Sundance 2026 Unveils A-List Lineup for Its Last Dance in Park City

Here we go: Sundance just dropped the full 2026 lineup, and it is a beast. It also happens to be the last Park City edition before the festival picks up stakes and heads to Boulder in 2027. History lesson up top, then the good stuff.

The quick rewind (and the big move)

Sundance launched in 1978 in Salt Lake City, with Robert Redford and his Wildwood team helping get it off the ground. It shifted to Park City in 1981 and stayed there every January (aside from those pandemic years when it pivoted), growing into the premiere home for American indie film. That Park City era ends after this one. Starting in 2027, Sundance’s new base is Boulder, Colorado.

Dates, tickets, the basics

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival runs January 22 to February 1, 2026, with in-person screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City. The at-home program returns nationwide January 29 to February 1, 2026. Single Film Tickets for both in-person and online go on sale January 14 at 10 a.m. MT, and there are still limited passes and packages floating around if you move quickly.

The scope (it’s big)

This year’s slate is 90 feature films and seven episodics, drawn from 28 countries and territories. 40% of the feature directors are first-timers (36 of 90). Fourteen selected films and projects had Sundance Institute support during development. And 94 titles are world premieres, which is 97% of the lineup. If you like discovering things first, this is that.

'The 2026 Sundance Film Festival will be a truly pivotal and memorable moment as we celebrate artists and their visionary works, honor our Sundance Institute founder, Robert Redford, and his transformative vision, and show our gratitude to Utah by commemorating our collective journey.'

– Amanda Kelso, Sundance Institute Acting CEO

How the lineup breaks down (and what stands out)

All the usual Sundance sections are here, and the programming team clearly went for high contrast: intimate character pieces next to high-concept oddities, big-name premieres alongside risky debuts. If a synopsis makes you do a double take, that’s by design.

U.S. Dramatic Competition is stacked with actors you know showing up in films you don’t: Chris Pine leads 'Carousel' as a Cleveland doctor dealing with life detours; Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan pop in 'Josephine,' about an 8-year-old grappling with trauma after witnessing a crime; Rinko Kikuchi resurfaces in the ballroom dance-world drama 'Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!'; and Will Poulter stars in 'Union County,' set inside a rural Ohio drug court program. You also get indies that feel like the heartbeat of the fest: 'Hot Water' (a midwest-to-west road story with Lubna Azabal and Daniel Zolghadri), 'Run Amok' (a high school stages a musical about the one day everyone wants to forget), and 'Take Me Home' (a tender portrait of a Korean adoptee caring for aging parents).

U.S. Documentary Competition hits some live wires: three American doctors enter Gaza in 'American Doctor'; a Utah environmental catastrophe looms in 'The Lake'; a polar bear and a human town collide in 'Nuisance Bear'; New York’s wild public access television days get the spotlight in 'Public Access'; and 'Seized' revisits the police raid on Kansas newspaper the Marion County Record. There’s also 'Soul Patrol,' the first Black special ops team in Vietnam telling their story; 'American Pachuco,' chronicling Luis Valdez from 'Zoot Suit' to 'La Bamba'; a Barbara Hammer deep dive in 'Barbara Forever'; and, yes, 'Joybubbles,' the whistle that accidentally birthed the phone phreaking that led to modern hacking.

World Cinema Dramatic Competition brings new voices and inventive setups: a 2006 New Zealand summer of identity and internet in 'Big Girls Don’t Cry'; a divorce colliding with the invasion of Ukraine in 'How to Divorce During the War'; a boarding-school friendship that morphs into first love in 'Extra Geography'; Philippine class tension under clubroom gloss in 'Filipiñana'; and a Juárez-set vigilante story inspired by real events in 'The Huntress (La Cazadora)'. Elsewhere, Lagos night life reorients a cab driver in 'LADY'; spiritual possession turns into revenue stream in Indonesia’s 'Levitating'; and Kosovo’s 'Shame and Money' moves a family into the grind of hypercapitalism.

World Cinema Documentary Competition spans a decade-long Syrian family journey ('One In A Million'), a 900-foot suspended cable car rescue ('Hanging by a Wire'), Scottish neighbors blocking a deportation van ('Everybody To Kenmure Street'), a wealthy American heir’s commune-turned-communist experiment ('All About the Money'), and a primatologist’s pivot into animal welfare activism ('Sentient'). There’s also defamation and #MeToo in 'Silenced,' Kenyan land battles in 'Kikuyu Land,' and a mother-daughter mountain standoff in Montenegro in 'To Hold a Mountain'.

NEXT (presented by Adobe) is where the creatives get freaky and formal: Kogonada premieres 'zi' with Haley Lu Richardson and Jin Ha; 'Ghost in the Machine' digs into the myth-making around AI; 'Aanikoobijigan' tracks ancestors trying to get out of museum archives; 'BURN' drops a runaway into a Kabukicho youth tribe; 'Night Nurse' gets weird in a retirement community; and 'The Incomer' sends Domhnall Gleeson to a remote Scottish island where siblings talk to mythical beings.

