From K-pop and The Traitors to Dune and the return of Madge: your A-Z of the biggest culture of 2026

AI

Bad news: the intellectual property equivalent of The Terminator is here to obliterate the concept that the mug who actually wrote something matters somewhat. Better news: cinemas are fighting back against AI with films anxious about the new tech, including Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (13 February), in which a man apparently from the future (Sam Rockwell) wants to warn people about an incoming AI hellscape, followed by The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist (title says it all really), from the film-makers behind Everything Everywhere All at Once, in March. Then, later in the year, Luca Guadagnino unveils Artificial, his biopic of Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Catherine Bray

Britpop

“If it was all up to me then you know we’d be touring till the day we die … but UNFORTUNATELY it’s not,” mused Liam Gallagher recently on X after fielding questions about Oasis’s plans for 2026, hinting perhaps that it was up to the boss (Noel). Still, rumours persist that the band are planning huge summer shows, likely at Knebworth, the apex point of their Britpop dominance back in 1996. A 30-year anniversary would make (financial) sense. Another fan of the Hertfordshire country estate – he played three shows there in 2003 – is Liam’s old foe Robbie Williams, who will attempt to tap into the fumes of reheated Britpop fever with February’s guitar-heavy album called – you guessed it! – Britpop. Featuring a picture on the cover of a noticeably refreshed Williams after he’d gatecrashed the Oasis camp at Glastonbury in 1995, complete with red Adidas tracksuit, bleached hair and missing tooth, it’s apparently the album he always wanted to make after being booted out of Take That. “It was the peak of Britpop,” he said recently of that time, “and a golden age for British music.” While Britpop (the movement) was marked by fierce chart rivalries, Williams delayed Britpop (the album) from its original October 2025 release date to avoid being bested by Taylor Swift. Michael Cragg

Confessions

More than 20 years after Madonna’s last truly great front-to-back album, 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, the Instagram addict will release its sequel at some point this year. Having reunited with that album’s producer Stuart Price for 2023’s rejuvenating, hit-focused Celebration tour, the pair have been holed up in the studio seemingly ever since. (There was also a tease of Madonna in the studio with pop supremo Max Martin.) Fingers crossed for a conversation-changing killer first single – equal parts bonkers and undeniable – lashings of glittery, disco-adjacent electropop and the rightful return of Madonna: The Icon. Elsewhere, the confessional brand of pop Madonna helped pioneer in decades past is at its zenith, with revealing releases forthcoming from the likes of Lana Del Rey, Sky Ferreira and ex-Little Mixer Leigh-Anne following in the footsteps of Lily Allen and Rosalía’s very different, but equally brutal, breakup epics. MC

Dracula

Proving its immortality, Bram Stoker’s classic has been adapted yet again, for both stage and screen. French film director Luc Besson brings us Dracula (in cinemas now) as a gothic romance, starring body-horror connoisseur Caleb Landry Jones as the undead lover searching for 400 years for the reincarnation of his wife (Zoë Bleu). Christoph Waltz plays the stake-wielding priest chasing him across the globe. On stage, Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo will play all 23 roles in Kip Williams’s Dracula (Noël Coward theatre, London, 4 February to 30 May). Williams’s screen-heavy stagings have had wild success, including the recent adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, with Sarah Snook playing all 26 roles. Now it’s the Wicked star’s turn to do the same, and leave her bloody mark on Stoker’s tale. Kate Wyver

Eat the Rich

In her celebrated Edinburgh show, Jade Franks turned the brutal culture shock and myriad humiliations she experienced as a working-class scouser at Cambridge into a merciless satire of privilege in the UK: Eat the Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates x) which transfers to London this month (Soho theatre, London, 12 to 31 January). If seeing wealthy elites brought down a peg or two is your cup of tea then Glen Powell inheritance caper movie How to Make a Killing and Lee Sung Jin’s returning TV dramedy anthology Beef (which this time revolves around a Korean billionaire) should both be something to savour. Talking of TV treats, money still correlates closely with misery in the fourth series of peerless finance drama Industry, airing on BBC later this month. Rachel Aroesti

