Marvel Studios already has its 2026 slate planned out, and it is set to leave something out that has been present in the franchise every year for over a decade. The MCU anchors itself on smaller franchises. Most of the time, Marvel Studios balances out releasing brand new projects with sequels. For example, 2025 will showcase the Fantastic Four for the first time in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but it also continued the story of Captain America and Sam Wilson in Captain America: Brave New World.
Marvel Studios' 2026 slate of theatrical releases and Disney+ TV shows will not feature a non-sequel or a Season 1, meaning that every project released throughout the year will be a sequel to a past film or a follow-up season to a show that began in a past year.
Below is a list of every Marvel Studios project that will be released in 2026, either in theaters or on Disney+:
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day
- Avengers: Doomsday
- Daredevil: Born Again Season 2
- Vision Quest
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 2
- The Punisher Disney+ Special Presentation
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will operate as a sequel to the previous three Spider-Man films in the MCU, following Peter Parker after the events of No Way Home as he navigates life without anyone remembering him.
Avengers: Doomsday will be a direct sequel to the other Avengers flicks, but will also, in a way, be a sequel to many other films and shows throughout Phases 4-6 of the MCU.
Daredevil: Born Again Season 2 will obviously follow up on the first season, which came out on Disney+ in 2025. Vision Quest is another Disney+ series, and, while it is the first show to solely focus on Paul Bettany's Vision, it will be a sequel to WandaVision and include six major characters from the MCU.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Season 2 will follow the first season that recently aired on Disney+, and the show is expected to release a new season every year for the time being.
The special presentation centering on the Punisher on Disney+ will be the first Punisher project in the MCU, but it could still be argued that it will be a sequel to The Punisher Netflix series, and a spin-off sequel to Daredevil: Born Again.
The last time the MCU only featured sequels on the feature film side of its slate was 2022. In that year, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (a sequel to Doctor Strange), Thor: Love and Thunder (the fourth film in the Thor franchise), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (a direct sequel to Black Panther) were released.
However, in 2022, a lot of first seasons were released on Disney+, such as Moon Knight, She-Hulk, and Ms. Marvel.
This also happened back in 2013 when the only projects to be released were Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. However, technically, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premiered that year with its first season, and, since it was an MCU-adjacent series, that year didn't solely include sequels or follow-up seasons.
Therefore, the true (and only) time this happened was in 2010 with the release of Iron Man 2, the only project within the MCU to be released in that year.
The MCU Is Turning the Page
It may seem a bit strange to some that Marvel Studios would not introduce a new franchise or new series in 2026, but there is a method to the company's madness.
2026 will see the release of Avengers: Doomsday. Like Infinity War did with Endgame, Doomsday will directly set up Avengers: Secret Wars. That means that, in 2026, the MCU will be bridging the gap between Doomsday and Secret Wars, so there will not be a lot of room to introduce new characters, projects, etc. in that year.
However, after Secret Wars premieres in 2027, fans will likely see a lot of new movies and first seasons. Many expect Secret Wars to close out the current chapter of the franchise, bringing an end to the Multiverse Saga. At the same time, it will likely mark the beginning of the Mutant Saga, or whatever comes next in the MCU.
If Marvel Studios does, in fact, incorporate Mutants into the franchise following Secret Wars, a lot of projects in 2027 and 2028 will likely be original films or shows to set up those characters.
