How do most couples meet now? The 2026 answer

Online. One in three couples who married in 2025 met through a dating site or app, up from 27% the year before, according to The Knot’s 2026 Real Weddings Study of more than 10,000 newlyweds. Friends came a distant second at 14%, then school at 12%.1

That’s been the top answer four years running. But the figure depends a lot on who’s being asked, so it’s worth reading the numbers side by side.

Did apps really overtake meeting through friends?

Yes, and earlier than most people think. Sociologist Michael Rosenfeld and colleagues, using a nationally representative 2017 survey, found that among heterosexual couples, meeting online overtook meeting through friends around 2013.2 Their title says it bluntly: online dating is “disintermediating your friends.” Fewer online couples now get there through someone who introduced them.

An earlier analysis of the same long-running survey showed the slow fade of family, school and neighborhood as meeting places over 60 years, and found the internet increasingly connects people who had no previous social tie at all.3

Why do different surveys give such different numbers?

Because they measure different people:

Survey	Who was asked	Met online
The Knot, 2026	US couples married in 2025	1 in 31
Pew, 2022 survey	All partnered US adults, any year they met	1 in 104
Pew, 2022 survey	Partnered adults under 30	2 in 104

Pew counts everyone in a relationship, including people who met decades before apps existed, so its overall number is low. Its under-30 figure is closer to what your generation is living.4 The Knot surveys its own members, recent newlyweds who planned a wedding online, which is a narrower group than all couples.1

What does this mean if you’re dating in your 20s?

A few practical reads from the data:

• Apps aren’t a fallback. For people in your age group, they’re one of the main ways relationships start. More than half of adults under 30 have used one.4
• You’re often starting cold. When friends set you up, someone has already vouched for the person. Meeting a stranger online means doing that vetting yourself.23
• The other routes still count. Friends and school together still account for about a quarter of recent newlyweds.1

None of these surveys show that one way of meeting leads to better relationships. They show where people meet, not how it goes afterward.

Key takeaways

• 1 in 3 couples married in 2025 met on an app or site, the most common way.1
• Online passed friends around 2013 for heterosexual couples.2
• 1 in 5 partnered adults under 30 met online, per Pew’s 2022 survey.4
• The internet connects strangers who share no friends, which changes how you get to know someone.3

Matched with a stranger? Read looking up a date before you meet before the first drink, and did the first date go well? after it.