First Ladies

Heading to a show about Mary Todd Lincoln? Make sure to double check your ticket. Cole Escola’s riotous Broadway hit Oh, Mary! (Trafalgar theatre, London, to 25 April), has arrived in the West End with Mason Alexander Park in this fervently embellished story about the life of Abraham Lincoln’s wife. A five-minute walk away at Charing Cross theatre, Bronagh Lagan directs John Ransom Phillips’s Mrs President (23 January to 8 March), a straighter look at Mary’s life and her encounter with the first celebrity photographer. If you’d rather spend an evening seething in rage at the state of the world, try the $40m Mrs Trump documentary Melania (in cinemas 30 January, then on Prime Video), made by disgraced director Brett Ratner, who denies multiple claims of sexual misconduct. Melania is on board as a producer, so it’s sure to be a clear-eyed, honest take. KW

Glastonbury-shaped hole

For the first time since its post-Covid return in 2022, Worthy Farm is having a fallow year. With no Glastonbury in sight, there are a plethora of festival options still on sale and available to fill the music-shaped chasm in your summer. For fans of Glasto’s eclectic programming, Dorset’s We Out Here (20 to 23 August) is a very capable substitute with headline sets from Stereolab, Ethio-jazz great Mulatu Astatke and Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai. When it comes to late-night partying, Lincolnshire’s Lost Village (27 to 30 August) always promises a genre-spanning range of DJs in its labyrinthine wooded site, and further afield, Barcelona’s Primavera Sound (3 to 6 June) has huge headliners to compete with the Pyramid Stage, including the Cure, Massive Attack and the xx. Ammar Kalia

Heathcliff

Fresh from his turn as a disconcertingly hunky humanoid in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi will spend 2026 cementing his position as one of Hollywood’s few bona fide gen Z leading men. In the spring, he’ll front Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic thriller The Dog Stars (in cinemas 27 March), but first he reunites with Saltburn writer-director Emerald Fennell for her gleefully irreverent, erotic take on Wuthering Heights (13 February). Starring opposite fellow Aussie Margot Robbie, all eyes will be on Elordi’s Heathcliff, whose transformation from rural waif to gentleman brute will be soundtracked by Charli xcx and bestowed upon the world just in time for Valentine’s Day. RA

Imax

Tell me, O Muse, of the hero who wandered far and wide, searching for the best film format, before deciding Imax was the one. Yes, Christopher Nolan has filmed Homer’s Odyssey (17 July) Imax-style, with Matt Damon as Odysseus. Cinephiles will want to watch as the gods intended, on an Imax screen in an Imax cinema. Giant screens will also play host to Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday (18 December) – though the more interesting battle for box office nerds will be the current sand v spandex booking conflict between the comic-book behemoth and Dune: Part 3, slated for the same release date. CB

Jack Thorne

The prolific screenwriter has been at the vanguard of British television for more than a decade (his CV includes Skins, This Is England and The Virtues), but 2025 really was Thorne’s year thanks to a trio of big social-justice dramas: The Hack; Toxic Town; and, of course, the juggernaut that was Adolescence. That show made a star out of 16-year-old Owen Cooper; expect the unknown child cast of Thorne’s upcoming BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies to get similar career boosts. Yet he’s also made time to pen a romantic drama for two of our best actors: Channel 4’s Falling features Keeley Hawes as a nun who becomes infatuated with Paapa Essiedu’s priest. RA

K-pop

Last year was the year animated film KPop Demon Hunters dominated Netflix and with its wildly popular soundtrack, nominated for five Grammys; in 2026 there is plenty more K-pop to come. Genre-defining stalwarts BTS are slated to return this spring with a new album and reportedly their biggest world tour yet, following a 2022 hiatus where members of the boyband were enlisted for mandatory military service, while girl group Blackpink are also releasing a new single in January after the completion of their Deadline world tour. Ascendent K-pop group NewJeans, meanwhile, were embroiled in a legal battle with their record label in 2025, but pending an imminent resolution their comeback is slated for later in the new year. AK

