Roblox users showed up in greater numbers than ever before this year, sharing their experiences with such passion that the impact was felt internet-wide. Roblox content hit 1 trillion all-time views on YouTube, and in July and August, one of every five game-related videos posted on TikTok mentioned Roblox globally. With 88.7 billion hours engaged,1 over 50 million searches a day, and 274 million daily avatar updates, users made Roblox an epicenter of next-gen culture.
Roblox’s 2025 story goes beyond the immense scale. Each time someone searched for an item, customized an avatar, or explored a new world, they communicated something: curiosity, belonging, aspiration, taste, fandom, mood. Taken together, these moments tell the story of a global community discovering and redefining how they express themselves, play, and create.
Understanding how Roblox users showed up in 2025 and how the platform evolved is vital for brands, creators, and storytellers looking for fresh opportunities to stand out, so we went looking for the patterns beneath the activity.
Record-Breaking Experiences in 2025
Roblox is part of over 151 million users’ daily lives, and in Q3 of 2025, the average user spent 2.8 hours a day playing games and sharing experiences.2 With endless possibilities, the choices they made about where to spend that time revealed the interests, trends, and communities that defined the year.
It’s impossible to talk about 2025 without mentioning the record-breaking numbers of concurrent users we saw this year. Platform-wide, 45 million users played together one Saturday morning in August (read about the infrastructure supporting this here). In July, Grow a Garden broke the Guinness World Records® achievement for most concurrently played video game, with 21.6 million users playing simultaneously. Then, in September, Steal a Brainrot beat that record, reaching over 25 million concurrent users.
What Users Searched For
Roblox is built on discovery, connection, belonging, and creative self-expression. Exploration is what keeps the platform fresh, relevant, and constantly evolving. Our diverse range of experiences drives a culture of curiosity and continual discovery.
Users come to Roblox ready to engage with the games they love and explore new content that feels unique. Record-breaking games like Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot set a new bar in the world of gaming and represented some of the most talked-about games of the year. Naturally, they were also some of the most searched games in 2025, across geographic borders and language barriers. The year’s top three searches overall were:
- Brookhaven (created in 2020)
- Grow a Garden (created in 2025)
- Steal a Brainrot (created in 2025)
Some of the most searched games of 2025.
While these roleplaying and simulation games led the pack, the top searches cover a vast array of genres—sports and horror games alike, displaying the varied interests users bring to Roblox.
Roblox users have a healthy appetite for new content and decade-old favorites alike. Looking across the top searches, we see everything from sports games like Blue Lock: Rivals (created in 2024) to survival games like 99 Nights in the Forest (created in 2025) and Murder Mystery 2 (created in 2014), to shooters like RIVALS (created in 2024). Homing in on searches this past month, we see brand-new games like the RPG The Forge picking up speed.3
As popular as they are, the games above represent a subset of what users searched for each day. Broad searches like “horror” and “roleplay” are even more popular as users seek to discover new experiences. In 2024, users engaged with an average of 21 experiences per month, highlighting the opportunity for diverse genres and creative designs.
Cultural Currents
Cultural currency for Gen Z has shifted toward active and engaged participation, not just passive consumption. A deeper look into these broad searches reveals that users are increasingly turning to Roblox to engage with cultural moments and discover experiences based on themes and genres that appeal to their interests. Millennial trends of the joy economy and nostalgia resonated on Roblox, too, with searches like Y2K and Hello Kitty surging in 2025. From enduring genres to flash-in-the-pan viral sensations, users’ thematic searches paint a dynamic picture of what’s captivating the global community.
Some trends are predictable. For instance, horror is a theme that players enjoy year-round, but searches for horror and related terms pick up dramatically pre-Halloween. Search traffic for Halloween itself also sees a consistent annual spike from September through October.
