SummaryIn this paper, a new high‐data rated and energy‐efficient hexagonal quadrature amplitude modulation aided media‐based modulation scheme, called HQAM‐MBM, is proposed for the next‐generation communication systems. In MBM, mirror activation patterns (MAPs) of a reconfigurable antenna have been used to convey extra information in addition to conventional modulated symbols. Therefore, the MBM is seen as a promising index modulation (IM) scheme for the next generation of high‐data rated communication systems. On the other hand, the HQAM constellation scheme is more energy‐efficient than traditional QAM but also has a similar performance at high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) values. Hence, the HQAM technique can appear as a promising energy‐efficient scheme for 5G and beyond networking systems. From this point forth, it has been found appropriate to propose the rational HQAM‐MBM technique, which uses an energy‐efficient HQAM constellation instead of a traditional QAM constellation, and also carries additional information with the indices of the MAPs of a reconfigurable antenna. Besides, it has been shown via computer simulations that the HQAM‐MBM system has lower transmission energy than QAM‐MBM systems. Performance analysis of the HQAM‐MBM scheme is evaluated on Rayleigh fading channels.