The 30 Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2026

More Game of Thrones? Yes. But different Game of Thrones. HBO’s latest entry in its hugely popular fantasy franchise is set about 100 years before the events in GoT and several decades after the events in House of the Dragon. The six-episode season is based on a George R.R. Martin novella and follows the adventures of the wandering “hedge knight” Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his squire Egg (Dexter Sol) as they enter a tournament in hopes of improving their fortunes. The series from showrunner Ira Parker (The Last Ship) has a notably different style than the other two dramas. There are no dragons or magic, or massive battles, and the show mainly focuses on everyday folk in Westeros rather than nobles. Expect something more like what Andor is to Disney+’s Star Wars shows. 

Netflix’s favorite Regency-era family is returning for its fourth season, this time focusing on the Bridgertons’ second son, Benedict (Luke Thompson), and his love interest Sophie Baek, portrayed by Yerin Ha. The season is based on the third novel in Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, An Offer from a Gentleman. Following the formula of season three, the fourth season of Bridgerton will debut on Netflix in two parts.

The previously titled American Love Story —  said to be the first of another planned anthology following American Horror Story, American Crime Story and American Sports Story — finds Ryan Murphy tackling the tragic and all too brief relationship between John F. Kennedy Jr. (played by newcomer Paul Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy (Sarah Pidgeon). The series will presumably cover their romance, the media obsession with them and the 1999 plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard that took their lives while they were still in their 30s.

Tracy Morgan, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock mined comedy gold for seven seasons on 30 Rock, and they’re teaming up again for another NBC comedy — with Daniel Radcliffe joining the fray this time. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins stars Morgan as a disgraced former football player who, in a bid to win back his fans and reclaim respect from his family, hires a documentary filmmaker (Radcliffe) to rehab his image. Erika Alexander, Bobby Moynihan, Precious Way and Jalyn Hall also star. Radcliffe is a gifted comic actor and the contrast between his and Morgan’s style should create lots of opportunities for laughs. Carlock and Sam Means (a 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt alum) created the series, and Fey and Morgan are executive producers along with them.

After literally years of talking about it at various cast reunions and other events, the team behind Scrubs got the band back together for a revival on ABC. Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, John C. McGinley and Judy Reyes are all set to reprise their roles, as are several recurring actors, and series creator Bill Lawrence is executive producing (though not involved day-to-day, owing to his current overall deal at Warner Bros. TV; Scrubs is produced by Disney’s 20th TV). Other writers and producers are also back on board. Revivals have a shaky track record — for every Conners there are at least a couple Heroes Reborns — but hope springs eternal. The evident affection everyone involved still has for the show and each other definitely helps.

Survivor’s milestone 50th season promises to add a few twists to the long-running competition as the show’s fans played a hand in altering it formats. Titled Survivor 50: In the Hands of the Fans, elements of the game were voted upon by fans (Will there be idols? Will they have rice?) as a pool of all-star players return. While reaching 50 installments itself is a landmark occasion, the upcoming season will likely draw even more attention with Mike White as part the cast for his second time on the reality show. 

The White Lotus creator’s casting reveal drew quite the reaction from Hollywood, something that host Jeff Probst told THR left him “a little surprised.” Only time will tell if White will be able to outwit, outplay and outlast his second Survivor run (paired with his status as “the biggest writer, director, show creator in the world right now,” Probst says). 

The Starz time-travel centric romance series is officially coming to an end after eight seasons. The final season, airing almost 12 years after its 2014 premiere, will wrap up the sprawling love story of Caitríona Balfe’s Claire and Sam Heughan’s Jamie. Despite the show coming to an end, a prequel, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, will continue airing on Starz, so fans of the show won’t be completely without their fix.

Two decades after its initial release and nearly 11 years since its last season, the Lisa Kudrow-fronted comedy series is making its long-awaited, well, comeback to television for its third and final season. The season will follow Kudrow’s character, Valerie Cherish, as she “has found her way back to the current television landscape. Neither of us are surprised she did,” according to co-creators Kudrow and Michael Patrick King. Dan Bucatinsky, Laura Silverman, Damian Young, Tim Bagley and Matt Cook are reprising their roles alongside series newcomers Andrew Scott, Jack O’Brien, Ella Stiller, John Early, Barry Shabaka Henley, Abbi Jacobson, Tony Macht, Brittany O’Grady, Zane Phillips and Julian Stern. 

For months and months, all anyone really knew about Steve Carell’s new HBO comedy was that it was co-created by Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses and was slowly amassing a killer cast that now includes Danielle Deadwyler, Robby Hoffman, Phil Dunster, Charly Clive and John C. McGinley. Well, the network blessed fans with details in the final weeks of 2025, describing it as a college-campus-set comedy, with Carell playing a middle-aged author navigating a complicated relationship with his grown daughter (Clive). Presumably, this will be one of his first post-Office TV series that doesn’t promptly kill him off.

