The best Halloween costume ideas in the U.S. for 2025

One of the hottest shows on TV makes for a perfect excuse for a low-effort outfit: Throw on a suit and tie or a work dress and dangle a Lumon ID from your neck, and you basically have all of the ingredients you need for your surgically-distinctive work persona à la Severance. For bonus points: Reminds folks that the work is mysterior and important, and suddenly shift your personality between your “innie” and “outie” as you pass through doorways or climb up and down stairs.

Millennials, remember that episode of Doug where he’s accused of copying a teen heartthrob’s look, so he counters by wearing an over-the-top mash-up of every style? Well, meet the Dylan Farnum look of Gen Z trends. Should you dress up like a Labubu? Or Dubai chocolate? Maybe matcha? Perhaps a rave look that’s been inexplicably themed to one of these trends? Yes—opt for all of them at once to craft the ultimate on-trend nightmare.

Leave it to the Internet to take a good thing—a genuinely funny Timothée Chalamet look-alike competition—and beat it into submission with an endless parade of copycats: Pedro Pascal, Eminem, Jeremy Allen White… I could go on and on and on. But here’s the good thing about the proliferation of these viral look-alike contests: You and your friends can all dress up in the same not-quite-accurate celebrity-inspired costumes and call it a look-alike contest. Have a bunch of red bow ties? Well, now you’re all part of a Pee-wee Herman look-alike contest. Have a couple of Boston Bruins jerseys? You’re all Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore. 

It was such a big moment that it has its own section in the Wikipedia entry for kiss cams: During a Coldplay concert, a couple appears on the Jumbotron and then quickly tries to hide because, whoops, it turns out they’re both married to other people. So how exactly can you turn that into a costume? Wear a light blue polo and wrap your arms around someone in a black dress—but whenever anyone tries to take a photo of you, duck in shame.

Start practicing your best Southern-tinged “Piper, no!” if you plan on dressing up as everyone’s favorite darkly dysfunctional TV family this year, the Ratliffs. The upper-crust quintet from the third season of The White Lotus works best as a group outfit; opt for some generally preppy looks (or a Duke T-shirt) and drop pretty of references to Lorazepam and tsunamis. If you plan on dressing up as brothers Lochlan and Saxon, just don’t be surprised if people ask if you can, ahem, lend a hand.

The obvious route here is for a doe-eyed duo to dress up as Taylor and Travis and call it a day. But I think the far more clever option is to outfit yourself like the literal engagement photo: Make your midsection look like a decorative urn and cover every other inch with flowers—then invite any would-be English teachers and gym teachers to pose in front of you.

For millions of Americans, putting together a Halloween costume meant taking a trip to JoAnn Fabrics to stock up on all sorts of colorful soft goods. But the craft supply chain shuttered all of its 500-plus locations earlier this year, leaving one less go-to for costume supplies—but thereby giving you the perfect excuse to cobble together all of those leftover textile scraps and strands of yarn into the disheveled ghost of JoAnn Fabrics.

Katy Perry was pretty mercilessly dragged online for her participation in Blue Origin’s all-female flight this spring. But no matter how you feel about the space tourism escapade, you have to admit that it made for an instantly memorable and simple to re-create look: zip up in a blue jumpsuit, hold onto a daisy and kiss the ground whenever you have the chance.

The stratospheric popularity of these two properties means that you’ll have no problem finding off-the-shelf costumes for Elphaba and Glinda this year as well as Rumi, Mira and Zoey—a particularly easy solution for group costumes. But the omnipresence of the two films also means that you can dig deep into the character roster and still have people recognize your outfit. Feel like you’re admittedly a clingy person? Why not dress up as Boq from Wicked. Have a big black hat and the ability to draw on some extra eyeballs with makeup? Give the crow (which the Internet tells me is actually a magpie named Sussie) from KPop Demon Hunters a go.