Disney Film at D23 2026: Every First Look
First looks from Friday's Entertainment Showcase, as they land.
Credit: Title card generated by HeadLines Decoded. · HeadLines Decoded LLC
D23 2026 opened on Friday night with the Disney Entertainment Showcase at the Honda Center, and it was, as expected, where the movie news broke. Across a single evening Disney laid out first looks and release dates from Walt Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century, plus a run of live-action and streaming reveals. Here is every film and animation first look from the showcase, organised by studio, with what was actually confirmed and when each title arrives.
Marvel Studios: Doomsday leads, and the X-Men finally come home
Marvel brought its next event film in finished-enough shape to sell tickets on the spot. Avengers: Doomsday got a special look and a hard date of December 18, 2026, with tickets going on sale the same day. Anthony and Joe Russo are back directing a Marvel film for the first time since Endgame, and the headline is Robert Downey Jr. returning to the universe he launched, this time as Victor von Doom rather than Tony Stark. The cast Disney read out was enormous, pulling in Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, and Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal, Anthony Mackie, Florence Pugh, Vanessa Kirby, and Simu Liu among many others, alongside a new poster.
The bigger long-term news was the X-Men. Marvel confirmed the film is in early development for May 5, 2028, and named its cast: Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Kit Connor as Scott Summers, Christopher Abbott as Professor Xavier, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, and Maya Boyd as Storm, with Adam Driver announced by video as Nathaniel Milbury. This is the first film to fold Marvel’s mutants fully into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a moment fans have waited for since Disney bought 20th Century Fox in 2019. A VisionQuest series was also dated for October.
Walt Disney Animation: Frozen and Zootopia keep printing
Disney Animation leaned on its two biggest franchises. Frozen 3 is set for November 24, 2027, with Jennifer Lee back directing, the full voice cast returning, and songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez previewing two new songs. New footage teased a villainess whose powers are said to rival Elsa’s, a first for a series that has kept its conflicts personal. Zootopia 3 was confirmed in early development, timed to the franchise’s tenth anniversary this weekend, with Ginnifer Goodwin returning as Judy Hopps and Ke Huy Quan joining as a character named Gary De’Snake. A date will come later.
Pixar: back to the Land of the Dead
Pixar’s night belonged to Coco 2, confirmed for November 2029, nearly twelve years after the original won two Academy Awards and crossed 800 million dollars worldwide. Lee Unkrich returns to direct, with Adrian Molina co-directing, and concept art catches up with Miguel as a teenager. Benjamin Bratt is set to return as Ernesto de la Cruz. Pixar also dated Incredibles 3 for June 16, 2028, covered in our Incredibles 3 first look, and teased two original films, Gatto and Ghost Market.
Lucasfilm: Gosling takes the cockpit
Lucasfilm gave attendees a sizzle reel for Star Wars: Starfighter, arriving May 28, 2027, with Ryan Gosling front and center. Shawn Levy directs and produces from a script by Jonathan Tropper, with Kathleen Kennedy producing. The cast includes Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Amy Adams, and Flynn Gray. Disney confirmed Starfighter is a standalone story rather than a chapter of the Skywalker saga, which gives Levy room to build something new. It is set to be one of the first Star Wars films in theaters in years.
20th Century and live-action: a herd, a blue experiment, and a princess
Ice Age: Boiling Point was dated for February 5, 2027, with John C. Donkin directing and the original voice cast, Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Queen Latifah, and Simon Pegg, back in theaters for the first time in a decade. On the live-action side, Lilo & Stitch 2 arrives May 26, 2028, with Chris Sanders directing and voicing Stitch, Maia Kealoha returning as Lilo, production beginning in Hawaii later in 2026, and the reveal teasing Angel, Stitch’s pink counterpart. It follows the studio’s live-action Tangled, dated for 2028.
Streaming and beyond: the rabbit who started it all
Jon Favreau unveiled Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a live-action and animation series arriving on Disney+ on February 17, 2027, with Kathryn Hahn and Albert Brooks in the voice cast. It is a fitting comeback: Oswald was Walt Disney’s first breakout star, created in 1927 a year before Mickey, lost in a 1928 contract dispute, and not returned to Disney until 2006. On Hulu, Disney confirmed a sequel to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion for 2027, with Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino back and Tim Federle directing. Disney Theatrical also announced a stage musical of The Greatest Showman, opening in spring 2027 in London’s West End.
