Texas Is Still Ours
And still a source of fascination.
Why was everyone so obsessed with us in 2025?
In many ways, one could make the case that every year is the Year of Texas, and we wouldn’t stop you from trying—but there’s something undeniable happening right now. The world seems focused on what’s going on in our state and on how we’re responding to this fraught political moment.
You can’t get away from us, no matter where you go. In London this summer, Brits got all booted and belted up to see the new Queen of Country, Beyoncé, on tour for her Grammy-winning album Cowboy Carter. They would have fit right in at the Fort Worth Stockyards. In Paris, her onetime duet partner Post Malone drew on his Grapevine roots for the debut of his Western fashion line, Austin Post. One model even rode a bay horse on the runway in a show that made headlines around the world. We assume the French were delighted.
This global cowboy-core fixation can be traced in part to the successful empire headed by Yellowstone cocreator Taylor Sheridan. The Fort Worth son turned his sights on his home state this year with his hit show for Paramount+. The world knows it as Landman, but around these parts we like to call it “that series based on a Texas Monthly podcast.” This sexed-up version of a Permian Basin oil patch, starring everyone’s favorite honorary Texan, Billy Bob Thornton, was rivaled in soapy drama only by The Hunting Wives, the delightfully bawdy East Texas–set Netflix adaptation of May Cobb’s novel. (Once you’ve successfully been spoofed on Saturday Night Live, as The Hunting Wives was in October, you can consider yourself part of the national zeitgeist.) Recognizing the potential to capitalize on something special, Texas lawmakers from both parties united behind a bill to pour $1.5 billion into the state’s film-production industry over the next decade. Here’s to many more Texas stories and backdrops.
In music, we played well with others. Dallas rapper BigXThaPlug teamed up with Darius Rucker on “I Hope You’re Happy,” while Kacey Musgraves performed a duet with Mexican superstar Carín León. Meanwhile, Leon Bridges and Charley Crockett brought Texas to arenas across the country with their Crooner and the Cowboy tour.
We anointed a new class of literary stars with wildly different perspectives on the state. Austin’s Lucas Schaefer won the $50,000 Kirkus Prize for his debut novel, The Slip, based in a local gym and set mostly in the nineties. Dallas writer Sarah Damoff earned acclaim for her first book, The Bright Years, a multigenerational drama. Another Austin writer, Emily Hunt Kivel, received raves for tackling the housing crisis in her novel, Dwelling.
Whether we’re looking to the future or reminiscing about the glory days, 2025 was something of an inflection point for Texas sports: With the stacked talent on the Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, and Houston Rockets, we’re positioned to be the locus of power in the NBA for years to come. The Dallas Cowboys remain so iconic that even amid a long lull in the team’s fortunes, an eight-part docuseries on its nineties heyday was a fixture on Netflix this fall. And can we give a “hoorah” to the Cowboys Cheerleaders for their well-deserved raise? In a different kind of competition, there was the seventh Texas student in ten years to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
But the Year of Texas isn’t just about our influence relative to the rest of the world. It’s also about how we see ourselves. Is it possible that we’ve gotten even more Texan? Look at how Texas Parks and Wildlife has begun buying private property to add to the state’s park system for all to enjoy. Purchases from this year alone include the approximately 2,020-acre Vann River Ranch and roughly 1,100 acres at the neighboring Big Spring Ranch, which together will provide the land for Post Oak Ridge State Park. In a state where about 95 percent of land is privately owned, that’s a spending spree we can get behind.
We came together when it mattered this year. Think about the ways Texans showed strength, grace, and support in the wake of the devastating floods in the Hill Country over the Fourth of July weekend. And in the acrimonious world of Texas politics, the one-sided power play among GOP leaders had a brief bipartisan interlude, as lawmakers from both parties worked together to pass a law protecting victims of abuse from being silenced. Is this the start of a new era of cooperation? Unlikely, but Texans have always prided themselves on taking care of one another, and even in the most bitter of places we found a way to do that in 2025.
In that spirit, we present the Best Things in Texas for this year: the people, scenes, and moments that made us proud of who we are. —Dan Solomon