The world’s biggest dating app announced a variety of new features for 2026 at its product conference, Tinder Sparks. There will be ways to match based on music taste and astrology, to enhance photos with AI — and to skip out on the back-and-forth of online dating entirely.
The new “Events” tab, which is testing in Los Angeles this month, will connect users to in-person dating events. In an exclusive interview, CEO Spencer Rascoff said that IRL dating is the “perfect solution” for Gen Z daters.
“Events are fun, they’re low-pressure, they’re social, they’re safe,” Rascoff told Business Insider. “They’re bringing Tinder into the physical world in a way that is consistent with our users’ lifestyles.”
The Events tab is placed squarely next to the swiping tab — a sign, Rascoff said, of how important it is to the company. Users can browse listings with attendee counts and blurred photos. Once the user registers, the photos will unblur, and they can see some of the faces that will be in attendance.
It’s a fairly notable about-face for a company that once centered around the endless possibilities of “Swipe Right.” Indeed, many users have been tiring of the apps entirely; you may have heard of “swipe fatigue.”
“If you run a consumer internet company, you have to stay attentive to changing consumer tastes,” Rascoff said. “We can’t put our heads in the sand and stay wedded to past practice.”
Tinder is testing an in-person dating feature in Los Angeles.
Tinder
Rascoff hopes that events will help bring in those worried by or frustrated with online dating. He compared it to Airbnb’s experiences market. That company uses luxury houses and villas to get people to reconsider “alternative accommodations” and, hopefully, return to their core product.
Since Rascoff’s takeover in 2025, he’s attempted to steer the app clear of its hookup reputation.
“I think IRL events have the potential to drive reconsideration of Tinder from people who have formed an opinion,” Rascoff said. He described an anti-Tinder user who downloads for the events, and eventually uses it as an “alibi” to start swiping.
Other upcoming features include specialty swiping modes for music and astrology.
Rascoff shared stories of two recent job interviews he held with Gen Z candidates. One responded to a question about why they were leaving their current company with, “I’m a Gemini.” Another responded to why they went into this field with, “because I’m a Taurus.”
Tinder lets users match by their astrological sign.
Tinder
Early testing shows that these modes are driving more engagement. One in 10 users under 22 have adopted Music Mode, and there was a 20% increase in Likes sent by women on astrology profiles.
While Rascoff is married, he still has a Tinder profile for product testing. He’s personally a Scorpio, and planned to list the Rolling Stones.
Then there’s AI, the looming question over all the dating app companies. Everyone is embracing it in some form, but the question of how much has proved controversial.
Tinder announced at the conference an expansion of its AI matchmaking program, Chemistry, as well as a camera roll scan for profile creation and photo enhancements, both powered by the tech.
Tinder’s matchmaking feature, Chemistry, is powered by AI.
Tinder
But Rascoff is quick to cut through the flashier features — there’s also video speed-dating and profile stickers — and point out safety. One of the biggest threats to online dating is bots, scammers, and crypto shills.
Tinder is now making its Face Check technology mandatory worldwide (excluding some markets, such as the EU and UK) and further rolling out its safety nudges for potentially inappropriate messages.
“We don’t talk about it enough,” Rascoff said. “We’ve raised the bar on trust and safety.”
Oil traders are bracing for disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz after the US and Israel struck Iranian targets over the weekend, putting at risk the waterway that carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil.
A longer disruption would shift the risk onshore, because storage tanks across the Gulf can only be filled for only so long.
If the conflict drags on and export routes remain blocked, producers could be forced to halt production as storage fills up, Daan Struyven, the head of oil research at Goldman Sachs, said on Goldman Sachs’ “Exchanges” podcast published Monday. This could send prices sharply higher.
“If the Strait of Hormuz is closed for a very long time, you cannot draw inventories forever, and the market may have to rebalance by incentivizing prices to such high levels that you generate demand destruction,” Struyven added.
