Pilates rises up the 2027 fitness trend reports

Every autumn the fitness industry publishes its forecasts for the year ahead. This October, Pilates featured near the top of three of them.

Number one in Australia

AUSactive, the industry body for Australia’s exercise and active health sector, ranked Pilates first in its Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2027. It is the first time Pilates has topped the list: it was third in 2025 and second in 2026. The survey, now in its seventh year, collected 528 responses from professionals, operators and educators between April and June 2026.

The rest of AUSactive’s top five were wearable technology, exercise for mental health and wellbeing, fitness programmes for older adults and competitive fitness events.

A top-three category worldwide

The American College of Sports Medicine’s 2027 Worldwide Fitness Trends, based on responses from more than 1,400 fitness professionals, placed “balance, flow and core strength” third, up from fifth. The category covers Pilates, yoga, barre and mobility-focused training together, so the ranking is not for Pilates alone. Wearable technology and mobile exercise apps took the first two places.

New studios in the United States

A third report, from the US booking platform Mariana Tek, looked at more than 2,500 US studio locations on its system. New studio openings on the platform rose 72% over 12 months, and Pilates and two related machine-based formats, Lagree and Megaformer, made up 75% of them. The report groups the three formats together, and it describes the US market only.

What the rankings do and don’t show

These lists measure what the industry sees and expects, not whether one kind of exercise works better than another. The ACSM authors say so plainly: a high ranking “reflects industry visibility and adoption; it does not establish that a particular product or program is effective.”

What they do show is how far the method has travelled from a handful of specialist studios. For anyone wondering what a session on the machine actually involves, there is more on the reformer Pilates page.