Toronto, Ontario -- BASF Coatings has released its 2025–2026 automotive colour trends collection, titled Driving the Proxy.
The 45-colour range reflects the company’s continued push toward sustainability, incorporating renewable or recycled raw materials into select coatings. Advances in pigment and coating technology allow for finishes that shift tone and depth under changing light, giving surfaces a layered visual texture.
Automotive manufacturers use the company’s annual colour forecasts to guide upcoming model designs, with some hues expected to appear on production vehicles within two years.
The 2025–2026 lineup highlights three regional key colours that reflect shifting trends across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Tesseract Blue, representing Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is a vivid blue with green and violet undertones. Developed with interference pigments, the finish changes appearance depending on angle and light — a technique used to create optical depth and movement across a vehicle’s surface. BASF’s global head of automotive colour design, Mark Gutjahr, said the shade symbolizes new perspectives amid changing social and environmental conditions.
In the Asia-Pacific region, Phygital Magnetar blends warm metallic tones with bright white highlights, designed to reflect both rapid innovation and a growing need for calm. “With its calm, expressive surface, Phygital Magnetar creates a space where innovation becomes invisible, and design quietly redefines the future,” said Chiharu Matsuhara, head of automotive colour design for Asia-Pacific.
Auxetic Neutral, the featured colour for the Americas, is a rich brown tone intended to redefine neutrality as a statement of inclusivity and collective identity.
Each year, BASF’s colour design team studies global shifts in fashion, consumer behaviour and technology to inform its colour forecasts.
