2026 is here, and looks to be an amazing year in animation (both for adults and kids)! Here are our picks for the animated series and movies we are looking forward to the most!
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal offered a pretty brutal story set within the stone age, with plenty of action and drama spread throughout. Season two had a pretty finite ending and it was basically the end of Spear’s story, but a brand new season is on the way, which will hopefully be just as entertaining as what came before. Primal Season 3 is scheduled to debut on January 11, 2026, on Adult Swim.
This sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie is scheduled to release on April 3, 2026 and will bring back Chris Pratt and Charlie Day as the voices for the titular bros, Mario & Luigi. Joining them are Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, And Jack Black as Bowser likewise role reprisals, along with newcomer Brie Larson as the voice of Rosalina. The movie should cover more concepts and plots inspired by the Mario Universe (or Galaxy) video games, which should be fun and viewers don’t even really need to be hardcore gamers to enjoy it.
The “Stranger Things” series has wrapped, and no matter what you think of the final episode, the series creators (the Duffer Brothers) have teased there are spinoffs coming. First up, the “Tales From ’85” animated series! Set around Season 3 (aka “1985”), this actually is a welcome “change of pace” for the franchise – as it doesn’t have to solve plotlines or expand upon the lore (though it likely will). Instead, this animated series just gives us what we like: more stories set in this universe! With interdimensional monsters, 80’s music and stylish animation, what’s not to love?
Regardless of how you feel about the live action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” that’s ongoing on Netflix, fans of the original “Avatar” series have been awaiting a new project set in the universe of “The Last Airbender” for years. This upcoming film promises to show a continuation of Aang’s story, and was said to be leading to more animated films and a new animated series, but the hype for this upcoming film took a blow recently with the annoucement of it being moved to streaming (instead of releasing in theaters). Still, it doesn’t change the fact that every glimpse we see of this project looks amazing, and brings back all of the happy memories we have of this franchise in it’s glory days (back in the late 2000’s).
If last year’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie was the first “rallying cry” of fans saving animated shows from the “David Zaslov/HBO Max/Discovery Monster”, then getting “Coyote vs Acme” to air in theaters is all of that, on steroids. The news that this film could be reduced to a “tax write-off” and cast aside angered fans of these characters. There hasn’t been this much love for the “Road Runner/Coyote” storyline in years.
Yes, it’s not a fully animated film, as the Looney Tunes characters present will be interacting with actors in some scenes, as was done previously in the two Space Jam films (and in Looney Tunes: Back in Action). But this is still the triump of fans uniting to defend the theatrical experience for classic animated characters (which is what Looney Tunes represents in the eyes of many animation fans).
Just going by how well Star Wars has merged with animation over the last decade, it’s worth giving a “shout out” to two different projects releasing next year: First up is the Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord animated series (featuring the return of Sam Witmer – aka the world’s biggest Star Wars fan, in the role of Maul). The story chronicles the events of what happened to Maul inbetween the Clone Wars and the eventual conclusion of his plotline in “Star Wars: Rebels”. The other is a spinoff of “Star Wars: Visions” anthology series titled Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi. The “Visions” line is always an animation spectical, so we will be watching this one with great interest.
But that’s our picks. What animated series or films are YOU looking forward to the most in 2026?!?
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