“I didn't have a lot of space to write songs for women so I purposefully tried to write songs that men could record.”
Every year brings a fresh wave of talent that reshapes pop culture. Some of these famous celebrities seem to materialize overnight; others spent years grinding in relative obscurity before the spotlight finally caught up.
Either way, a breakout year tends to define a career trajectory for the decade that follows.
In 2025, names like Adéla, Odessa A’Zion, Chase Infiniti and the global girl group Katseye entered the chat, all of whom are expected to carry momentum well into 2026.
But if you’ve been spending any time on TikTok lately, you’ve probably noticed the “2026 is the new 2016” trend going viral — a collective recognition that pop culture moves in cycles, and the energy of 2016 feels like it’s about to loop back around.
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That makes this the perfect moment to revisit the breakout class of 2016 and track where are they now, a full decade later. What happened to the actors, models, musicians and creators who defined that year? The answers reveal something about how fame actually works — and who manages to turn a single breakout moment into a lasting career.
Here are 14 celebrities who broke through in 2016, and what they’ve been up to since.
Millie Bobby Brown
She was 12 years old. That’s worth sitting with for a second: Millie Bobby Brown debuted as Eleven in Stranger Things in 2016 as a middle schooler, and the role turned her into one of the most recognizable young actors on the planet.
A decade later, Stranger Things has been put to rest after five seasons, and Brown has built a career well beyond Hawkins, Indiana. She appeared in multiple films including The Electric State, Damsel and both Enola Holmes films. She earned two Emmy nominations along the way.
READ MORE: Millie Bobby Brown opens up about motherhood — and why she doesn’t plan on revealing baby’s name
Off-screen, her trajectory has been just as full. Brown was announced as UNICEF’s youngest-ever Goodwill Ambassador on World Children’s Day in 2018. She married Jake Bongiovi in 2024 and became a mother after adopting a baby girl with him. At 22, her resume reads like someone twice her age.
Tom Holland
Tom Holland was 20 when he showed up as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War in 2016. The casting gave him instant global visibility, and he ran with it.
Ten years on, Holland has appeared in six MCU superhero films and ranks as one of the highest-grossing film actors of all time. He also branched out with dramatic roles in The Devil All the Time, Cherry and Chaos Walking — projects that showed range beyond the superhero genre. His 2026 slate includes The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
His personal life has tracked alongside his career in the public eye. Holland announced his engagement to Zendaya in 2024, making them one of the most high-profile couples in entertainment. From a 20-year-old auditioning for Marvel to one of the biggest box-office draws working today — that’s the kind of decade most actors only dream about.
Ashley Graham
Before Ashley Graham, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue had never featured a plus-size model on its pages. That changed in 2016, when Graham posed for the magazine and cracked open a conversation about representation in fashion that hadn’t existed at the time. The same year, she appeared in DNCE’s video for the song “Toothbrush.”
Graham took that visibility and built on it steadily. She authored a book, A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like, in 2017. She gave an inspiring TED talk, launched clothing lines and became a leading voice in the body positivity movement. In 2025, she made her Broadway debut. She has welcomed three children (including a set of twins) with her husband Justin Ervin.
What makes Graham’s trajectory stand out is that she didn’t just ride a single moment of representation — she kept pushing the conversation forward, year after year, across different industries.
Kaia Gerber
Kaia Gerber was just 15 years old when she made her New York Fashion Week debut in 2016. That same year, she starred in a campaign for Miu Miu sunglasses, became a face of Marc Jacobs Beauty and posed for Vogue. For most people, any one of those milestones would define an entire career. For Gerber, they were the opening act.
She won Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in 2018, cementing her status in the fashion world. But the more interesting development has been her pivot to acting. She has held a recurring role on Palm Royale since 2024 and appeared in multiple films, including Bottoms, Saturday Night and Shell. Her 2026 calendar already includes Outcome and Mother Mary, per IMDB.
