South Africans are searching for joy in 2026… and the answer might be closer than we think.
Johannesburg, South Africa (21 December 2025) – “To thrive in 2026, we don’t need more… we need each other.”
That’s the sentence that’s been replaying in my mind since a “Time Out” event I recently attended.
“Cool story Brenty, but what exactly is a Time Out?”
Well, Time Out kicked off in London in 1968 with a simple job: show people what’s great in their city. The food. The culture. The gigs. The theatre. The hidden gems. The stories that make a city feel alive. And since then, it’s popped up all over the world, shaping how locals and tourists experience a place. Now we’ve got our own Mzansi version full of headlines like “The 11 Best Burger Joints in Joburg”, “The 7 Best Christmas Markets in Jozi”, and “What’s Happening This Week in the City”. It’s fresh, it’s fun and it genuinely celebrates the best bits of who we are. They also run markets (Cape Town has one already), host events, and bring people together to experience a city the way it deserves to be experienced, through connection.
That’s what their “Joy Revolution” event was really about. They spent months researching what makes us happy as South Africans. They dug into how we socialise, whether we’re planners or wing-it warriors, what braaing really means to us, the ways social media lifts us or breaks us and how the past five years have shaped our sense of joy.
Or maybe lack thereof.
It’s been 5 years of a Cofifi hangover. And we all know hangovers don’t generally bring joy.
But apparently, we’re on our way there (to joy), and they are calling it a revolution.
There was A LOT of data. And loads of slides.
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But one thing stood out above it all:
We are happiest when we are connected.
To each other.
To community.
To something shared.
It’s the heartbeat of Mzansi.
Ubuntu.
“I am because we are.”
I speak a lot about Arthur C. Brooks. He’s my guy. A global thought leader who studies happiness for a living (for realsies… that’s his job). He believes the pillars of a good life are things like purpose, spirituality and meaningful work…
But the biggie is human connection.
Not followers. Not likes. Not “being busy”. Not “being successful”.
Just people. Real people. Our people.
The besties who send you TikTok videos to make us laugh, the ones you can WhatsApp at 11pm because life is life-ing, the maatjies who braai with you, laugh with you, hold space for you and remind you that you’re not doing this alone.
At the end of the keynote, Elana Afrika (who is one of the best MCs in South Africa) asked Melissa (an incredibly passionate researcher), “Why did it take us so long to get to a revolution around joy?”
And Melissa said something so painfully true.
“Because we never want to hear anything good about ourselves.”
Hard relate.
As a country, we downplay our magic. We shrug off compliments. We focus on the hard things. And ja… there are many. We all know about the kak in our country. We live here. We see it all around us. But we seem to forget the beautiful bits. Or overlook them. We forget the stories that make us proud. We forget that we get through the worst of times because of each other, not in spite of each other.
And maybe that’s the real revolution.
Not fireworks.
Not fanfare.
Not some big, dramatic shift.
But learning to believe the good about ourselves.
Learning to hold onto it.
Learning to choose it.
Learning to see it in one another.
Joy isn’t something that arrives at our front door like a Takealot delivery.
It’s something we build. Together. Through connection. Kindness. Shared moments. And a willingness to believe we deserve better days.
As we look toward 2026 (we have to, it’s 10 days away), maybe the question isn’t “What do we need?”
Maybe it’s:
Who can we connect with?
Who can we lift?
Who can we show up for?
And who can we let in?
Thriving isn’t about having more.
It’s about having each other.
And maybe that’s the start of our joy revolution.
“To thrive in 2026, we don’t need more… we need each other.”
And I hope to God that we find a way to each other.
Okay. Love you. Bye.
by 