Every Anniversary Disney Celebrated at D23 2026, Decoded
D23 2026 spent much of its weekend looking backward. Here are the eight anniversaries Disney celebrated, and why the birthday panels are also a business plan.
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Alongside the new-project reveals, D23 2026 spent much of its weekend looking backward, with a run of anniversary panels spread across the Anaheim Convention Center and the Walt Disney Archives Stage from August 14 to 16. Eight milestones in all got their own celebration. Here they are, oldest film to newest, and what the lineup of birthdays is really doing.
The milestones Disney marked
Alice in Wonderland, 75 years. The 1951 classic, with Kathryn Beaumont as Alice, honored as one of Disney animation’s most enduringly strange and beloved films.
101 Dalmatians, 65 years. The 1961 feature that changed how Disney animation looked, celebrated with rarely seen art from the Animation Research Library.
Marvel’s Spider-Man, 65 years. Six and a half decades since Peter Parker first appeared, marked by Disney and Marvel as a headline anniversary.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks, 55 years. The 1971 live-action and animation hybrid, revisited in a multimedia panel by Disney historian Jim Fanning.
Beauty and the Beast, 35 years. The 1991 landmark, celebrated with a panel that streamed globally on Disney+ to open the weekend.
Kingdom Hearts, 25 years. The Disney and Square Enix crossover game, given a Deep Dive panel that treated the anniversary as a headline moment rather than a footnote.
Enchanted, 20 years. The 2007 film that turned fairy-tale tropes into a live-action love letter, honored on the Archives Stage.
Zootopia, 10 years. The 2016 Oscar winner, celebrated on the same weekend Disney confirmed Zootopia 3 is in development.
Decoded: nostalgia is a business plan
A birthday panel looks like fan service, and it is, but line these eight up and a strategy shows through. The anniversaries Disney chooses to celebrate are rarely random. Zootopia’s tenth was marked on the very weekend a third film was announced. Enchanted’s twentieth arrives as Disney mines its own catalog for live-action and sequel material. Each celebration is also a reminder, delivered to the most devoted audience in the room, that a piece of intellectual property is alive, loved, and available to be sold again. That is not a knock on the films, which have earned their affection. It is simply worth seeing the machine for what it is: at a modern D23, an anniversary is both a genuine tribute and a soft launch, and the two are increasingly hard to tell apart.
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.
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