Q1 2026 marketing cheat sheet: 5 key insights for your strategy

From key awareness days to brand management, the continued rise of AI and 'treatonomics', here's all you need to know for your Q1 2026 marketing activity.

1. Q1 2026 key dates and awareness days

Awareness days can represent a simple win — natural ways for your brand to align with and relate to things happening in the world and those events that matter to your audiences.

Of course, it’s not about shoehorning your brand into every single one, but rather looking for organic, relatable opportunities that marry with your service, product or values.

January

• 1-31 – Dry January
• 1-31 – Veganuary
• 1-31 – Cervical Cancer Awareness Month
• 3 – Festival of Sleep Day
• 6 – National Shortbread Day
• 19 – Blue Monday
• 24 – International Day of Education
• 25 – Burns Night
• 27 – Holocaust Memorial Day

February

• 1-28 – LGBT+ History Month
• 1 – World Vegan Day
• 1 – Yorkshire Pudding Day
• 2-8 – Race Equality Week
• 4 – World Cancer Day
• 5 – Time to Talk Day
• 9-15 – Children's Mental Health Week
• 9-15 – National Apprenticeship Week
• 10 – Safer Internet Day
• 11 – International Day of Women and Girls in Science
• 13 – Galentine's Day
• 14 – Valentine's Day
• 17 – Random Act of Kindness
• 17 – Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year
• 17 – Pancake Day
• 18 – Ash Wednesday
• 20 – National Love Your Pet Day
• 23 – 1 Eating Disorder Awareness Week
• 28 – Rare Disease Day

March

• 1-31 – Women's History Month
• 1-31 – Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month
• 1 – St David's Day
• 3 – World Wildlife Day
• 3-9 – British Pie Week
• 8 – International Women's Day
• 11 – National No Smoking Day
• 13 – World Sleep Day
• 16-22 – Neurodiversity Celebration Week
• 16-22 – Sign Language Week
• 18 – Global Recycling Day
• 21 – World Poetry Day
• 22 – World Water Day

2. AI automation and generative search

AI’s rise across the marketing board is evident to all marketing professionals. Like it or loathe it, expect a bigger dose in 2026, in a variety of ways.

Time-saving use cases for automation and data collection – AI-generated meeting notes, anyone? – are amongst the most harmless and beneficial. These types of features will continue to roll out and allow marketers to focus on real creative, added-value work.

Alongside automation, it is apparent generative AI is here to stay, and as such will play a significant role in search, how results are framed and supplied, and how users interact with content in the coming year.

In July 2025, ChatGPT was processing an estimated 2.5 billion daily prompts. By contrast, Google returned 14 billion searches per day.

So while Google is still your absolute priority, the gap is closing all the time.

Late 2024 saw the birth of a new acronym that’s got search marketers all hot under the collar, generative engine optimisation (GEO). Expect to hear more in 2026.

We’ve written an entire blog post on how to optimise your website for ChatGPT and AI search, but the key takeaway is that if you’ve been doing things right up to this point, you don’t need to worry. Just ensure you’re allowing LLMs to crawl your website.

3. Brand management in the face of misinformation

AI will speed up some of our processes and force us to adapt some of our search strategies, but amidst the proliferation of AI use, comes a wave with a warning – the increasingly indistinguishable imagery, the poorly managed messaging and the rise of misinformation.

Brand management and stewardship will be more important than ever as AI use increases. Monitoring sentiment, commentary and mentions cross platform will be more vital.

Both as agencies and for clients, we have to be able to retain and build trust through personalisation, human creativity and a watchful eye over the ways we utilise AI to ensure it’s for good and does not negatively impact our brand perceptions.

Keep the balance on where AI has benefit versus when human touch and management are needed to preserve brand authenticity and creativity.

4. Bring the… joy

Economic uncertainty is not enough to quash the desire to have a little treat.

In fact, volatility is pushing old-school major milestones out of the picture for many – see marriage, homeownership – and is driving a desire to feel optimism and joy through small wins and purchases every day.

Kantar tells us 'treatonomics is about injecting optimism and control through small pleasures.' This means there is opportunity for well-timed, well-placed and personalised offers and marketing that speaks to sprinkling a little joy into the lives of customers.

5. Attention spans are down but video content is still up

What does it mean then if we want video content, but have less time and shorter attention spans? It means micro-content is going to be king. Stopping the scroll with impactful, hard-hitting creative.

For 2026, keep things focused on a great hook, a clear message, known brand elements, and of course, tell the story as effectively as possible in the shortest window.

Does this all sound a little like hard work? Maybe we can do some of the heavy lifting for you in 2026.

Our award-winning team covers all digital marketing specialisms, including social media, branding, PPC, SEO (including GEO), content, email, e-commerce and web development.

Oh, and don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for the next cheat sheet! 👀