Roblox is a central hub within a larger cultural ecosystem that amplifies cultural moments across social media, streaming platforms, and real-world conversations. Roblox helps brands and users engage where culture is being created—not just consumed. Trends like this year’s wildest meme, 67 (or six seven), and the viral film “KPop Demon Hunters” drove massive, concentrated search volume on Roblox. Searches for Squid Game began showing up before the series’ latest season even aired, building awareness and excitement.
Shared Experiences
On Roblox, digital culture thrives through community. A major part of Roblox’s appeal is that it’s an accessible way for users to learn, create, collaborate, and play with friends, as evidenced by frequent searches for multiplayer games and multiplayer-specific takes on popular genres.
In 2025, we rolled out significant upgrades to experience events and updates, helping creators bring users together in exciting new ways and promote a bigger sense of community around their work. Searches for community-driven content like “team green bean” were common when Grow a Garden topped the charts. “Admin abuse” later became a frequent search, referring to playful events held in the record-breaking high-concurrent competition between Steal a Brainrot and Grow a Garden, where the creators of both games competed for users by giving free upgrades, restocking shops for all who participated, and inviting celebrities like Travis Kelce and Glass Animals to join in on the fun.
Hyperlocal Niches
Roblox users are a part of a global community, and their searches reveal hyperlocal niches that creators can tap into. While Halloween-related searches tend to dominate September and October globally, we also see searches for more localized holidays, like Thailand’s Loy Krathong, or festival of lights. Anime-related searches are popular in Japan, while searches for Notruf Hamburg, in which users roleplay as emergency services in the German city of Hamburg, are popular in, well, Germany. Brazil unsurprisingly loves “futebol” (or soccer), and users in Indonesia and the Philippines had outsize search volume for “wall hop,” a climbing subgenre.
Different Devices, Different Preferences
Of note for creators, while there is a lot of crossover—especially among the top global searches—players of different devices also had their own distinct preferences. These preferences are often defined by the device’s input method, the user’s immersion level, and the complexity of the content they seek.
On mobile phones—the most ubiquitous device type—users showed a proclivity for horror, escape, and obby content, suggesting a desire for intense, immediate challenges. Tablet users were most likely to search for creative experiences like Build a Plane and Dress to Impress, where they could take advantage of a larger (touch-enabled) screen. Users on consoles like Playstation and Xbox looked for popular, action-oriented, and licensed titles, pointing to more competitive interests, with searches for Sonic, football, and basketball, to name a few.
VR users predictably looked for experiences that take advantage of their hardware and its immersive capabilities, searching for terms like VR and VR hands. And PC users often searched for complex, mechanics-driven experiences, including RPGs and fighting games. For instance, PC users searched for Deepwoken, a challenging paid-access RPG with permanent character loss, a sprawling open world, and tons of secrets to discover.
A sampling of unique keywords searched per device.
Users flock to Roblox because of this diversity of games and experiences available on the platform, as well as the endless avenues for self-expression.
How Users Expressed Themselves in 2025
On Roblox, self-expression isn’t just a feature—it’s foundational to how users show up. The avatar a user creates on day one becomes a living extension of who they are, evolving as their tastes, moods, and identities shift. New research from Roblox and Ipsos’s 2025 Roblox Digital Expression Report underscores this reality. Gen Z Roblox users surveyed change their avatar to express their creativity (47%), to try out a new identity (38%), to stand out (38%), or to match their mood (37%), according to our recent self-expression survey. In 2025, users updated their avatars an average of 274 million times a day. For Gen Z, the digital world is a natural canvas for exploring style, connection, and creativity.
Mirroring Between Digital and Physical
3D immersive experiences actively influence users’ real-world choices and vice versa. Approximately 84% of users surveyed said their physical style is influenced by their digital self, and 87% felt more comfortable expressing themselves offline after experimenting with their avatar’s style online first. Survey respondents were 6.3 times more likely to say that expressing themselves via avatars felt better (“more me”) than posting photos on social media, showing how connected users feel to their avatar within Roblox’s welcoming community.
