How quickly a year passes. Our Must-Have Fonts for 2025 list was our most popular ever, but our must-have fonts for 2026 list aims to set the bar even higher. Finding the best typefaces among thousands can be pretty daunting! So, to make things easier, we’ve curated a list of outstanding must-have typefaces for the coming year. The ten font families in the list share something important in common — an explicitly human touch, not machine-made or prompt-produced, but born from human minds and crafted by human hands. Enjoy!

Pliego

A classic old-style text typeface with calligraphic pedigree with roots in the Renaissance, Pliego has some beautiful modern details and plenty of flair, most evident in its optional swash letterforms and confident italics. Also features broad language support, including Latin Plus encoding and Vietnamese support.

Pliego by Juanjo López.

Comma Sans

Joining Martin Majoor’s growing Comma superfamily is the new Comma Sans. A thoroughly modern uniwidth sans serif with warmth in the details and some charming and lovely alternates and ligatures. Ideal for all kinds of editorial design, book covers, and as web fonts. This typeface is the perfect accompaniment to Comma Base.

Comma Sans by Martin Majoor.

Coranto 2

Gerard Unger’s timeless masterpiece, Coranto 2, sought to bring style and sophistication to newsprint. Coranto 2 is designed for running text, while Coranto 2 Headline, with its taller x-height and condensed width, is ideal for headlines. Coranto 2 is a refined ‘newsface’ that possesses a timeless and distinctive character, along with supreme clarity, making it well-suited for any form of editorial design.

Coranto 2 by Gerard Unger.

Parisine

Jean François Porchez’s Parisine superfamily eschews the geometric and mechanical in favor of the pen and a throughly human hand. It’s a supremely legible sans serif with some exceptional details.

Parisine by Jean François Porchez.

Gieo Text

A beautiful new text typeface from a new foundry. Meet Gieo Text from ÁccentiaType. Beautifully and precisely crafted, this one is designed for immersive texts, for reading. Use it for books and for editorial design, and use the web fonts for your blog or company website.

Gieo Text by Linh Nguyễn.

Fenland

Jeremy Tankard’s Fenland is a beautifully crafted modern-day classic. There really is a lot to unpack in the details of this typeface perhaps most notably its distinctive counter shapes and the tension generated by internal and external curves. As the letterforms become bolder those sinewy details become all the more pronounced.

Fenland by Jeremy Tankard.

LiebeHeide Fineliner

Packed with a wide range of ligatures, LiebeHeide Fineliner creates more natural letter connections: your designs will flow effortlessly, capturing the organic feel of handwritten text. The typeface offers numerous alternatives for each letter, allowing you to craft unique text every time and thus mimicking the natural rhythms and idiosyncrasies of human handwriting.

LiebeHeide Fineliner by Ulrike Rausch.

Maiola

A modern-day classic, and winner of a TDC Certificate in Typographic Excellence, Veronika Burian’s Maiola, with its crisp chiseled old-style letterforms is an accomplished text typeface with exceptional character and charm. Its thorny yet fluid italic is a perfect accompaniment to the roman, and when set in text blocks this typeface shines.

Maiola by Veronika Burian.

Confer Sans

A new humanist sans that’s sophisticated enough for professional, on-brand communication, yet informal enough to appeal to those who aren’t looking for the cold neutrality of a neo-grotesque. Confer Sans is designed for use in culture, education, packaging, branding, and advertising.

Confer Sans by Moritz Kleinsorge.

Almandin

Available in a choice of seven static fonts or a single variable font, Almandin, designed by Laurent Bourcellier & Jonathan Fabreguettes, is a lightly calligraphic sans and contains many stylistic variations. It’s also uni-width (its width remains constant across weights). Ideal for editorial design where you need something softer and more organic than your typical neo-grotesque or even your typical humanist sans.

Almandin by Laurent Bourcellier & Jonathan Fabreguettes.