Banana Products Are Everywhere Right Now, From Starbucks Drinks to New M&Ms Flavors

Bananas are the world's most consumed fruit, and right now they're also its most marketed one. A wave of banana-flavored products has hit shelves and menus in 2026, and the trail leads back to a surprisingly simple source: a TikTok drink recipe.

It Started With a Latte

The hashtag #BananaLatte took off on TikTok as users mixed Korean Binggrae banana milk with coffee over ice. That do-it-yourself drink is now widely credited with kicking off the broader banana flavor trend that food and beverage companies have chased since.

Starbucks has leaned in hard. The chain rolled out iced caramelized banana lattes, banana oat espressos, and banana velvet lattes in the United Kingdom, along with an iced banana cream protein matcha for the U.S. market. That's notable given that Starbucks has quietly stopped stocking fresh bananas in many locations, even as it builds out a banana-flavored drink lineup.

Dunkin' made banana its limited-edition "flavor of the season," adding banana syrup and cold foam as add-ons across its menu, including a "monkey business" cloud latte that pairs banana with buttery pecan.

Beyond Coffee: Snacks, Seltzers, and Candy

The trend isn't confined to coffee shops. Califia Farms is launching an organic banana creme almond milk coffee creamer and a ready-to-drink banana creme almond milk latte, part of a broader push into plant-based dairy alternatives.

Suzanne Ginestro, chief marketing officer at Califia Farms, framed the choice as low-risk rather than trend-chasing. "It's not some newfangled thing," Ginestro said. "It's pretty all-American and pretty mainstream."

Lexington Brewing & Distilling Co. is canning a Bourbonola bourbon and banana seltzer. Waterloo has a Banana Berry Bliss sparkling water on shelves. Olipop's Banana Cream soda, originally a limited-run "Minions" movie tie-in from 2022 that sold out within weeks, became a permanent flavor after demand proved durable rather than a one-off novelty.

On the candy side, Mars is adding a banana nut bread flavor to its M&Ms lineup, and the Iowa State Fair is set to debut banana cream fries this year, banana pudding and whipped cream served over warm funnel cake fries.

There's also a fashion angle, with banana motifs and banana-yellow palettes showing up in apparel drops, though the food and drink category is where the trend has the most measurable traction so far.

Why Bananas, Specifically

Rob Smithson, founder of the banana water brand Banagua, argues the fruit's appeal is its total lack of controversy. "It's one of the last nonpolarizing foods in a polarizing world," Smithson said. "Every demographic, every age group, every culture all over the world loves bananas."

That's a marketing pitch, not a scientific claim, but it lines up with basic market facts: bananas are already the single most consumed fruit on the planet, according to figures cited across the food industry. A trend built on a fruit nearly everyone already eats has a lower bar to clear than one built on something exotic.

Whether banana flavor sticks around at the scale of pumpkin spice or fades like past food fads is an open question. Some of these products are explicit "limited edition" runs, like Dunkin's seasonal banana add-ons, built to create urgency and then disappear. Others, like Olipop's Banana Cream soda and Califia's new creamer line, are positioned as permanent additions, a bet that the trend has staying power beyond a single TikTok cycle.

The real test comes at retail. Limited-time menu items are cheap for chains to test and easy to kill if they don't sell. Permanent SKU additions, like Califia's new creamer and M&Ms' banana nut bread flavor, cost more to produce and stock, meaning companies are making a bigger bet that banana flavor has real staying power rather than a summer's worth of social media buzz.

No sales figures for these specific 2026 launches have been publicly reported yet. Whether banana becomes the next pumpkin spice or fizzles out like past viral food fads will show up in reorder rates and shelf space next year, not in press releases now.