This blurring of lines between the physical and digital worlds indicates users want their avatars to reflect their personal style, with 76% saying that experimenting with style in immersive spaces is highly important to them. A staggering 70% of Gen Z Roblox users surveyed have worn branded digital fashion, and 60% think it’s either extremely or very important that their avatar wears clothes from recognized brands. Our research shows that Gen Z wants brand interactions that feel authentic, integrated, and reflective of how they move through both digital and physical spaces.
In the first half of 2025, Roblox Marketplace had an average of 18.8 million daily visitors (up 17% year over year) as users searched for the perfect items to show off their personal style, whether that meant opting for a blocky avatar in classic Roblox fashion or decking out their custom UGC avatar in rare Limiteds.
When surveyed, 69% of Gen Z users agreed that branded avatar items help them try out new styles and express themselves. When a brand provides this opportunity, the impact is significant, with 54% reporting they feel more positive about a brand after trying out their items.
Hear from users about how they express themselves with their avatars here and here.
Seeking Out Authentic Brands
Self-expression data from the 2025 Roblox Digital Expression Report reveals how this generation thinks, moves, and connects in 3D spaces, giving brands a powerful roadmap for activating in ways that feel authentic, personalized, and culturally relevant to Gen Z.
For brands that rise to meet that challenge, the rewards can be significant, given the feedback loop between the physical and digital realms. Because virtual fashion is comparatively low-cost and low-friction, it’s easy for users to experiment and see what they fall in love with before splurging on pricier physical items. The majority% of Roblox users surveyed (69%) say their physical purchasing decisions are influenced by digital trends, 88% use digital fashion as a preview tool before buying physical clothing, and 64% are extremely or very likely to consider a brand in the physical world after wearing it virtually.
While 41% of Gen Z Roblox users surveyed say they still prefer shopping with friends in the physical world, 54% say they either prefer shopping with friends in the digital world or enjoy both equally. This signals a significant shift in social commerce.
However, users want digital brand integrations to be meaningful, with 68% saying branded style options must align with the theme of the game they’re playing, particularly in role-playing (56%) and fashion-focused (54%) experiences.
Given the clear ties between digital fashion and physical purchases, it’s important that brands show up in these virtual spaces so users can discover them. One effective way for brands to do this is by offering free avatar items. More than 94% of the Gen Z Roblox users we surveyed said they went on to explore a brand’s physical-world offerings after receiving freebies for their avatar.
Expression Through Motion
Users care about more than just fashion when it comes to their avatars. They’re increasingly purchasing avatar items like emotes to deepen expression and personality, with 73% of surveyed Gen Z Roblox users wanting their avatar to be able to express a full range of emotions—laughing, cheering, smiling, and so on. And for Gen Z, emotes are becoming core to that expression: they use them for fun and aesthetic reasons (54%), to reflect how they’re feeling in an experience (49%), to entertain others (48%), and to communicate with other players (43%). We even unlocked a new avenue for avatar customization this year with the launch of user-generated emotes, leading to dance and other verbs taking over Marketplace searches in the back half of 2025. With 61% of those surveyed saying a full range of dance options helps them feel fully represented, the demand is clear.
We’re committed to giving users more ways to express themselves, and we expect the line between physical and digital to blur further as immersive 3D worlds continue to solidify themselves as important third spaces. We’re excited to share new updates to avatar movement and makeup in 2026.
What’s Coming in 2026
Regardless of age, device, or country, the sheer volume of users searching for new experiences and avatar items makes one thing unmistakable: Roblox has become an epicenter of culture, with diverse content, vibrant communities, and endless ways to show up and show off.
Roblox is helping to shape culture around the world—and we’re just getting started. With record-breaking engagement, empowered creators, and new forms of self-expression, 2025 was a milestone year, and the next chapter is already underway. As always, we can’t wait to see our community—and everything they create—in the new year.
