliberately upscale. The lesson for 2026 is that "drink less, drink better" now comes with a footnote: better has to be worth it, and the customer is checking the price.

For brands and retailers, that raises the value of storytelling, not lowers it. When a shopper is weighing a $25 bottle against a $40 one, the deciding factor is whether your staff can explain why the more expensive one earns the gap. A good-better-best lineup with a team that can walk a customer up the ladder beats a wall of bottles with nobody to talk about them. This is the same retention and confidence problem we wrote about in how alcohol retailers are fixing turnover with training, because you cannot build product expertise on a floor that turns over every ten weeks.

Industry Contraction Is Accelerating

Declining demand combined with years of overexpansion has created industry strain.

Notable developments include:

• Distilleries pausing production due to oversupply

• Craft breweries and distillers filing for bankruptcy

• Alcohol stocks underperforming broader markets

• Companies selling non-core assets to stabilize balance sheets

This contraction is not limited to small players. Large global producers are restructuring, cutting costs, and reassessing long-term growth assumptions. The next phase of the alcohol industry will favor operational discipline over aggressive expansion.

Competition is Expanding Beyond Alcohol in 2026 Alcohol Industry Insights

Alcohol is no longer competing only with beer, wine, and spirits.

Consumers now choose between:

• Alcohol

• Non-alcoholic beverages

• Cannabis and hemp-derived products

• Functional and mood-enhancing drinks

Cannabis in particular has reached consumption levels comparable to alcohol in some demographics. THC-infused and CBD-infused beverages, where legal, are increasingly sold alongside alcohol and are viewed by consumers as an alternative social intoxicant.

While hemp-derived THC product regulation remains uncertain, cross-category competition is real and growing. Alcohol brands must now compete for attention, shelf space, and share of occasion in a broader beverage ecosystem.

Hemp-derived THC beverages sit at the center of this shift, and most distributor reps and retail staff have never been trained to sell them. That gap is exactly why we built Hemp Bev Certified (HBC), Learn Brands' first owned IP certification program.

HBC is purpose-built for the beverage trade, with two tracks designed for the people actually moving product: HBC-D for distributor and supplier sales teams who need to confidently pitch and place infused beverages, and HBC-R for retailers and on-premise staff who need to merchandise, recommend, and stay compliant. Both tracks cover cannabinoid science, dosing, compliance, category management, and consumer conversations, giving teams the credibility to win the shelf and the share of occasion that's increasingly up for grabs.

Explore the Hemp Bev Certified program →

What These Trends Mean for the Floor

Strip away the market reports and the three trends point at the same operational truth. The set is getting more complex, the customer is getting more informed, and the margin increasingly lives in the conversation at the shelf rather than the product itself.

Here is how that plays out by role:

• Brands should treat education as part of the launch, not an afterthought. If you are putting a no-alcohol line, a spirits-based RTD, or a functional drink into distribution, the rep and the retail clerk need to be able to tell its story before it earns repeat purchase. Build the training the same week you build the sell sheet.

• Distributors are now carrying portfolios that span full-strength spirits, RTDs, no-alcohol analogues, and alcohol adjacents in the same book. A sales team that can speak fluently across all four is the one that wins shelf space and holds it. Our distributor solutions are built for exactly that range.

• Retailers win or lose at the moment a customer picks up two cans and reads the labels. Staff who can explain the difference, recommend with confidence, and trade a shopper up when it makes sense turn browsing into baskets. Our retailer training is designed around that interaction.

The good news is that the foundational knowledge is free to start. Our free Core Education Suite includes no-cost courses like Spirits 101, Whiskeys of the World 101, and Wine Essentials, so a new hire can get up to speed on the categories before they ever face a customer. From there, certifications give your team and your brand a credential that signals real expertise. If you are weighing the options, our breakdown of beverage alcohol certifications walks through which one fits which goal. Vodka still leads U.S. spirits by revenue even as the growth shifts toward ready-to-drink cocktails. For the people selling it on the floor, here's how to sell vodka.

Looking Ahead

Low and no-alcohol, RTDs, and premiumization are not three separate stories. They are three readings of the same shift. Consumers want choice, they want convenience, and they want quality they can justify, and they are making those decisions with more information than any generation of drinkers before them.

The brands, distributors, and retailers who come out ahead in 2026 will be the ones who match that sophistication on their own side of the counter. The product mix will keep changing. The customer will keep getting smarter. The teams that keep learning are the ones that keep selling.

Final Takeaway: Why Education Is the New Competitive Advantage

The future of alcohol is not about volume. It is about relevance, clarity, and execution.

As consumer behavior fragments and categories converge, success in 2026 will depend less on product alone and more on how well organizations understand the market, train their teams, and adapt in real time.

Brands, distributors, and retailers are now navigating:

• Declining consumption alongside growing assortment

• Alcohol, non-alcoholic, RTD, and adjacent categories on the same shelf

• New regulations, new health dynamics, and new consumer expectations

• Sales teams and frontline staff expected to explain increasingly complex products

In this environment, education is no longer a support function. It is a growth lever.

Learn Brands exists to solve this exact challenge.

By providing industry-agnostic training, market intelligence, and scalable education infrastructure, Learn Brands helps alcohol businesses:

• Equip teams with the knowledge to sell confidently in a changing category

• Translate macro trends into actionable retail and brand strategy

• Support responsible, informed consumption across channels

• Adapt faster as new products, regulations, and consumer behaviors emerge

The companies that win in 2026 will not be the ones waiting for demand to rebound. They will be the ones investing in understanding their customers, empowering their people, and building resilience through education.

The alcohol industry is not ending. It is evolving.

And the brands that evolve with it will define what comes next.

FAQ Section

Three dominate: the low and no-alcohol surge, the sorting of the RTD category, and the stalling of premiumization. All three trace back to a more health-aware, value-conscious consumer.

Overall volumes are under pressure, especially in traditional categories. Growth has concentrated in no and low-alcohol products and in spirits-based RTDs rather than across the board.

Health awareness, the spread of GLP-1 medications, mainstream moderation habits like Dry January and sober curiosity, and far better-tasting NA products that now sit on grocery, convenience, and liquor shelves.

Yes, but selectively. Spirits-based ready-to-drink cocktails continue to gain while novelty-led segments have cooled, which rewards brands that deliver dependable taste and quality.

The 2026 customer is informed and intentional, so product knowledge is the edge. Teams that can speak fluently to moderation, NA options, and shifting categories close more sales.