The final season of Prime Video’s hit series The Boys flies onto the streamer April 8. Season five will put a cap on Erik Kripke’s superhero saga, where Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and the rest of the boys are living in a dictatorship under Homelander (Antony Starr). It will serve as the closing chapter of the show, but it surely isn’t the end of the franchise. The Boys has already expanded with the spinoff Gen V and will soon add the prequel series Vought Rising, starring Jensen Ackles and Aya Cash. 

Malcolm is headed back to the middle for a sequel to the early 2000s Fox comedy, this time on Hulu. Frankie Muniz will return to reprise the titular character in the four-episode revival series for the streamer, alongside former stars Bryan Cranston, Jane Kaczmarek, Christopher Masterson and Justin Berfield. Malcolm — and his daughter — return to his family’s chaotic orbit when Hal (Cranston) and Lois (Kaczmarek) insist he return home to celebrate his parents’ 40th anniversary. Muniz has been teasing behind-the-scenes tidbits from the revival to help build anticipation for the April premiere.

Even if we knew nothing about the actual plot of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, we’d be in. Check out this murderer’s row of quality-makers: Apple TV, A24, Michelle Pfeiffer, Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, David E. Kelley. You’re in too, right? The thing is, we do know the plot — in no small part because Margo’s Got Money Troubles is already a best-selling book by Rufi Thorpe. Margo, played by Fanning, is a recent college dropout and aspiring writer with a new baby and a pile of bills. Her parents, Pfeiffer, an ex-Hooters waitress, and Nick Offerman, an ex-pro wrestler, may not have all the answers.

The wait for Euphoria‘s hotly anticipated third season is almost over. The new installment, which will feature a five-year time jump, arrives on HBO Max in April 2026. Creator/showrunner Sam Levinson recently teased that season three is centered on “being out of the safety net of school” and sees the characters post-college.

However, it seems life is just as messy as where it was left off in 2022’s season two. The third season kicks off with Rue (Zendaya) south of the border in Mexico, trying to find “innovative ways” to pay off her debt to drug dealer Laurie, according to Levinson. As for Sydney Sweeney‘s Cassie and Jacob Elordi‘s Nate, they get married this season. Meanwhile, Hunter Schafer‘s Jules is in art school, Alexa Demie’s Maddie works at a Hollywood talent agency and Maude Apatow‘s Lexi is a showrunner’s (Sharon Stone) assistant.

With the high school drama behind them, the creator added of the new season, “The stakes are a bit higher than they were in the past because the consequences are real and no one’s gonna swoop in and save you.”

HBO has been characteristically tight-lipped about the upcoming season of House of the Dragon, leaving fans to parse every little detail from a handful of photos and a few seconds of footage in a 2026 sizzle reel. Of course, the relatively scant information only fuels the anticipation for the Game of Thrones prequel, which will continue to chronicle the Targaryen clan and those around them some 200 years before the events of GoT. James Norton (Lord Ormund Hightower, briefly seen in the aforementioned sizzle reel), Tommy Flanagan (Ser Roderick Dustin) and Dan Fogler (Ser Torrhen Manderly) join the sprawling cast for season three.

Fox Entertainment and Fremantle’s Baywatch reboot promises “all the adrenaline-fueled rescues, tangled relationships, complicated chemistry and beachside heroics that defined the original — now with an entirely new cast, contemporary trappings, tensions and challenges, and a renewed mission to protect Southern California’s shoreline.” Plus, you know, hot people in swimsuits.

Matt Nix will serve as showrunner and executive produce with Baywatch creators Michael Berk, Greg Bonann and Doug Schwartz and Dante Di Loreto. No cast has been announced yet. The reboot comes on the heels of a 2017 film adaptation starring Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, and a 2024 Hulu docuseries that featured interviews with the original cast. 

Peacock has spent several years trying to make this Friday the 13th prequel series happen, and 2026 — a year with three Friday the 13ths, incidentally — looks to be the year it finally comes to pass. The streamer is keeping plot details quiet, but Linda Cardellini will star as Pamela Voorhees, mother of the horror franchise’s eventual unkillable killer, Jason. Pamela is also responsible for the murders of the 1980 movie that kicked off the series, taking out belated revenge for the drowning of her son decades earlier. (Callum Vinson will play the kid version of Jason in the series.) It’s fertile ground for an exploration of the roots of one of the longest-running horror franchises on screen.

The coming-of-age prequel centering around Reese Witherspoon’s iconic Legally Blonde character is slated to hit TV screens sometime this year. Lexi Minetree, a relative newcomer, is set to star as the show’s titular character, Elle Woods, during her high school years, offering Legally Blonde fans a look at what the Harvard Law grad was like before the events of the 2001 film. The O.C. and Gossip Girl writers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage are helming the show, which is produced by Witherspoon herself under her production banner, Hello Sunshine.

Richard Gadd bulked the F up for his Baby Reindeer follow-up, Half Man. That’s good, because Half Man, a violent drama in which Gadd’s character reunites with his “brother” Jamie Bell long after their explosive falling out, has a very kill-or-be-killed vibe. Let’s be real: Baby Reindeer was a phenomenon, so whatever Gadd did next was going to be big. Now that he’s physically big, Half Man, a co-production with the BBC, is even more intriguing. (As is the fact that HBO scored the rights out from under Netflix.)

