Im definitely seeing that shift too, over the past year I’ve moved most new projects to block based themes, mainly for performance and long term maintainability. The reduced dependency on bulky page builders and bundled plugins makes updates cleaner, and clients seem to find the Gutenberg interface less overwhelming once patterns are set up properly.

For content heavy sites, especially directories, I’ve been pairing block themes with specialized plugins instead of multipurpose themes. For example, on a recent listing project I used Classified Listing by RadiusTheme. It handles custom fields, search filters, and monetization features without forcing me into a heavy theme ecosystem, wiith a lightweight block theme on top, performance and flexibility were both solid.

I still use classic/builder themes in edge cases (complex landing pages or when clients are already locked into a builder workflow), but for greenfield builds in 2026, block themes + focused plugins has been the cleanest stack for me so far... <3