Oil prices are already sharply higher this year on the back of heightened geopolitical risks.
International benchmark Brent and US West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures are 3% and 2.4% higher at around $80 and $73 per barrel, respectively, in early trade on Tuesday. Both grades are up about 30% this year.
The Middle East accounts for about one-third of the world’s seaborne crude.
“Gulf producers do have storage capacity, pipelines, and tanker alternatives, but these are not unlimited,” wrote Chris Weston, the head of research at Pepperstone, in a Tuesday note.
“With the Strait of Hormuz temporarily constrained, the longer the disruption persists, the greater the risk that additional facilities and infrastructure across the Gulf region may be forced offline,” Weston added.
JPMorgan analysts have also warned that if the strait is effectively closed for more than 25 days, storage constraints could push major Middle East producers to suspend output altogether.
‘A supply shock of historic proportions.’
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Monday that the Strait of Hormuz is closed and they will attack any ship trying to cross the waterway.
Major lines are rerouting or suspending services and adding war-risk fees, while some marine insurers have canceled war-risk cover for vessels operating in and around Iranian waters.
Apart from oil, Qatar’s state-owned energy company has halted liquefied natural gas production after reported damage to facilities, underscoring how quickly disruptions can spill beyond crude into wider energy markets.
The macro consequences could be severe, wrote analysts at ING on Monday, as even a partial disruption to the Hormuz would produce “a supply shock of historic proportions.”
However, because the US is a major oil producer, higher oil prices benefit shale producers and improve the domestic energy industry.
Still, inflation could tick up for American consumers, so “that balance is politically awkward to explain and economically insufficient to compensate for the broader damage,” wrote ING analysts.
This story originally ran in Welt and appears on Business Insider through the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.
“All we’ve got left now,” the Russian soldier said, “are radios, cables and pigeons.”
A decision earlier this month by SpaceX to shut down access to Starlink satellite-internet terminals caused immediate chaos among Russian forces who had become increasingly reliant upon the Elon Musk-owned company’s technology to sustain their occupation of Ukraine, according to radio transmissions intercepted by a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit and shared with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, to which POLITICO and Business Insider belong.
The communications breakdown significantly constrained Russian military capabilities, creating new opportunities for Ukrainian forces. In the days following the shutdown, Ukraine recaptured roughly 77 square miles in the country’s southeast, according to calculations by the news agency Agence France-Presse based on data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Analysts in Ukraine’s Bureviy Brigade eavesdrop on Russian communications from an underground listening post in northeastern Ukraine.
Viktor Lysenko/BI
SpaceX began requiring verification of Starlink terminals on Feb. 4, blocking unverified Russian units from accessing its services. Almost immediately, Ukrainian eavesdroppers heard Russian soldiers complaining about the failure of “Kosmos” and “Sinka” — apparently code names for Starlink satellite internet and the messaging service Telegram.
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“Damn it! Looks like they’ve switched off all the Starlinks,” one Russian soldier exclaimed. “The connection is gone, completely gone. The images aren’t being transmitted,” another shouted.
Dozens of the recordings were played for Axel Springer Global Reporter Network reporters in an underground listening post maintained by the Bureviy Brigade in northeastern Ukraine. Neither SpaceX nor the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to requests for comment.
“On the Russian side, we observed on the very day Starlink was shut down that artillery and mortar fire dropped drastically. Drone drops and FPV attacks also suddenly decreased,” said a Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance operator from the Bureviy Brigade who would agree to be identified only by the call sign Mustang, referring to first-person view drones. “Coordination between their units has also become more difficult since then.”
The satellite internet network has become a crucial tool on the battlefield, sustaining high-tech drone operations and replacing walkie-talkies in low-tech combat. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which destroyed much of Ukraine’s traditional communications infrastructure, Western governments have provided thousands of the Starlink units to Kyiv.