Gerber’s shift from modeling into film is worth watching. Not every model who tries acting lands recurring TV roles and a full slate of film projects. She seems to be building something durable on both sides of the industry.
Kelsea Ballerini
Kelsea Ballerini released her debut album The First Time in 2015, but 2016 was the year everything clicked. Her single “Peter Pan” hit No. 1 on the country charts, and she won New Female Vocalist of the Year at the ACMAs.
The decade since has been a steady climb. She won two awards at the 2021 CMAs and has earned six Grammy nominations. Her fifth studio album, Patterns, came out in 2024, and her third EP, Mount Pleasant, was released in 2025. She also debuted as a coach on the 27th season of The Voice in 2025.
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That coaching gig says something about where Ballerini sits in the country music landscape right now. You don’t get asked to mentor the next generation of talent unless the industry considers you an established force.
Glen Powell
Glen Powell’s story is a patience play. He made his acting debut back in 2003 but didn’t score his first major breakthrough until he starred as Chad Radwell on the first season of “Scream Queens” in late 2015. He followed that with Ride Along 2, Misconduct and Everybody Wants Some!! in 2016. Solid work, but not stardom. Not yet.
The decade since has changed that equation completely. Powell joined the cast of Top Gun: Maverick in 2022 — and that’s when things accelerated. He went on to appear in Hit Man, Anyone but You, The Blue Angels, Twisters and Running Man, per IMDB. He also starred in and created Chad Powers and has The Great Beyond and How to Make a Killing lined up for 2026.
Powell’s trajectory is a good reminder that breakout years don’t always produce instant mega-fame. Sometimes they plant seeds that take another six or seven years to bloom. His jump from 2016 supporting player to leading man in back-to-back theatrical releases is one of the bigger career transformations on this list.
Auli’i Cravalho
Auli’i Cravalho made her acting debut voicing the titular heroine in Disney’s Moana in 2016. She was a teenager landing a lead role in one of the year’s biggest animated films — the kind of debut that immediately puts you on the map.
Since then, Cravalho has taken on leading roles in Rise, All Together Now, Darby and the Dead, The Power and the 2024 film adaptation of Mean Girls: The Musical. She reprised her role of Moana in the film’s 2024 sequel, Moana 2. In 2025, she had a voice role in Zootopia 2.
Her relationship with the Moana franchise keeps evolving: she’s now an executive producer of the live-action adaptation Moana, set for release in 2026. Moving from voicing a character to executive-producing the live-action version of the same story is a level of creative ownership that most actors her age haven’t reached.
Hailey Bieber
Hailey Bieber was already making headlines in 2015, but 2016 is when her modeling career kicked into a higher gear with campaigns for Ralph Lauren’s Denim & Supply line, H&M x Coachella, Tommy Jeans and Guess. She also briefly dated Justin Bieber before the two split in early 2016.
Fast-forward a decade, and Hailey and Justin have been married for eight of those years. They welcomed their first child in August 2024.
READ MORE: Hailey Bieber hints she’s ready for baby No. 2 and says she feels ‘much more prepared’
But the bigger business story here is Rhode. Hailey is the founder and chief creative officer (CCO) of the skin care brand, which was acquired by e.l.f. Beauty in a $1 billion deal in 2025. That acquisition number puts her in rare territory among celebrity-founded brands. Going from fashion campaigns to building a billion-dollar beauty brand over the span of a decade is a business arc worth paying attention to.
Alessia Cara
Alessia Cara released her debut studio album, “Know-It-All,” in November 2015 and kept her momentum going with hit singles “Wild Things” and “Scars to Your Beautiful” in 2016. Those songs established her as a voice for anyone who’d ever felt like an outsider.
She went on to become the first Canadian artist to ever win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2018. That same year, she earned nominations for Song of the Year, Best Music Video and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance.
Cara has since released three more studio albums: The Pains of Growing (2018), In the Meantime (2021) and Love & Hyperbole (2025). Her output has been consistent, with a new project landing roughly every few years.
