Glitter, Bacon and Beige: Seven Doughnut Crimes We're Banning in 2026

We are a tolerant website. We have defended the pineapple-on-pizza debate, we have forgiven the cronut its crimes, and we once gave a lukewarm review to a doughnut shaped like a celebrity's head. But even we have limits.

After a decade of doughnuts being used as content, canvas, wedding décor and personality substitute, it is time for a reckoning. So here, with love and a mouthful of sugar, is the Doughnut Hall of Shame: seven trends we're sending to the naughty step in 2026.

The Seven Doughnut Crimes

1. Edible glitter as a personality

Somewhere a marketing team decided that a doughnut should look like a unicorn sneezed on it, and we've never fully recovered. The problem isn't just that glitter tastes of absolutely nothing — it's that it migrates. It gets on your chin, your jumper, your car seat and, mysteriously, your tax return. In 2026 we want flavour, not craft supplies.

2. Anything with bacon on top

Yes, we know the maple-bacon thing has its defenders, and yes, we know it was on a menu in Shoreditch in 2014. It's still a pork product lying on a dessert like a small, confused sunbather. Sweet and savoury is a noble tradition — the salted caramel industry exists — but streaky bacon on a glazed ring is a cry for help, not a flavour profile.

3. The £8 'artisan' doughnut

We understand craft, we understand small-batch, we understand a rent bill in a big city. But a doughnut is fundamentally flour, water, yeast, a bit of sugar and a hot bath of oil. When one of them costs more than a pint and a packet of crisps, it had better do the washing-up afterwards.

4. Unicorn-mermaid-cereal TikTok bait

We lived through it. The pastel icing, the cascade of Froot Loops, the doughnut balanced on a milkshake balanced on a burger. Millions of likes, no flavour, and a bin bag full of regret. The era of the doughnut as a dare is over. Bring back desserts that taste nice rather than merely photographing well.

5. The 'healthy' protein doughnut

'Guilt-free' doughnuts usually mean one of two things: it tastes of sweetened cardboard, or it contains so much sweetener you'll be tasting it at Christmas. A doughnut is a treat. Treats are allowed to be treats. The day we need a macro breakdown with our baked goods is the day we've lost the plot.

6. Doughnut burgers

Using a doughnut as a bun was a fun joke for roughly eleven minutes in 2016. It is now just a sticky, structurally unsound mistake. It ruins the burger, it ruins the doughnut, and it ruins the person at the next table who has to watch you eat it with a knife and fork and a look of quiet despair.

7. The doughnut wall

We're not against joy at weddings. We are against a wall of doughnuts that has been sweating under warm lighting for four hours, gathering dust, wasps and unspoken resentment. It's pinterest bait masquerading as catering. Put them on a plate. Give them a napkin. Let them breathe.

Three That Deserve a Glorious Comeback

Enough negativity — we're a sweet website, not a sour one. Here's what 2026 should be reviving.

The raspberry jam doughnut

No glitter. No glitter-adjacent product. Just soft dough, a generous hit of sharp raspberry and a whole lot of caster sugar. The jam doughnut is the folk hero of British bakery — quietly working-class, quietly perfect, and always the first thing gone from the box. Let's stop treating it as the boring option and start treating it as the standard.

The cinnamon-sugar ring

Somewhere between a doughnut and a churro, tossed in warm cinnamon sugar and eaten standing up in a car park in November. It's messy, it's cheap, and it's better than most things that cost four times as much. Nobody has ever felt sophisticated eating one. Everybody has felt happy.

The chocolate-iced ring with hundreds-and-thousands

Retro, uncomplicated and almost aggressively nostalgic. It tastes of childhood birthdays, school fêtes and that one friend's mum who did the class bake sale properly. It's shiny, it's silly, and it has absolutely no ambition to be a lifestyle brand. More of this in 2026, please.

The Bottom Line

Doughnuts should be joyful, not stressful and certainly not expensive enough to need insurance. In 2026 we're calling time on gimmickry for gimmickry's sake and asking for one thing: dough, sugar, and a flavour that actually turns up. That's not a small ask. But it is a simple one.