2025’s smash hit, KPop Demon Hunters, has already gotten a digital art book release (Which you can read right now: HERE ), but on January 1st Gallery Nucleus will be opening preorders for the paperback physical edition of the 142-page art mook. If you have a golden fan who could use a little up, up, up – this could be your ticket.

Historian, Artist, Peabody and Academy Award winner – John Canemaker’s accolades and accomplishments are abundant and The Art of John Canemaker: An Animator’s Garden promises to be a memoir worth picking up when it launches on January 13th. There are notable standard-bearers in animation history and John Canemaker is near the top of that list – his authored books are among the best. They are often celebrations of some of the most important animators in history and it’s really exciting to read about his own process in making animation and what that process means. To prepare for the launch, you might even consider tracking down a copy of the DVD, John Canemaker: Marching to a Different Toon.

The fourth publication from the meticulous and fantastic Hyperion Historical Alliance, Didier Ghez’ Mickey Mouse in the 1930s – The Christmas Season will launch midway through January exclusively through Stuart Ng Books. This 200-page hardcover explores how the Disney Company inundated stores with Mickey Mouse at Christmas and how, for a time, he rivaled Santa Claus in notoriety.

In March, Ozzy Inguanzo will release through publisher Rizzoli Universe, LAIKA: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory: Two Decades of Groundbreaking Animation from Coraline to Wildwood profiling the stop-motion/visual effect studio and the work they’ve been creating. The oversized 240-page hardcover promises to tour through each aspect of the studio’s development process from pre-vis to final shooting while interviewing prominent staff members along the way.

Come May, anime historian, Jonathan Clements, will be releasing Japan’s Anime Revolution!: Twenty Animated Films That Changed the World. He will dive into twenty films he believes are of the most consequential films Japan has released. A few of the films Clements will profile include, Momotaro, My Neighbor Totoro, Ghost in the Shell, Spirited Away, and A Silent Voice. As he describes, “each of these case studies has changed the anime world in its own unique way, influencing developments in content, production methods, or distribution, capturing all the vibrancy and diversity of this world-beating medium.”

Animation historian Charles Solomon, just published the phenomenal Animation for the People: An Illustrated History of the National Film Board of Canada this past year. Following up on that important Canadian history we’ll see Mr. Solomon tackle Irish animation history by profiling the award winning Cartoon Saloon in July of 2026 with The Art of Cartoon Saloon: 25 Years: The Official Retrospective of the Award-Winning Irish Animation Studio behind The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers, and Song of the Sea. The over 300 page hardcover promises to cover the studio’s feature films, short films and commercial work while exploring how the studio created their notable aesthetic style.

Every generation has its Disney era that they associate the company’s output with – imprint upon you might say. For those that grew up during the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s, there is one person whose fingerprints show up the most often, though is but a slice of his tenure at the House of Mouse. Director, writer, producer, and now unretired advisor, Ron Clement’s almost 500 page memoir will be releasing this August, Making Disney Magic … from a Mermaid to Moana: Tales of a Disney Animation Director.

“The Only Woman Animator” – Bessie Mae Kelley & Women at the Dawn of an Industry by Mindy Johnson is near the top of my want list in 2026. Mindy Johnson has been giving quite a few lectures at Universities in the last few years sharing the story of Bessie Mae Kelley amongst other prominent women pioneers and their work in the earliest era of animation and unless you’ve been near those universities, like me we’ll have to wait to learn all that Mindy Johnson has discovered when the book launches this year.

Lastly, some more artbooks that we know are releasing this year; in April Colin Stein will release The Art of Rise of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The next month, in May, Tracey Miller-Zarneke will release a 25 year retrospective on the yellow sponge in, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Art of an Undersea World.

At the same time, we’ll also see Megan Treviño’s The Art of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Whew!