Altcoin season in 2026: How to identify it?

[Criptoview]

Altcoin season is a period in which most of the leading cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin (the altcoins) rise more than Bitcoin itself.

Show me the great outcome of those altcoins that you think outperformed Bitcoin during the altcoins season you are referring to and I will show you Bitcoin which is still standing firmly, Bitcoin is not a pump and dump shitcoins, the last time I hear about good altcoins season was few years back when some shitcoins made some lucky dude rich and currently majority of those coins and tokens are dead. Bitcoin bull season is what some of these surviving altcoins now depends onow there is no seperate altcoins season happening.

I don't think you understand what the op is trying to say, because if you do, you wouldn't be asking him to bring forth an alt coin that is doing well as Bitcoin.

What he is actually saying is that during the alt seasons, most alt and shit coin outperform Bitcoin and make some lucky people rich those period, but that doesn't mean that they will do better than Bitcoin in the longer run, because when the season is over, almost all of these coin drop significantly, so he is not saying that they are better than Bitcoin or doing well than Bitcoin, but he is only saying that it's during the alt seasons alt coin can make a significant amount of money for investors that decides to take a risk on them.

Thank you!

[Mayor of ogba]

I agree with you that altcoin can rise more than bitcoin during altcoin season but since it can't rise more than bitcoin in the long run, I will always prefer bitcoin than altcoin because it has stood against the test of time. Just imagine that you are holding bitcoin from when it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 until date the profit you will get if you sell it can make you rich, and if you decide not to work in the rest of your life, you won't work.

[2stout]

IMHO opinion, there will be no true alt season in 2026.  May have to look @ 2028 and 2029 for potential alt seasons, esp after the Bitcoin halving event in 2028.  Alt season typically kicks in some time afterward, but the gains have been less and less over the years.

[Jostle]

Playing with altcoins and having more returns from altcoins than bitcoins require a person to buy and sell altcoins at the right time. The inherent risks are higher than just buying bitcoin and hodling.

Hodling altcoins is not something that's for the faint-hearted and has resulted in losses for many.

[DanWalker]

Just imagine that you are holding bitcoin from when it was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 until date the profit you will get if you sell it can make you rich, and if you decide not to work in the rest of your life, you won't work.

Your gains probably won't match Bitcoin, sure, but if you'd put money into ETH, BNB or even Doge back in the early years and just held till now. You'd be rich too.

Come on, those days are long gone. That's all in the past. We need to look at reality instead of just looking at what Bitcoin did back then.

What we should actually care about is which asset still have explosive upside potential moving forward, not which one made the biggest returns in the past.

[Marykeller]

Well, the altcoin season is for a few investors who happen to spot it when it happens. Most investors miss it because they want the coins they invested in to increase more than they expected.

As the last altcoin season happened in Q4 of 2024, many believe it will happen in Q2 and Q3 of 2025; by the time the market gets to that point, the market is at its downside, leaving many investors who bought altcoins at high prices with terrible losses.

Next year and upper year after, none of us can pinpoint the exact time for the altcoin season. I advise that we should sell any of our altcoins at a price where we know we are at a significant gain.

[BALIK]

IMHO opinion, there will be no true alt season in 2026.  May have to look @ 2028 and 2029 for potential alt seasons, esp after the Bitcoin halving event in 2028.  Alt season typically kicks in some time afterward, but the gains have been less and less over the years.

I actually think altseason we used to know is dead. Market has changed, the kind of altseason where everything pump together is probably a thing of the past.

What we will probably see instead is scattered pump, focused on specific ecosystem, narrative and few projects with actual use cases that manage to pull in inflows. Look at the recent run, when bitcoin went from $60k to $87k. Many altcoin did 2-5x while a bunch of other barely moved an inch.

So you gotta be more selective with altcoin now instead of just picking some at random and waiting like before.

[IjawMan]

Altcoin season is a period in which most of the leading cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin (the altcoins) rise more than Bitcoin itself. The most widely used test comes from Blockchaincenter's Altcoin Season Index: it is altcoin season when at least 75% of the 50 largest cryptocurrencies, excluding stablecoins and asset-backed tokens, outperformed Bitcoin over the last 90 days. On September 28, 2026, that index stood at 59, so by the official rule it was not altcoin season, even though the shorter 30-day window was already at 80. No single indicator confirms the season.


Leave your opinion in the comments.


  Learn more: https://criptoview.net/en/altcoin-season-como-identificar/ 

I do not know how you guys do this comparison of altcoins and Bitcoin performance when it is clear that by overall performance altcoins are just what they are _ pump and dump coins.