Decoded: what the slate actually tells you
Step back from the individual reveals and a strategy comes into focus, and it is a cautious one. Of the films Disney put on stage, nearly all are sequels or revivals of things that already worked: Frozen 3, Zootopia 3, Coco 2, Incredibles 3, a live-action Lilo & Stitch 2, a sixth Ice Age, and the return of a character created in 1927 in Oswald. The genuinely original bets were rare and quiet, two unheralded Pixar films in Gatto and Ghost Market, and Lucasfilm’s standalone Starfighter. The single biggest swing was not a new idea at all but a piece of casting: Robert Downey Jr. returning as the villain of the universe he built as its hero.
For a studio that spent the 2010s betting on new worlds, this was a slate built to defend known franchises rather than start new ones. Read charitably, that is discipline in an expensive and uncertain box-office era: Disney is leaning on the properties it is surest of and asking its animation houses to keep two or three tentpole franchises in permanent rotation. Read skeptically, it is a company running low on new ideas and buying safety with nostalgia. The tell will be in the marketing. Watch whether the two small original Pixar films get anything close to the push the sequels do. That, more than any release date announced this weekend, will show how much room Disney actually leaves for the new.
The rest of the weekend
The showcase was only part of D23 2026. For the rides and lands, see our Disney Parks at D23 2026 hub; for the series news, our TV and streaming roundup; and for the weekend’s biggest, quietest, and most surprising moments in one place, our D23 2026, Decoded.
Reported and edited to HeadLines Decoded newsroom standards. E.G. v4.17 · I.R.G. v1.14 · L.R.G. v1.9 · P.L.G. v1.10. Part of our coverage of D23 2026.
D23 2026
16 partsA series by Todd Ruffner-Schoenfeld.
D23, Disney’s big fan event, ran Aug. 14 to 16, 2026, at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. On Friday night the Disney Entertainment Showcase dated films as far out as November 2029. On Saturday night Neil Patrick Harris hosted Horizons: A Carousel of Progress, the parks showcase at the Honda Center in Anaheim, where Disney put years on two big projects it had first announced in 2024. One is Monstropolis, the Monsters, Inc. land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida. It opens in 2027, in phases. Avengers Infinity Defense and Stark Flight Lab, the two new rides at Avengers Campus in Disney California Adventure, are set for 2028. Ryan Seacrest hosted the Disney Legends ceremony on Sunday.
A family deciding when to book a trip needs an opening year. At D23 in August 2024, Disney announced eleven new lands and rides around the world. Only two got a year. EPCOT’s reimagined Test Track reopened on schedule, on July 22, 2025. Tropical Americas at Disney’s Animal Kingdom was still billed for 2027 on the Disney Parks Blog as late as April 30, 2026. Most of the others still have no opening date, even where steel is already standing, so the series keeps what Disney has said apart from what fan sites work out from permits and construction photos.
Most of the series is about the parks, one project to a part, each written just before the showcase and updated live as Disney added details. At Magic Kingdom, the Villains land going in behind Big Thunder Mountain now has two named rides, a Maleficent coaster and a dark ride hosted by the Magic Mirror. Nearby, Piston Peak National Park, the Cars land being built where the Rivers of America used to run, gets a rally ride called Cars Ridge Run Rally and a gentler family ride. Monstropolis brings the first suspended coaster at any Disney park, the kind where the cars hang below the track, and Tropical Americas pairs an Indiana Jones ride with Antonio’s Fiesta de Encanto, the first Encanto ride anywhere. In California, one part covers the first Coco ride, a boat trip through the Land of the Dead, while the Avatar project and the Avengers Campus expansion get parts of their own. Four parts go abroad. Disneyland Paris is building a Lion King land whose flume drops 52 feet beneath Pride Rock, and Shanghai Disneyland finished the track on its Spider-Man coaster in June. Hong Kong Disneyland cleared its old Tomorrowland Stage for a Spider-Man ride. Disneyland Abu Dhabi, announced in May 2025, will be built, owned and run by the Abu Dhabi company Miral, with Walt Disney Imagineering leading the design.