Legacy sequels

Time was, a sequel meant part two of a self-contained film which did so exceptionally well at the box office that another story involving the same characters was unexpectedly in order. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, along came Jaws 2. Sequels are so normalised these days that we’re into Hollywood’s legacy sequel era: films that pick up the story years or even decades down the line. This year, examples are set to include 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (16 January), The Devil Wears Prada 2 (1 May), Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (cinemas 6 March, Netflix 20 March), Scream 7 (27 February), Toy Story 5 (19 June) and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping (20 November) – OK, so technically a legacy prequel, that last one. CB

Miller

Arthur Miller is hot property. Ivo Van Hove’s West End production of All My Sons (Wyndham’s theatre, London, to 7 March) has already been showered with five-star reviews. At London’s Young Vic, Jordan Fein (Fiddler on the Roof) brings us Miller’s lesser-known Broken Glass (21 February to 18 April). A devastating portrait of antisemitism in 1930s America, it’s a story of dislocation and defiance, as a woman’s body stops working in response to reading about Kristallnacht. The Crucible, which premiered at London’s Royal Court 70 years ago, continues to fuel new stories, and now in the same space, Danya Taymor directs Kimberly Belflower’s seven-time Tony-nominated take on Miller’s best-loved play, John Proctor Is the Villain (20 March to 25 April) as a class discuss The Crucible in the context of their own knotty lives. Perhaps Miller’s most famous play, Death of a Salesman, receives a new staging at Liverpool’s Everyman theatre this autumn (19 September to 10 October). And looking further ahead, Millermania is set to reach fever pitch in 2027, with Paul Mescal set to star as Biff Loman in the same play at London’s National Theatre. KW

Nu-metal

Perhaps it makes sense that late-90s nu-metal – all rock choruses, rap verses and nostalgic frat party energy – is continuing its comeback in 2026. Who doesn’t have some rage that needs exorcising? Besides, those baggy, oversized clothes and backwards snapbacks are a forgiving look for the OG fans hoping to cover expanding waistlines and male pattern baldness. Nu-metal’s influence was seen in the aesthetic of recent album campaigns by the likes of Fontaines DC and 5 Seconds of Summer, while this year sees the return of the genre’s heavyweights in arenas, stadiums and fields across the country. At the start of the summer, Rollin’ hitmakers Limp Bizkit headline the UK’s premiere rock festival, Download (10 to 14 June), despite their last album, 2021’s Still Sucks, missing the UK Top 75. A month later System of a Down (13 & 15 July) bring their slightly more progressive take on nu-metal to London for two shows at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, while Deftonestour the UK this spring (12 to 20 February) before headlining London’s All Points East festival (23 August) in support of last year’s Private Music album. See you in the moshpit! MC

Oscar season

The year starts at the height of Oscar season. New players entering the arena soon include Hugh Jackman singing his heart out in Song Sung Blue (out now), Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare weepie Hamnet (9 January), emotional documentary The Voice of Hind Rajab (16 January) and Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut The Chronology of Water (6 February). It’s also possible that the big winners have already completed their tour of the multiplexes: Ryan Coogler’s Sinners was well liked by critics, while Wicked: For Good made the kind of money Oscar finds difficult to completely ignore, while the muscular heft of One Battle After Another seems locked on for Academy approval. CB