Altcoins pull up performance in short time they can not sustain and that what makes them lack value and utility, imo. In the previous altcoin season many of the altcoins that pumped at that time are now worthless after dumping but it not same for Bitcoin every season it gains more value in the price with ATH.

[Rabata]

The last altcoin bull season happened in 2021. The index at that time was above 75 and has not touched it since then. It should also be considered that the 30-day and 90-day index are not equal. Even if the index increases more in 30 days and even rises above 75, I will not believe that the alt season has started. Moreover, an important point is that when investing in altcoins, it is not possible to predict when the bullish movement will start. Therefore, trusting in it means taking risks.

Investors who have sufficient funds can invest a small amount according to their analysis. However, if there is a dream of getting rich through this, the possibility of loss will increase. There are many investors who try to hold for a long time to fulfill their expectations, but such an attempt can witness huge losses for the investors.

The alt season will come but it is difficult to predict when it will happen because the crypto market does not always move in the same pattern. That's why we saw the alt season in 2021, but it's not showing up now, even after a long period of time. The alt season will come in the future, but since we don't know when it might happen, we can invest as much as we have the ability to lose and hold it.

Currently, investors trust Bitcoin, so even if the price of altcoins increases in the short term, reliable growth is possible only in Bitcoin. When the price of Bitcoin increases several times and then takes a break, the alt season may begin, but there is no guarantee of this. The alt season cannot be predicted only by looking at the index.

[2stout]

IMHO opinion, there will be no true alt season in 2026.  May have to look @ 2028 and 2029 for potential alt seasons, esp after the Bitcoin halving event in 2028.  Alt season typically kicks in some time afterward, but the gains have been less and less over the years.

I actually think altseason we used to know is dead. Market has changed, the kind of altseason where everything pump together is probably a thing of the past.

What we will probably see instead is scattered pump, focused on specific ecosystem, narrative and few projects with actual use cases that manage to pull in inflows. Look at the recent run, when bitcoin went from $60k to $87k. Many altcoin did 2-5x while a bunch of other barely moved an inch.

So you gotta be more selective with altcoin now instead of just picking some at random and waiting like before.

Yes, true, altseason isn't  what it used to be and the gains during altseason have been decreasing exponentially over the years.  I believe part of the reason for the rise of memecoins, in addition to greed, is its ability to fill in the void of the ever decreasing altseason gains.

[BALIK]

I actually think altseason we used to know is dead. Market has changed, the kind of altseason where everything pump together is probably a thing of the past.

What we will probably see instead is scattered pump, focused on specific ecosystem, narrative and few projects with actual use cases that manage to pull in inflows. Look at the recent run, when bitcoin went from $60k to $87k. Many altcoin did 2-5x while a bunch of other barely moved an inch.

So you gotta be more selective with altcoin now instead of just picking some at random and waiting like before.

Yes, true, altseason isn't  what it used to be and the gains during altseason have been decreasing exponentially over the years.  I believe part of the reason for the rise of memecoins, in addition to greed, is its ability to fill in the void of the ever decreasing altseason gains.

Yep, that's on the rise of memecoins and alts in general.

Compared to 2021, there were only around 400K tokens. That number jumped 47x to 20 million in 2025. That's spreading the capital flowing into alts already fragmented thanks to Bitcoin ETFs even thinner. Which is exactly why we're not seeing that exponential growth in alts anymore, or the whole market pumping together like previous cycles.


https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/how-many-cryptocurrencies-failed

[Localhostspeed]

Yep, that's on the rise of memecoins and alts in general.

Compared to 2021, there were only around 400K tokens. That number jumped 47x to 20 million in 2025. That's spreading the capital flowing into alts already fragmented thanks to Bitcoin ETFs even thinner. Which is exactly why we're not seeing that exponential growth in alts anymore, or the whole market pumping together like previous cycles.

This is the signed that altcoins are just crap because how can that number grows to millions in the space of under 10 years and we expect things to look good. I blame meme creators for this behavior of towns that littered everywhere. We don't need most of those tokens but we do we blame? The creators of the token or the people that buy this tokens. The number of people with money to buy this tokens can't add any value to it, and it will not encourage new people.

Some people might want to disagree with regulations but we can't continue this way. If another trend comes, most of these tokens will be forgotten, people that are new will keep holding and get tired. With that habit of relaunching tokens with nothing valuable, it will not attract new buyers and that will say alot about what altcoin industry has become.