Movies and television get their own roundups. The film part walks through the Friday showcase studio by studio, from Avengers: Doomsday on Dec. 18, 2026, with Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, to Coco 2 in November 2029. Two parts go deeper. Incredibles 3 is dated June 16, 2028, with Peter Sohn directing and Edna Mode front and center in the first-look art, and the live-action Tangled is set for March 31, 2028, with Teagan Croft as Rapunzel and Kathryn Hahn as Mother Gothel. Edna has her own tribute, too. The television part separates shows that got real release dates from ones that only got a booth on the show floor, and an early August review looks at Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, which Disney+ said became its most-streamed title worldwide after its July 16 premiere.
The weekend closed with eleven new Disney Legends, among them Bob Iger, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Jonas Brothers, and one part goes through the whole class. Another counts the eight anniversaries Disney marked, from Alice in Wonderland at 75 to Zootopia at 10. If you want the weekend in the order it happened, start with the live guide, which links to everything else. If all you want to know is when a ride opens, the parks roundup, Disney Parks at D23 2026, keeps every project’s status in one place.
Five weeks on, the dated releases are the ones you can plan around. Marvel's VisionQuest arrives on Disney+ on Oct. 14, 2026, and the third season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians follows there on Nov. 20. In theaters, Avengers: Doomsday opens Dec. 18. The 2027 calendar holds Ice Age: Boiling Point on Feb. 5, Jon Favreau's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series on Disney+ on Feb. 17, Star Wars: Starfighter on May 28, the Bluey movie on Aug. 6, The New Simpsons Movie on Sept. 3 and Frozen 3 on Nov. 24. Then 2028 brings the live-action Tangled on March 31, the X-Men film on May 5, Lilo & Stitch 2 on May 26 and Incredibles 3 on June 16. None had moved as of Sept. 24.
Five parts of the series now carry dated corrections or updates. The Tropical Americas part and the parks roundup, Disney Parks at D23 2026, have notes on what changed in September, which is also below. The television part now uses the title Disney revealed at D23, The New Simpsons Movie. The Edna Mode tribute from July has an update naming Peter Sohn as director of Incredibles 3, with Brad Bird, who directed the first two films, producing. The Legends part dropped two counts Disney does not publish.
The bigger change is Tropical Americas. On Sept. 11, Tom Bricker of Disney Tourist Blog reported that Disney had taken the year out of the land's description in the Coming to the Parks section of DisneyWorld.com. It used to say "Get ready to journey to an 11-acre, immersive land in 2027," and it now says "Prepare for your journey to an 11-acre land." Bricker also wrote that Disney did not repeat the 2027 opening year during the D23 parks showcase. BlogMickey reported that 2027 still appears on the Disney Experiences page of upcoming projects and on the Disney Parks Blog, and said its understanding is that the plan is still to open in 2027. Disney has not announced a delay or explained the change. Bricker expects the land to open in stages, with two-thirds of it open in 2027 and the Encanto ride likely slipping into 2028, and that is his estimate, not Disney's.
Disney also dated a few smaller park projects. A refreshed Carousel of Progress at Magic Kingdom starts in late spring 2027, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Bryan Cranston voicing the parents. At Disneyland, the Remember... Dreams Come True fireworks and an updated World of Color return in February 2027. The Magic Happens parade follows that summer. The Coco ride, the Villains land, Piston Peak and Avatar still have no official opening date, and neither do the projects in Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi. Any year you see attached to them comes from outside analysts: Bricker puts Coco somewhere between late 2028 and summer 2029, and Inside the Magic has suggested 2029 to 2031 for the Villains land. Fan outlets also list 2027 for the Paris Lion King flume and the Shanghai Spider-Man coaster, which neither park has confirmed. At Disney California Adventure, Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! is scheduled to close in 2027, and many fans expect the Avatar project to take its space, though Disney has not said so. In Florida, the Monsters, Inc. door coaster keeps rising over Hollywood Studios, and WDW News Today photographed roof structures on its show building on Sept. 21.
Abu Dhabi is furthest from a date. Disney has shown only concept art and has not confirmed that construction has started. On the Aug. 5, 2026, earnings call, with conflict in the Middle East raising questions, Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston said Disney is fully committed to seeing it through, and the company's next quarterly earnings report is the next scheduled chance for an update.
Josh D'Amaro, who took over as Disney's chief executive from Bob Iger on March 18, 2026, was running the parks division in August 2024 and announced most of these park projects himself from the same Honda Center stage.
Editor written. AI used for spelling and grammar only.
