Wearing costumes on Halloween goes far beyond trick or treating. Adults, teachers, and even pets get dressed up for the season, showing off at work, parties, charity drives, and of course to join in with candy-collecting kids.
But with different movies, television shows, albums, and other cultural touchstones changing year-to-year, the most popular Halloween costumes also get switched up regularly.
With the help of Google Trends data through their Frightgeist series, Visual Capitalist's Omri Wallach visualized the top 27 most searched Halloween costumes in the United States.
As with last year, the impact of popular movies, shows, and games is clearly visible in the top 27 most popular Halloween costumes in the U.S. in 2023:
Reigning supreme is toy-turned-movie icon Barbie, after the eponymous movie released this year. The summer blockbuster has so far topped the 2023 box office at $1.44 billion earned globally, and also was responsible for the most popular couple’s costume: Barbie and Ken.
#3 Spider-Man and #13 Princess Peach also reflect on the cultural power of the box office and video games. Both were in popular movies this year—with the The Super Mario Bros. Movie earning $1.36 billion and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse earning $690 million at the global box office—and both had major game releases in October for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5.
Netflix also saw cultural “success” in this year’s most popular Halloween costumes, with #6 Wednesday Addams coming from their Addams Family series Wednesday. Though the show released in November of 2022, it quickly became the most watched English-language show on the platform and a perfect fit for Halloween costume ideas.
This year also had one celebrity make the top 25, Taylor Swift at #22. The singer-songwriter released two re-recorded albums following an ownership dispute with her former record label, and is currently in the midst of a record-breaking concert tour.