Does Bluesky Have Trending Topics? What 2,500 Trending Posts Show
Yes. Bluesky has trending topics, near the top of the Search tab in the app and in the right-hand sidebar on bsky.app. It doesn't have trending hashtags. Each trend is a custom feed with a name and a one-line description written by AI, and tapping it opens recent posts about that topic. To turn it off, go to Settings > Content and media and switch off Enable trending topics.
That leaves the question of which posts show up inside a trend, so I measured it. I took every topic on Bluesky's Trending list at 16:04 UTC on October 23, 2026 (25 of them) and pulled the first 100 posts from each one's feed. 11.2% of those 2,500 posts used a hashtag, about the same as the network as a whole. Bigger accounts filled most of the top 10 slots, but 13 of the 25 trends had at least one account with under 1,000 followers in their top 10.
(Disclosure: I make Agent Sky, a Bluesky growth tool. More on it at the end.)
Where Do You Find Trending on Bluesky?
In the Search tab, or in the sidebar on desktop. Bluesky started testing Trending in late December 2024, and it's now in three places:
| Where you use Bluesky | Where Trending is |
|---|---|
| iPhone or Android app | Tap the Search (magnifying glass) tab. Trending is near the top, a numbered list of 10 topics |
| bsky.app in a desktop browser | The Trending box in the right-hand sidebar (top 10 topics), or Explore in the left-hand menu |
| Discover feed, logged in, on a phone or narrow window | A Trending box with 3 topics may appear a few posts down |
I checked these against the code of Bluesky's app (bluesky-social/social-app, as of October 23, 2026). In the Search tab, each row shows the topic's name, a short description, a few avatars and a post count such as "1.2K posts". The desktop sidebar shows just the rank and the name.
Tap a topic and you get a feed. Every trend is a custom feed published by Bluesky's own @trending.bsky.app account, which was created on December 27, 2024. That's why a trend page looks just like any other feed. (For other feeds worth pinning, there's our Bluesky feed directory.)
Does Bluesky Have Trending Hashtags?
No. There's no trending hashtag list, and the topic names aren't hashtags. Bluesky's own app says so: "Topic titles and descriptions are generated with AI." That's why the list reads like headlines ("Storm Austen brings weather warnings") and not like tags.
Inside trends, hashtags are about as rare as everywhere else:
- 11.2% of the 2,500 trending posts used a hashtag. Across the whole network in the half hour before my snapshot, 9.4% of 95,534 new posts did.
- In the top 10 posts of each trend, it was lower: 8.0%.
- 21 of the 25 trends had hashtags on 15% of posts or fewer. The four above that were two fan topics (Spooky month stream schedules, 40%; Sonic the Hedgehog fan creations, 39%), a storm (29%) and a get-out-the-vote push (24%).
- The network's most-used hashtags weren't trending. In that same half hour, the top tags were #nowplaying, #art and #news, plus tags from automated ship- and plane-tracking bots. None of them matched a trend.
So a hashtag doesn't look like what gets a post into a trend. Hashtags are still useful for being found in search and in tag feeds. That's covered in how to use hashtags on Bluesky.
How Do You Turn Off Trending on Bluesky?
Two ways:
- Settings > Content and media, then switch off Enable trending topics. The same screen has Enable trending videos in your Discover feed.
- Tap the ··· button next to the Trending heading and choose Hide trending topics.
To bring it back, switch the setting on again. If Trending is missing and you never turned it off, check Settings > Languages: the Search tab only shows Trending when English is one of your content languages. Topics that contain one of your muted words are also hidden for you.
How Long Do Bluesky Trends Last?
The median trend on the list had been there for 28 hours, but some stay for weeks. The list was mostly US politics, and most topics were already labelled "cooling". This is a snapshot, not today's list. For what's trending today, open the Search tab.
| What I measured | Result (25 trends, 16:04 UTC, Oct 23, 2026) |
|---|---|
| Politics topics | 13 of 25 |
| Entertainment topics | 7 of 25 |
| Sports, business, tech, culture, other | 1 each |
| Status "trending" / "saturating" / "cooling" | 5 / 1 / 19 |
| Median time since the trend started | 28 hours |
| Newest / oldest trend | 30 minutes / since September 16 |
| Median post count | 919 (range 135 to 239,695) |
The status comes from Bluesky's public API. The app doesn't show it. Of the 25 topics, 19 were already labelled "cooling", and one Ukraine topic had been on the list since September 16.