Premieres is celebrity central, sure, but with actual juice. Andrew Stanton returns with 'In The Blink of An Eye' (this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize winner). Olivia Wilde directs 'The Invite' and stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton. Natalie Portman headlines and produces Cathy Yan’s 'The Gallerist' about a dead body at Art Basel Miami. Gregg Araki’s 'I Want Your Sex' pairs Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in a sex-obsession-murder spiral. Charli xcx pulls double duty with 'The Moment' (she also appears in Araki’s film). Alex Gibney documents Salman Rushdie’s recovery in 'Knife.' Billie Jean King gets her due in 'Give Me the Ball!'. Courtney Love goes unfiltered in 'Antiheroine.' There’s a Brittney Griner doc, Josephine Decker directs Iliza Shlesinger in 'Chasing Summer,' Wu-Tang Clan lore fuels 'THE DISCIPLE,' and John Wilson turns a doc about concrete into a meta pitch. Also: Jay Duplass tackles PTSD with 'See You When I See You,' John Turturro stars in 'The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,' Nelson Mandela narrates 'Troublemaker' from his recorded words, and Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe team up in a 1933 Oregon survival tale 'The Weight.' If that sounds like a lot, it is.

Midnight continues to be where Sundance eats its vegetables and then chases them with something spiked. We’ve got 'Buddy' (a brave girl has to escape a kids TV show), 'Leviticus' (a violent entity looks like the person you want most), 'Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant' (exactly what it says), 'Saccharine' (a hungry ghost tied to a weight-loss craze that involves eating ashes), 'undertone' (a paranormal podcaster gets haunted by the tapes), 'Rock Springs' (grief, an isolated house, and a town with secrets), plus an all-access 90s/00s alt-rock tour time capsule in 'The Best Summer' with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps, and Bikini Kill.

Episodic brings a small but tasty slate: 'BAIT' stars Riz Ahmed as an actor whose life unravels over four days; 'The Screener' from Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe follows an agency leak; Nicole Holofcener’s 'Worried' captures two people who worry as a sport; 'FreeLance' and 'Soft Boil' are the fiction pilot picks; and on the non-fiction side, a Tennessee high school class cracks a cold case in 'Murder 101,' while 'The Oligarch and the Art Dealer' details how a billion-dollar art feud exploded between Yves Bouvier and Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Spotlight (presented by Audible) features 'Broken English,' a portrait of Marianne Faithfull, and 'Tuner,' a crime-caper premise about a gifted piano tuner who starts cracking safes, starring Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman.

Family Matinee, formerly KIDS, keeps the younger crowd in the loop: 'Cookie Queens' follows four determined Girl Scouts during the cookie-season blitz and is tagged as a Salt Lake City Celebration Film; and 'Fing!' (from David Walliams) casts Taika Waititi alongside Mia Wasikowska in a family fantasy about a very rare one-eyed creature.

Special Screenings brings Mark Cousins’ 'The Story of Documentary Film,' a guided tour through the form’s landmarks and hidden gems.

One list to rule your planning: 25 titles to keep on your radar

• In The Blink of An Eye (Premieres, Fiction) – Andrew Stanton’s time-spanning trip; 2026 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.
• The Gallerist (Premieres, Fiction) – Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Sterling K. Brown; dead body, Art Basel, desperation.
• The Invite (Premieres, Fiction) – Olivia Wilde directs; Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton at the dinner from hell.
• I Want Your Sex (Premieres, Fiction) – Gregg Araki returns; Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, murder and obsession.
• Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie (Premieres, Doc) – Alex Gibney goes inside Rushdie’s recovery.
• THE DISCIPLE (Premieres, Doc) – The making of a Wu-Tang-adjacent album and the fallout it sparks.
• The Weight (Premieres, Fiction) – Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe in a 1933 Oregon survival mission with a moral price tag.
• The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (Premieres, Fiction) – John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany in a citywide caper.
• Give Me the Ball! (Premieres, Doc) – Billie Jean King’s impact on tennis and culture, told with rare archive.
• Antiheroine (Premieres, Doc) – Courtney Love, unvarnished and ready to release new music.
• The Brittney Griner Story (Premieres, Doc) – Why she played abroad, the detainment, the advocacy that followed.
• The History of Concrete (Premieres, Doc) – John Wilson tries to sell a Hallmark formula on, well, concrete.
• Wicker (Premieres, Fiction) – Olivia Colman asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband. Yes, really.
• The Shitheads (Premieres, Fiction) – Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. on a rehab transport job from hell.
• Time and Water (Premieres, Doc) – Sara Dosa on glaciers, memory, and an Icelandic family archive.
• Troublemaker (Premieres, Doc) – Nelson Mandela’s struggle told through his own recorded words.
• Carousel (U.S. Dramatic) – Chris Pine and Jenny Slate in a Cleveland second-chance dramedy.
• Josephine (U.S. Dramatic) – Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan in a story of a child processing danger and control.
• Union County (U.S. Dramatic) – Will Poulter, Noah Centineo; recovery in rural Ohio during the opioid crisis.
• American Doctor (U.S. Doc) – Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian American doctors enter Gaza.
• Public Access (U.S. Doc) – The underground chaos and creativity of New York’s public access TV.
• Filipiñana (World Dramatic) – A tee girl uncovers the rot under a pristine country club.
• How to Divorce During the War (World Dramatic) – A breakup in Vilnius collides with the invasion of Ukraine.
• zi (NEXT, Fiction) – Kogonada with Haley Lu Richardson in a night that bends time.
• Saccharine (Midnight, Fiction) – Hungry ghosts, taboo diets, and a medical student in way too deep.

A note on availability

Plenty of titles across competition and sections will be watchable online during the at-home window (Jan 29 to Feb 1), including a number of the high-profile world premieres above. If you are not in Utah, you still have options.

The end of an era, the start of another

Programming-wise, Sundance is embracing the moment: celebrating Redford’s legacy, thanking Utah, and putting out a lineup that mixes discovery with spectacle. Then, after this one, the festival heads east to the Rockies for its Boulder reboot. For now, Park City gets one last January blowout. See you on Main Street — or in your living room the following week.