Is Tailwind CSS Dying in 2026? Why v4 Might Be the Framework's Final Masterpiece
Hope you’re doing good! Honestly, there’s some pretty wild news in the Tailwind world right now. It’s a mix of “the tech is amazing” and “the business is in trouble.”
Here’s the lowdown on what’s happening as of January 2026:
The “AI Crisis” (Big News)
This is the one everyone’s talking about. Tailwind is actually a victim of its own success.
The Problem: Because Tailwind is so “AI-friendly,” everyone is just asking ChatGPT or Cursor to “build a card with Tailwind.”
The Result: People stopped visiting the official docs.1 No visits = no one seeing their paid stuff (Tailwind UI/Plus).
The Hit: Revenue dropped by 80%, and founder Adam Wathan had to lay off 75% of the engineering team earlier this month.2 It’s down to just a skeleton crew now.
Tailwind CSS v4.0 is Fully Out
Despite the drama, the tech is better than ever. v4 hit stable recently and it’s a beast:
Crazy Fast: They rebuilt the engine in Rust.3 Full builds are 5x faster, and incremental builds are basically instant.4
CSS-First Config: You don’t need that massive
tailwind.config.jsanymore.5 You can do almost everything directly in your CSS file using the@themeblock.6No more Plugins: Things like Container Queries and 3D Transforms are now built-in.7 No need to install extra packages for basic stuff.
Dynamic Everything: You can use variables and dynamic values much more easily without the “janky” bracket syntax as much.8
🛡️ The Rescue Squad
After the layoff news broke, the community stepped up big time:
Sponsorships: Companies like Vercel and Supabase jumped in to sponsor them.9
Google to the Rescue: The Google AI team officially became a sponsor to help keep the lights on, since so many of their own tools rely on Tailwind being the industry standard.10
Basically: The framework is the best it’s ever been (v4 is a must-try), but the company behind it is having a rough start to 2026.