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The future of dating in 2026: Why travel, casual connections and offline meetings are redefining relationships
The future of dating in 2026: Why travel, casual connections and offline meetings are redefining relationships Premium
A friend of mine recently told me, quite casually, that she had travelled to Bengaluru, Goa and even Kerala in 2025 to meet three different men she had matched with after switching her Tinder to Passport mode. She said it almost cheerfully, as though she were talking about weekend plans rather than dating logistics.
“I've never even been to these places before,” she laughed, “and suddenly I have memories in all of them.” The dates, she added, were genuinely good — long walks, easy conversations, and meals that stretched late into the evening — and the best part was that none of it felt heavy. The boys she met are all planning to visit her in Mumbai soon, not under pressure but with a sense of pleasant continuity. “I'm great,” she said, and she meant it.
I have been thinking about that conversation a lot, partly because it feels like a pretty accurate snapshot of where dating might be headed this year — not towards grand resolutions, but towards lighter and more mobile forms of connection. Territorial dating, if you want to call it that, seems to be growing, not because people are afraid of commitment, but because distance keeps things breathable. As another friend put it later, “Everyone behaves better when there is a return flight booked.” There is something about knowing that the encounter has edges that makes people kinder, more present, and less inclined towards building fantasy kitchens before dessert.
This sense of keeping things light seems to extend well beyond travel. Dating apps, for instance, are still very much around, but no one speaks about them with reverence anymore. It has lost its promise of destiny and settled comfortably into the role of logistics. “The app is just the corridor,” someone told me. “The date is the room.” Another friend shrugged and said she uses them the way she uses Google Maps — helpful, occasionally irritating, and not something she expects to fall in love with. Romance, if it happens, is treated as a bonus rather than a deliverable.
What has shifted, though, is where people seem to expect connection to actually unfold. There is a noticeable pull back towards physical spaces, not in a dramatic offline rebellion, but in a gentler way. Book launches, where people stay longer than necessary; reading clubs, where half the group has not finished the book and no one is particularly apologetic about it; or movie screenings that turn into dinner because the conversation feels unfinished. “I miss meeting people without context,” someone said to me. “No bio, no algorithm — just one thing they say that makes you look up.”
At some point, inevitably, run clubs enter the conversation. They always do now, slightly sheepishly, as though no one intended them to become relevant to dating. But they are. “If you still want to see someone after running next to them, that's not chemistry — that's compatibility,” said a regular. There is an honesty about meeting people when your body has already done the emotional work for you.
Mumbai, of course, is experimenting. Curated dinners with strangers, already popular, feel less like matchmaking initiatives and more like social reset buttons. There is also a subtle change in how people are choosing. “I'm done putting all my eggs in the first interesting basket,” a friend said. Another paused and added, more thoughtfully, “I'm not confused. I'm just watching myself more closely.” Dating, in this version, becomes less about intensity and more about information — about noticing how you feel before, during and after.
Someone else summed it up in a way that has stayed with me: “Dating now is about protecting your future self, not impressing your current one.” The question has shifted slightly, from can I fall for them to how do I feel when I leave?
So, where is dating headed in 2026? It is hard to say. It may remain messy and circular, full of revisions and soft exits. But perhaps it also becomes a little lighter, funnier, and less invested in spectacle. It is less about predicting outcomes, more about collecting experiences that do not exhaust us. We still want love — of course we do. We are just learning to let it arrive without a dramatic monologue, a five-year plan, or the urgent need to decide what it all means.
A fortnightly guide to love in the age of bare minimum
Published - January 02, 2026 04:15 pm IST
The Hindu Weekend
Source: TheHindu
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