All the baddies are ditching long hair for timeless buzz cuts.
At the beginning of the year, hair care appliance manufacturer Conair announced the buzz cut’s indisputable return among Aussie men. Partly influenced by NRL champion Reece Walsh, who traded his signature curls for a fade buzz cut, short hair soon saw a popularity boost nationwide.
During the summer, however, it seemed that men’s hairstyles were veering toward longer lengths and playful experimentation. The event-packed season delivered hairstyles across the style spectrum, particularly those fitted for the internet boyfriend crowd.
Prime Video’s Off Campus, 2026’s biggest streaming phenomenon, breathed new life into the hockey hair craze that picked up last year when Heated Rivalry (2025) hit the screens. At the FIFA World Cup, which took over our feeds with sports, bromance and pop culture conversations, names such as Erling Haaland and Michael Olise sparked an internet frenzy with their long-hair looks.
With music festivals unfolding worldwide and the June menswear runways introducing what’s to come in 2027, the trend of longer and more experimental hair continued.
As we reach the last stretch of the summer, though, men might be in for a major hairstyle reset.
Enter the buzz cut
Over the last couple of weeks, interest in buzz cuts has spiked, thanks in part to major sports and entertainment figures undergoing unexpected hair transformations. On Google Trends, searches for “buzz cut” are seeing an upward trajectory since late July and experienced a surge over the weekend (August 22-23). “Haaland haircut” and “Connor Storrie buzz cut” were among the terms receiving the highest volume of traffic worldwide.
We’ll get into a detailed breakdown later, but first things first, what is a buzz cut?
Buzz cut, for those who might need a quick rundown, is an umbrella term for all the hairstyles crafted with electric clippers, regardless of hair length and shape. Despite popular belief, the buzz cut isn’t limited to the classic military-infused induction style. This hairstyle family also includes the more aesthetically pleasing butch and crew cuts.
That being said, this type of hairstyle is often favored for its grooming ease and low maintenance. Additionally, the buzz cut has emerged as a symbol of masculinity, experimentation and departure from traditional beauty standards. In recent years, it has also become the go-to for an image or even mental reset for men.
This summer, though, the buzz cut is all about reinvention
The current buzz cut buzz (pun intended) started when rapper Nettspend shaved his signature two-tone hairstyle. The surprising hair transformation came only a few days ahead of the release of his new single, “sober,” in which Nettspend raps about sobriety, burnout and expectations on his artistry.
Then, rumors surfaced about Heated Rivalry star and fashion darling Connor Storrie shaving his iconic curls. With the filming of the romance hockey show’s season 2 currently underway, the hearsay sparked heated internet discourse. A few days later, a photo of Storrie sharing a meal with co-star Christina Chang confirmed the rumors. And yes, he had opted for a rather chic butch buzz.
Although a segment of the actor’s fandom wasn’t on board with the change, the transformation wasn’t entirely unexpected. Storrie had previously hinted at the possibility of reinventing his image and buzzing his curls. While the new buzz cut is certainly a departure from the image Storrie has crafted through mod-leaning and retro-inspired hairstyles that flaunted his natural hair texture, the actor is proving his (and the buzz cut’s) versatility with this new look.
Another buzz cut eliciting a whirlwind of emotions happened over the same weekend, when Manchester City’s striker Erling Haaland posted his late-summer makeover on YouTube.
After experiencing a popularity boost at the World Cup for, among other reasons, his hair, reactions to Haaland chopping off his trademark long blonde locks were mixed. The Man City man, however, explained that he wanted a style update as the 2026–27 club football season kicks off. (Yeah, he didn’t lose a bet.)
But believe it or not, the short hair craze was already shaping up since last year
While Haaland and Storrie’s buzz-worthy buzz cuts have dominated headlines in the last couple of days, this peak of interest isn’t coincidental.
Buzz cuts and short hairstyles have been steadily taking up space in the mainstream through idiosyncratic men who aren’t afraid of breaking the classic heartthrob mold. Tyriq Withers, one of Hollywood’s youngest and most promising, has made the hairstyle his signature, introducing audiences to a new kind of onscreen heartthrob through roles in slasher films I Know What You Did Last Summer and Him.
Elsewhere, in a throwback to the hairstyle diversity that boy band members flaunted in the 2000s, Drew Venegas, member of Hybe’s Latin American boy group Santos Bravos, built his onstage image around a portfolio of short hairstyles. Since the band’s debut in October last year, the Mexican American performer has embraced sharp buzz cuts, blonde crew cuts and most recently, Ivy League buzz cuts with Y2K frosted tips.
Though short hair and buzz cuts are not necessarily favored by boy bands in the mainstream (hair, after all, is a major asset for modern heartthrobs), Drew is shaping a distinctive image through his catalog of buzz cuts. And he’s demonstrating that stepping away from the classic playbook always pays off.
The appreciation for short hair is taking different forms
In 2026, Justin Bieber, one of our era’s biggest music heartthrobs, is opting for the evenly distributed buzz cut and beard combination. While the singer has made buzz cuts recurrent in his hairstyle rotation and has rocked them for a while now, his highly publicized performances at Coachella and the FIFA World Cup halftime show have brought renewed appreciation for short hairstyles.
For the ones who won’t commit to the classic buzz cuts, the crew cut and Ivy League buzz have become attractive alternatives.
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Chicago-born K-pop singer Johnny Suh, for example, replaced his sitcom beau hairstyle—chic curtain bangs he has rocked for nearly his entire career, with few periods of hair experimentation in between—with a crew cut. To usher in a new music era with his NCT 127 bandmates, the star added an experimental spin with rose gold dye, proving just how playful and eclectic buzz cuts can be when styled purposefully,
Grown-out styles like the warrior cut and eclectic designs such as patterned buzz cuts or bright-colored dye jobs also remain an option, especially among the most adventurous. For past and present inspiration, look no further than it boys Evan Mock (he has rocked it all from pink buzz cuts to bleached butch cuts), Hyunjin (who made a case for DIY buzz cuts by adding a logo mania touch), or footballer du jour Kylian Mbappé, who is all about the fade buzz.
Doesn’t matter which buzz cut style you’re leaning toward. According to the world’s hottest men, short hair is in this season.