Is Bluesky trending different by country? Not as far as I can see. I asked the public API for the list in English, Japanese, Portuguese, German and Spanish, and got the same 25 English topics in the same order each time. That's for logged-out requests. I can't see what a logged-in account gets.
Who Gets Into a Bluesky Trending Topic?
Mostly established accounts at the top, but smaller accounts do get in. Inside each trend feed, follower counts went down as I scrolled:
| Position in the trend feed | Median author followers | Posts from accounts under 1,000 followers |
|---|---|---|
| Posts 1–10 | about 15,500 | 13.6% (34 of 250) |
| Posts 11–30 | about 11,500 | 12.6% |
| Posts 31–60 | about 3,150 | 26.4% |
| Posts 61–100 | about 2,050 | 36.1% |
| The 5 accounts Bluesky lists for each trend | about 33,900 | 2.4% (3 of 125) |
What stood out:
- The #1 post usually belonged to a big account. For 9 of the 25 trends it was an account with over 100,000 followers, often a news outlet. For 4 of them it was an account with under 1,000.
- Small accounts get in without many likes. The 34 small-account posts in the top 10 had a median of just 2.5 likes. So the feed isn't sorted by likes alone.
- Trend feeds are about right now. The median post was about 2 hours old. In the topics still marked "trending", it was 1.3 hours.
- No replies. Not one of the 2,500 posts was a reply. Only top-level posts showed up.
- Links and quote posts were common. In the top 10 slots, 30% of posts had a link card, 28% were quote posts (with or without media), 21% had images, and 14% were text only.
So if you want your post seen inside a trend, post while the topic is new, and make it a top-level post, not a reply. Links and quote posts were common near the top. More followers help you get near the top, but they aren't a requirement to get in.
How I measured it, and the limits. At 16:04 UTC on Friday, October 23, 2026, I called Bluesky's public app.bsky.unspecced.getTrends endpoint (logged out) and got 25 topics. For each one I read the first 100 posts of its trend feed, then looked up every author's follower count (2,200 different accounts). For the network-wide hashtag figure I replayed Jetstream, Bluesky's public stream of network events, for 15:30–16:00 UTC the same day (95,534 new posts). This is one snapshot on one weekday afternoon, 11 days before the US midterm elections, which likely explains most of the politics. A logged-in account may see a different order. All of it is public data.
Trends are one of the few places on Bluesky where people who don't follow you see your posts. Followers who already care about your topic are the other way in, and I built Agent Sky to find them. It finds active accounts in your niche, follows them at a human pace, well inside Bluesky's limits, and checks for a live follow-back before it unfollows anyone. $9 a month, free to start. For when your followers are online, read the best time to post on Bluesky, or check your top posts with our free Bluesky analytics tool.
Quick FAQ
Does Bluesky have trending topics? Yes. Bluesky started testing Trending in late December 2024. In the iPhone and Android apps it's near the top of the Search (magnifying glass) tab. On bsky.app in a desktop browser it's in the right-hand sidebar. Each topic opens a feed of recent posts about it. The topic names are written by AI, not taken from hashtags.
Does Bluesky have trending hashtags? No. Bluesky has no list of trending hashtags. Trending shows topics, such as "Milwaukee Brewers in World Series", and Bluesky's app says their titles and descriptions are generated with AI. In my check of 2,500 posts inside 25 trends, 11.2% used any hashtag, about the same as the network as a whole.
How do I turn off trending on Bluesky? Go to Settings > Content and media and switch off Enable trending topics. Or tap the ··· button next to the Trending heading and choose Hide trending topics. Either way, you can turn it back on in the same setting.
Why is Bluesky trending not showing? Usually one of three things. Trending was turned off in Settings > Content and media, or hidden with the ··· button. Or English isn't one of your content languages (Settings > Languages), because the Search tab only shows Trending when it is. Topics that contain one of your muted words are also hidden for you.
How do you get your post into a Bluesky trending topic? Post about the topic while it's new, as a top-level post (not a reply). Trend feeds lean toward recent posts: the median post in my sample was about 2 hours old, and none of the 2,500 was a reply. Hashtags don't look like what gets a post in. Small accounts do get in: 13 of 25 trends had at least one account with under 1,000 followers in their top 10 posts.