“Vozdukhan” and AI vocabulary: the short list of the “Word of the Year — 2026” contest has been determined

The presidential aide's favorite

Elena Yampolskaya, aide to the President of the Russian Federation and chair of the Council under the President for the Support of the Russian Language, said that of all the contenders for word of the year, the one closest to her is “vozdukhan.” According to her, the word is “Russian both in origin and in the way it was formed.” This was reported by Gazeta.Ru citing RIA Novosti.

How the short list is structured

At the briefing, Yampolskaya named the popular contenders according to the Gramota.ru portal: “dofaminovy” (dopamine-related), “nishevy” (niche), “prime-era,” “vozdukhan,” “trevozhnik,” “iishka,” and others. The experts divided the finalists into three groups: technology, emotions, and human character types. Half of the short list was taken up by AI vocabulary — “vibecoding,” “generit” (to generate), “AI agent,” “iishka,” “data center.” The experts linked the second trend to people's tendency to allow themselves small joys in difficult times — hence the words “dofaminovy,” “nishevy,” and “prime-era.” The third group consisted of colloquial names for character types, including “vozdukhan” and “trevozhnik.”

What comes next

In the first stage, the experts collected more than 500 words; the short list of 10 entries was formed based on an analysis of search queries and the frequency of usage in blogs, social media, and the press. The winner will be chosen in early December by more than 400 linguists, and “Word of the Year — 2026” will be included in Gramota.ru's digital metadictionary. Society's attitude toward the new slang is mixed: it was previously reported that about a third of Russians get irritatedwhen they hear expressions from internet slang — Gazeta.Ru cited this fact in an earlier publication.