The Best Sci-Fi Movies of 2026 (So Far)

It’s shaping up to be a big year for sci-fi. At the end of this year, audiences will pack theaters for the simultaneous release of Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three. The competition is fierce, as the question of whether Marvel’s brand is strong enough to stand against Timothée Chalamet looms over both multimillion-dollar tentpoles. But those two movies aren’t the only science-fiction films worth watching in 2026.

The year kicked off on a high note with Project Hail Mary, the Ryan Gosling hit in which the Drive and Barbie star plays a schoolteacher who wakes up in a spaceship far from Earth. (It’s based on the novel by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian, so you know what you’re getting there.) Out of SXSW, there were movies like Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, a time-travel caper that brings a gangster swagger to sci-fi, and Anima, an intimate road movie about two strangers on a journey of connections.

When summer came around, audiences saw Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s grand return to alien-invasion blockbusters, while some checked out Masters of the Universe, a big-screen reboot of the classic toy franchise. (I say “some” because the movie bombed despite great reviews.) On Netflix, War Machine siphoned some of Alan Ritchson’s streaming-idol powers for another badass action movie in which outgunned soldiers fight to survive against a far more powerful alien threat.

The year isn’t over yet. Soon audiences will see The End of Oak Street, which stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor playing members of a suburban family learning their neighborhood has been transported to someplace truly alien. There’s also Onslaught, Adam Wingard’s spiritual successor to his acclaimed indie hit The Guest from 2014, and Godzilla Minus Zero, Takashi Yamazaki’s sequel to his acclaimed 2023 Godzilla movie. And we’ve gotta see Duncan Jones’s Rogue Trooper, should it ever get a distribution deal following rave reviews at the Annecy International Film Festival in June.

For now, these are the best science-fiction movies of 2026.

One of the biggest movies of 2026 is, without question, Project Hail Mary. Based on the 2021 novel by Andy Weir, the smash hit follows a middle school science teacher (Ryan Gosling) who awakes with amnesia aboard a spacecraft light-years away from Earth. The newest movie from comedy giants Phil Lord and Christopher Miller was the right movie at the right time, its release accidentally coinciding with the Artemis II mission to the moon. That it was still playing in theaters more than a month after its release—an eternity in today’s theatrical landscape—speaks volumes about its out-of-this-world appeal.

The man who invented the modern summer blockbuster came back to theaters in 2026 with his first sci-fi in years: Disclosure Day. Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor costar as two people who try to reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life, while the government tries to suppress the truth. It may not have been the glorious throwback to the days of E.T. and Close Encounters, but Disclosure Day gets by on career-best work by Blunt and another immaculate score by John Williams.

Alan Ritchson flexes his leading-man muscles in War Machine, a Netflix original that’s actually kinda worth watching. The Reacher star leads the movie as a staff sergeant for the Army Rangers who encounters a massively overpowered alien force during a training exercise. Sure, you’ve seen movies like this before—Predator, anyone?—but this throwback action flick is the best kind of turn-your-brain-off junk food we secretly crave.

You don’t have to be an overgrown ’80s baby to dig Masters of the Universe. This deeply affectionate reboot of the Reagan-era toy and TV franchise once again tells the story of Prince Adam (Nicholas Galitzine), who must save his fallen home of Eternia from the evil Skeletor (Jared Leto). The franchise started out as a cheap competitor to Star Wars, but the 2026 reboot is anything but a pale copy, with its dazzling visual design, snappy humor, and, most of all, a moving story about reasserting one’s place in the world.

How much you want to consider Marvel superhero movies “sci-fi” depends on you, but we safely consider radioactive spiders, mutant telepaths, and gamma-infused monsters to be firmly in the realm of science fiction. The fourth Tom Holland–led Spider-Man movie sees the web slinger working on his own until an invisible menace with the power to hijack people’s consciousness threatens everyone he still loves. It’s a box office (Hulk) smash, but Spider-Man: Brand New Day remembers that the true story lies in the hearts of heroes.

If Guy Ritchie made Looper, it might look like Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. Emerging out of SXSW, the Hulu exclusive follows a gangster (Vince Vaughn) who, after regretting murdering his friend (James Marsden), uses a time machine to stop his past self. There are an awful lot of action comedies nowadays, but Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice stands out from the pack with some novel twists on well-worn time-travel formulas.

Sydney Chandler (Alien: Earth) and Takehiro Hira (Giri/Haji) hit the road in this tender and emotional sci-fi road trip from first-time director Brian Tetsuro Ivie. Set in a speculative near future in which one’s consciousness can be uploaded into the cloud, Anima sees Chandler star as an unemployed engineer who drives a wealthy and terminally ill man (Hira) across Connecticut in the hopes of finding his estranged son before the end of his life. Anima premiered to rave reviews at SXSW earlier this year and may soon find wide-release distribution.

Animated children’s films about woodland creatures are usually a mixed bag. For every Bambi or The Wild Robot, you’ll find a dozen films trying to become the next Over the Hedge. Hoppers dodges the repetitive trend by magically turning a young girl into a woodland creature, and the box-office numbers prove that the gimmick has paid off so far. The film follows Mabel Tanaka, who transports her consciousness into a robot beaver. She wants to rally the animals to protect their wilderness from becoming a highway. It’s a crazy idea. But considering the way we’re headed in 2026, I’m down for anything.

This SXSW darling stars Lewis Pullman and Maya Hawke as a couple with the ability to literally shape their environment. After attending a couples-counseling session run by a set of magic wonder twins, the two on-again, off-again lovers learn that their emotions have dire effects on the world around them. The silly, video-game-like premise isn’t Wishful Thinking’s only draw, however. At its heart, director Graham Parkes’s feature debut really touches on a question we all ask ourselves. How do we change for the person we love without sacrificing what makes us who we are?

Coming Soon

Ralph Fiennes’s Dr. Ian Kelson experiments with some real science fiction in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is one of the first zombie flicks I’ve ever seen to reckon with the idea that a cure is physically attainable. This second entry in a planned sequel trilogy to the original 28 Days Later film also features Jack O’Connell (Sinners) as a maniacal cult leader styled after Jimmy Savile—just tearing up the apocalyptic landscape with Danny Boyle’s zany, violent humor.

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.

Main image: Jonathan Olley