Anya Taylor-Joy
Anya Taylor-Joy caught attention after starring in The Witch in 2015 and followed that with roles in Morgan, Barry and Split in 2016. That string of projects — particularly Split, which became a commercial hit — put her on the fast track to leading-lady status.
The years since have more than delivered on that promise. Taylor-Joy has starred in major films including Split’s 2019 sequel Glass, Peaky Blinders, Emma, The Queen’s Gambit, Last Night in Soho, The Northman, The Gorge, The Menu, and the apocalyptic film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. She also voiced Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Her 2026 slate includes Lucky, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Dune: Part Three. Landing roles in two of the biggest active franchises in cinema (Mario and Dune) at the same time puts Taylor-Joy in an elite tier of working actors.
Maren Morris
Maren Morris released her debut studio album, Hero, in 2016 and won New Artist of the Year at the 2016 CMAs, where she also had four other nominations.
The statistics in the decade since are staggering. Morris has five wins (and 18 nominations) at the ACM Awards, one win (eight nominations) at the AMAs, five wins (25 nominations) at the CMAs, and one win (17 nominations) at the Grammy Awards. She released three more studio albums: Girl, Humble Quest and Dreamsicle. In 2024, she was included on the Billboard list of the 100 Greatest Country Artists of All Time.
READ MORE: Why We Can’t Stop Listening to 2016: The Songs That Defined a Decade Ago and Still Resonate Today
That Billboard recognition, barely eight years after her debut album, speaks to how quickly Morris built a body of work that the industry takes seriously.
Sofia Boutella
Sofia Boutella scored her major breakthrough in 2016 when she starred as Jaylah in “Star Trek Beyond,” one of the highest-earning films of the year. That role gave her the kind of visibility that opens doors across the industry.
She’s appeared in more than a dozen films since then, including The Mummy, Atomic Blonde, both Rebel Moon films, Argyle, Climax, The Killer’s Game and Hotel Artemis. She’s set to appear in DreamQuil in 2026 and has several other films in post-production.
Grace VanderWaal
Grace VanderWaal took the music industry by storm in 2016 when she auditioned and later won the 11th season of America’s Got Talent. She was Howie Mandel’s “golden buzzer.” She signed a recording deal with Columbia Records shortly after her win and released her debut EP, Perfectly Imperfect, in December of that year.
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VanderWaal was just 12 years old when she won AGT. Ten years later, she has released two studio albums: Just the Beginning in 2017 and Childstar in 2025. She opened for Imagine Dragons in 2018 and Florence and the Machine in 2019. Her most recent outing was the “Childstar Tour” in 2025.
The eight-year gap between her first and second studio albums is an interesting detail. VanderWaal, who became famous as a preteen, seems to have taken time to grow up and figure out what kind of artist she actually wanted to be before releasing Childstar.
Halsey
Halsey released her debut studio album, Badlands, in 2015 and continued her rise on the Chainsmokers’ single “Closer,” which became her first No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016. That collaboration turned her from a rising artist into a mainstream name.
She went on to release four studio albums between 2017 and 2024, all of which peaked no lower than No. 2 in the US. Her song “Without Me” won an AMA for Favorite Pop/Rock Song in 2019. She has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, including Best Alternative Music Album in 2022 for If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. In 2024, she announced her engagement to actor Avan Jogia.
What these famous celebrities tell us about 2026
Looking across this group, a few patterns emerge. The celebrities who broke out in 2016 and sustained their careers over the following decade didn’t just ride one hit or one role. They diversified.
Brown moved into film and philanthropy. Graham moved into publishing, Broadway and business. Bieber built a billion-dollar brand. Powell waited years for his moment and then seized it across multiple genres.
With the “2026 is the new 2016” energy circulating on TikTok, the breakout stars emerging right now are following a similar playbook in a very different media landscape.
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The class of 2025 and 2026 — from Adéla to Katseye — will have their own version of this story to tell a decade from now. The question is which of them will still be building, pivoting and growing when we check back in 2036.
