New quotes from Punisher star Jon Bernthal have narrowed the release window for the character's Disney+ return. After appearing as the skull-cracking anti-hero in Netflix's Daredevil series in the mid-2010s, Bernthal came back to the role last year with the release of the acclaimed Daredevil: Born Again. Coming out of the hit Daredevil revival, Bernthal's Punisher will next appear in a Special Presentation explicitly focused on his character in 2026.
For months, audiences have known that the Punisher Special Presentation is coming next year, but the exact release date has remained a mystery. It has been assumed it would debut sometime after Born Again Season 2, which is expected sometime in the first half of the year.
Bernthal offered some clarity on exactly this subject in a recent interview with ScreenRant. When asked about his role in the upcoming Punisher special as well as next year's Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the Frank Castle star remarked, both projects will release "around that same time:"
"Around that same time, there will also be this Punisher special that's coming out, that I think will be as high-octane Punisher as you've ever seen. I think what was really important to me and to Destin and to Tom is that we believed that The Punisher could walk off of the Spider-Man set and could walk onto the special set, and I do believe that we achieved that."
This is the first indication of specific release timing for 2026's Punisher Special Presentation. For context, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is set to swing into theaters on July 31, 2026. As mentioned by Bernthal, a release window for The Punisher, somewhere between June and August 2026, feels the most likley.
Of course, fans will have to wait for official confirmation from Marvel on this specific release timing, but it does make sense to have these two projects debut so close to one another, serving as a nice one-two punch of Punisher action within the MCU.
Bernthal's summer 2026 will not end there, as he has also been confirmed to play King Menelaus in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, which is due out two weeks before Spider-Man 4 on July 17, 2026.
The Punisher Special Presentation will mark the character's first solo adventure in the MCU since his two-season run on Netflix between 2017 and 2019. The new one-off adventure featuring the R-rated hero will follow Bernthal's gun-toting vigilante as he takes on a new female crime boss with a dark and twisted history involving the Castle family.
Breaking Down the Punisher Release Strategy
As of this point, it is unclear whether 2026's Punisher Special Presentation will come out before or after Spider-Man: Brand New Day; however, fans now seem to know that it will at least be sometime around the release of Destin Daniel Cretton's web-slinging sequel.
Usually, two MCU projects like this would not dictate where the other lands on the schedule, but seeing as Jon Bernthal's Frank Castle is intrinsically involved in both titles, it presents an interesting conundrum for Marvel to figure out. The story of one of these projects has to almost directly lead into the other.
Rumors have been swirling about Punisher being a no-holds-barred version of the character in Spider-Man 4, as well as the iconic anti-hero seemingly taking on a sidekick in the upcoming movie. To this point, nothing about a protege has been mentioned in the lead-up to the Punisher Special Presentation, so it looks as though Punisher may precede Brand New Day.
This would mean Marvel's 2026 would flow like this: Wonder Man in January, Daredevil: Born Again around March, Punisher sometime in the summer, and Spider-Man 4 at the end of July.
That sets a pretty good cadence for the super-powered franchise, while still allowing for the story to be told in the correct order.