Prestige Trash

How do you like your TV thrillers? Aspirational and slickly produced? How about unbelievable and narratively bonkers? With television’s golden age now a distant memory, streamers have turned their attention to pumping out total nonsense that looks absolutely fantastic. Last year saw countless stars go through hell in the lap of luxury (see The Girlfriend, Malice, The White Lotus) and this year will follow suit, thanks to Prime Video’s Kill Jackie(Catherine Zeta-Jones is an art dealer targeted by hitmen), Netflix’s The Undertow (Jamie Dornan plays a man who assumes the identity of his rich twin), MGM+’s Vanished (a romantic Paris getaway becomes a missing person’s case) and surely many, many more. RA

Queueing

The return of Oasis shone a light not only on overpriced tickets (cheers, dynamic pricing!) but also the frustration of virtual queues, with millions of disgruntled fans in bucket hats stuck watching a screen for hours as their souls slid away. While ticket pricing is finally being overhauled, expect a slew of big cultural moments in 2026 to mean long queues. Semi-retired superstar Rihanna was rumoured to have been returning to UK stadiums last year before getting pregnant, so if that anticipated comeback has been pushed to 2027 then tickets will be like gold dust this year. Meanwhile, after a hiatus this year Glastonbury will return in 2027, with tickets typically going on sale in November; get your queueing supplies ready! Away from gigs, November also hails the arrival of car-based crime spree fantasia Grand Theft Auto VI(19 November), AKA the most anticipated video game in recent memory. Originally announced in 2022 and delayed over and over again, expect actual IRL queues around your local branch of Game. MC

Romeo and Juliet

Rarely do the actors playing Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers genuinely look like teens. But here we get pretty close, with fresh-faced 23-year-old Sadie Sink and 20-year-old Noah Jupe (also appearing soon in Hamnet), who will no doubt draw younger audiences to this doomed love story. Long before playing Max in Stranger Things, Sink was performing on Broadway, and she recently impressed there in John Proctor Is the Villain. Juliet will be her West End debut. Jupe plays her Romeo in this anticipated production by Robert Icke, on at Harold Pinter theatre, 16 March to 6 June. KW

SNL UK

There are many reasons why the British version of Saturday Night Live may flounder: we won’t get the endless stream of uber-famous hosts; we don’t have the improv tradition; we as a nation simply will not tolerate the bloated, brash and sweatily unfunny skits that make up the bulk of the US original. Yet there is cause for cautious optimism. Firstly, we have actually successfully recreated the iconic sketch show on British soil before (see: late-1980s star-maker Saturday Live, ft. everyone from Harry Enfield to Hugh Laurie). Secondly, the head writer’s job has been given to Daran Johnson, one-third of transcendentally funny and criminally underrated sketch troupe Sheeps. RA

Traitors

By now, two episodes in, you’re probably already immersed in the latest series of The Traitors, or regular-person Traitors as we may now have to call it after the success of the Celebrity variant last year. Will the civilians live up to Alan Carr in the machiavellian stakes? A second Celebrity Traitors is also due in 2026. Over in the US, the fourth season of their celebrity-fronted Traitors franchise returns on 8 January, with a UK broadcast following soon after. Contestants include Donna Kelce, mother of Taylor Swift’s fiance Travis, Love Island UK’s Maura Higgins, actor Michael Rapaport and Real Housewife stalwart Lisa Rinna. AK

Undead

In showbiz, death is no hindrance when it comes to new content, or copious amounts of money-making and, on occasion, reputation white-washing. While an Abba-style hologram Queen show featuring Freddie Mercury may be in its early stages – “I’m very taken with the idea that we can be the original Queen again,” mused the band’s Brian May last November – the band’s one-time collaborator Michael Jackson will have (a section of) his life immortalised via delayed Antoine Fuqua biopic, Michael (24 April). Chef, author and the so-called rock star of the culinary world Anthony Bourdain, who died in 2018, will also be given the biopic treatment in 2026 via A24’s Tony. Bourdain will be played by breakout star of The Holdovers Dominic Sessa, with Antonio Banderas and Emilia Jones co-starring in a film set during the life-changing summer of 1976. MC