At some point, it felt like the Russians had more devices than we did,” said a Ukrainian soldier identified by the call sign Mustang
Viktor Lysenko/BI
Viktor Lysenko/BI
With the portable terminals, there is no need to lay kilometers of cable that can be damaged by shelling or drone strikes. Drone footage can be transmitted in real time to command posts, artillery and mortar fire can be corrected with precision, and operational information can be shared instantly via encrypted messaging apps such as Signal or Telegram.
At the outset of the Russian invasion, Starlink access gave Ukraine’s defenders a decisive operational advantage. Those in besieged Mariupol sent signs of life in spring 2022 via the backpack-size white dishes, and army units used them to coordinate during brutal house-to-house fighting in Bakhmut in 2023.
Satellite internet became “one of, if not the most important components” of Ukraine’s way of war, according to military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, an adviser to European governments and security agencies who regularly visits Ukrainian units. “Starlink constituted the backbone of connectivity that enabled accelerated kill chains by helping create a semi-transparent battlefield.”
The operational advantages of Starlink did not go unnoticed by Russian forces. By the third year of the war, Starlink terminals were increasingly turning up in Russian-occupied territory. One of the first documented cases surfaced in January 2024 in the Serebryansky forest. Month by month, Ukrainian reconnaissance drones spotted more of the devices.
The Ukrainian government subsequently contacted Musk’s company, urging it to block Russian access to the network. Mykhailo Fedorov, then digital minister and now defense minister, alleged Russian forces were acquiring the devices via third countries. “Ukraine will continue using Starlink, and Russian use will be restricted to the maximum extent possible,” Fedorov pledged in spring 2024.
Yet Russian use of the terminals continued to grow throughout 2025, and their use was not limited to artillery or drone units. Even Russian infantry soldiers were carrying mini Starlink terminals in their backpacks.
“We found Starlink terminals at virtually every Russian position along the contact line,” said Mustang. “At some point, it felt like the Russians had more devices than we did.”
In the listening post this month, he scrolled through more than a dozen images from late 2025 showing Russian Starlink terminals set up between trees or beside the entrances to their positions.
“We targeted their positions deliberately,” Mustang continued. “But even if we destroyed a terminal in the morning or evening, a new one was already installed by the next morning.”
In the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Kreminna, there was even a shop where soldiers could buy Starlink terminals starting in 2024. According to Ukrainian officials, these devices were not registered in Russia.
SpaceX’s move in early February to enforce a stricter verification system effectively cut off unregistered Starlink terminals operating in Russian-occupied areas. Only devices approved and placed on a Ukrainian Ministry of Defense “whitelist” remained active, while terminals used by Russian forces were remotely deactivated.
“That’s it, basically no one has internet at all,” a Russian soldier said in one of the messages played for Axel Springer reporters. “Everything’s off, everything’s off.”
The temporary shutdown allowed Ukraine to slow the momentum of Vladimir Putin’s forces, although the localized counteroffensives do not represent a fundamental shift along the front. Soldiers from other Ukrainian units, including the Black Arrow battalion, confirmed the military consequences of the Starlink outage for Russian forces in their sectors in interviews with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.
By mid-February, Russian shelling had increased again, though largely against frontline positions that had long been identified and precisely mapped — suggesting that Russia has yet to fully restore all of its lost capabilities.
Now, analysts from the Bureviy Brigade say Russian forces are scrambling for alternatives. They have been forced to rely far more heavily on radio communication, according to Mustang, which creates additional opportunities for interception.
Russian units will likely attempt to switch to their own satellite terminals. But their speed and connection quality are significantly lower, Mustang says. And because of their size, the devices are difficult to conceal.”The shutdown of Starlink, even if only of limited effect for now, highlights the limited ability of the Russian armed forces to rapidly implement ongoing cycles of innovation,” said Col. Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces. “This could represent a potential point of leverage for Western supporters to provide swift and sustainable support to Ukraine at this stage.”