Video Pods

When television was in its infancy, it was the cheap cousin of cinema, often consisting of some blokes in a room having a chat – no fancy sets, minimal editing and modest production values. These days a certain level of polish is expected. But what if you could make talk TV without so much fuss? Just some blokes – or maybe even some women! – in a room, having a chat. And lo, the video podcast was born, giving the likes of Joe Rogan the chance to grow massive followings on a budget and without all that boring factchecking a broadcaster might require. Now even the TV guys are pivoting to pods, with the likes of Netflix embracing the fact that if people are looking at their phones half the time that they’re consuming streamer content, there’s no need to spend all that money making TV look super-flash: 2026 will see the fruits of a deal with Spotify to bring the most popular of its video podcasts, including The Rewatchables, The Big Picture, Recipe Club and Serial Killers to Netflix. Television is dead, long live television. CB

World Cup

Let’s face it, it probably won’t be coming home – but football definitely will be all over our screens this summer. The year’s glut of footie-themed telly includes Twenty Twenty Six – in which bumbling bureaucrat Ian Fletcher of Twenty Twelve and W1A fame is promoted to director of integrity at a global football tournament – and the Joseph Fiennes-led TV adaptation of Dear England, James Graham’s hit play about Gareth Southgate’s managerial magic (the stage version continues to tour the UK to 14 March). Another inspirational boss returns in the long-awaited fourth season of Ted Lasso, while garlanded director Molly Manning Walker makes her TV debut with Channel 4’s Major Players, about two teenage girls who start a football team. KW

eX-pop stars

What do pop stars Ariana Grande, Adele and Charli xcx have in common? None of them actually seem super keen on being pop stars any more. Yes Grande has a tour booked for this year – her first since 2019, including 10 dates at London’s O2 (15 Aug to 1 September) – but she’s already suggested it will be her final one, with her acting stint in the Wicked duology swiftly followed this year by a starring role in Meet the Parents sequel Focker in-Law (25 November). Adele, who announced an “incredibly long break” from music in 2024, looks to be making good on her statement and will make her acting debut in Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven. Having achieved top-tier status in the pop pantheon with Brat, it’s Charli xcx who seems most keen on relocating to Hollywood, however. She has six films in various states of production for this year, while three others, 100 Nights of Hero (6 February), Erupcja and Sacrifice, arrived at festivals in late 2025. She will briefly resume her pop-star form in The Moment, a mockumentary about a very xcx-ish figure’s headlining tour, directed by her longtime collaborator Aidan Zamiri and based on an original idea by Charli herself. MC

YBAs

Three decades on from their emergence as the unruly group of artists seeking to disrupt the stuffy British art world, the YBAs are back and indulging in 90s nostalgia in 2026. The Tate Modern in London is set to host the largest retrospective of YBA Tracey Emin’s work (27 February to 31 August), including hits such as The Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995, alongside her moving recent paintings and never-before-seen early works. Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show at V&A Dundee (3 April to 7 January 2027) is set to provide an innovative look at the development of modern fashion with landmark pieces including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga and Maison Margielas. At London’s Tate Britain, meanwhile, the entire decade of the 90s is under examination (1 October to 14 February 2027) with a new mixed-media show. Photographs from Juergen Teller expose the celebrity fascination around the YBAs and their partying cohort, while works from Damien Hirst showcase the trajectory of their artistry. AK

Zendaya

The bankable star can currently claim an incredible sum total of $3.9bn box office returns on her films to date, including the Dune movies, The Greatest Showman and three Spider-Men. This should be the year she tops $5bn, with credits including Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, a third Dune and romance The Drama (3 April) opposite Robert Pattinson. This year also sees the Euphoria star her potentially tie the knot with long-term squeeze Tom Holland, though only a fool would claim to know exactly what’s happening there. At the time of going to press, the rumour mill is running with everything from “they’re already married” to “they’ve already split” to “the reception will be at the Nag’s Head in Walthamstow on 12 March”. CB

[Source: The Guardian]