Netflix’s shocking erotic thriller is preparing to stir up more trouble. The series follows Sophie (Brittany Snow), who gets close — maybe too close — to socialite Margo (Malin Akerman) after her family moves from Boston to Texas and she becomes consumed by obsession, seduction and murder. After the bloodbath at the end of season one, which saw Sophie also become a killer after it was revealed that Margo was the one who murdered Abby (Madison Wolfe), the next installment will likely see their secrets and lies exposed.

While a release date hasn’t been revealed, production on season two got underway in November, which means the second installment could hit the streamer in late 2026 or early 2027.

Fifteen years after a Green Lantern film failed to light up the box office, HBO is taking a decidedly different approach to the long-standing DC Comics characters with Lanterns. Where the movie embraced its comic-book roots unabashedly (for good and ill), the people behind Lanterns have more often compared it to something like True Detective: an earthbound murder mystery that just happens to involve two members of the Green Lantern Corps, the seen-it-all veteran Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre).

The two leads are top-notch actors, and the creative team is strong too: Chris Mundy (Ozark), award-winning comics writer Tom King and Damon Lindelof (Watchmen) created the series, with Mundy serving as showrunner. James Hawes directed the first two episodes. Lanterns will be DC’s first series after Peacemaker, so the stakes are not small.

The premise alone sounds like a Curb Your Enthusiasm skit: Larry David and the Obamas team up for an American history sketch-comedy series? David will star in the limited series as historical characters who “didn’t change history,” his longtime collaborator Jeff Schaffer teased. The comedy is already off to a good start with its logline: “President and Mrs. Obama wanted to honor America’s 250th anniversary and celebrate the unique history of our nation on this special occasion. … But then Larry David called.”

Whether you want to blame (credit?) the popularity of trad wives, a robust streaming performance from the original series or just Hollywood’s bottomless fetish for IP, Little House on the Prairie is coming back for a reboot that’s not quite a reboot. The new TV iteration of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels about midwestern homesteaders is a major departure from the 1970s and ’80s series starring Michael Landon in that this one will take a narrative lead from the source material. For better or worse, that probably means it won’t end like the first adaptation — with production choosing to strike the set by blowing up the village of Walnut Grove on camera because the townspeople would rather see it burn than land in the wrong hands. How very American. 

Following the first three polarizing seasons of the Monster anthology — The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and The Ed Gein Story — the fourth season now centers on Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her parents in 1892. Ella Beatty stars in the title role, marking the first time Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster series has had a woman lead. Charlie Hunnam, who portrayed 1950s murderer Ed Gein in season three (released in October 2025), returns for Lizzie Borden as Lizzie’s father, Andrew Borden. In a July 2025 interview with THR, six weeks before the new season began filming, Brennan teased, “It’s really good. The cast we’re getting is bonkers. I should underpromise and overdeliver, but since we finished Gein and started writing Lizzie, I feel like we’re in a real groove with this.”

Samuel L. Jackson will take on his first-ever lead role in an ongoing TV series with NOLA King. A spinoff of Paramount+’s Tulsa King, Jackson’s character of Russell Lee Washington Jr. was introduced during season three of the Sylvester Stallone starrer.

NOLA King will follow Russell as he’s “sent to Tulsa by New York’s Renzetti crime family to take Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) out once and for all. Inspired by what Dwight created in Tulsa and impressed with the possibilities of second chances, Washington returns to New Orleans, the home he abandoned 40 years ago, to rekindle his relationship with his family, friends and to take control of the city he left behind.”

Even after the series finale of Stranger Things drops and the Duffer brothers move to Paramount in April 2026, both the show and its creators will continue to have a presence on Netflix. Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is an animated series that follows the original characters as they fight new monsters and attempt to solve a paranormal mystery terrorizing Hawkins during the winter of 1985. With the live-action Stranger Things continuously breaking ratings records for the streamer, it will be interesting to see whether the animated series takes off.

The Duffers are executive producers (but not creators) of two other series due on Netflix in 2026. The Boroughs follows residents of a retirement community — played by Geena Davis, Bill Pullman, Alfre Woodard and Alfred Molina, among others — who band together to stop a mysterious presence that’s literally stealing time from them. Something Bad Is Going to Happen follows a couple (Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco) whose wedding goes very, very wrong.

The Studio shook up Hollywood when its first season debuted, quickly sparking questions about its real-life inspirations and going on to win 13 Emmys, including the top prize of best comedy series after tying the record for most comedy nominations in a single season. Heading into season two, with Sarah Polley (who guest starred as the director in the meta “The Oner” episode in season one) in the writers room, co-creator, writer, director and star Seth Rogen was hopeful that The Studio‘s first-season accolades will make it easier to book even more big-name guest stars.

And while Hollywood figures are now more willing to be in the show, they may be less willing to pitch ideas. “I think when people were telling us stories, they didn’t think we’d actually use them,” Rogen previously told The Hollywood Reporter. “Now they know that we actually will.”

Rogen and co-creator Evan Goldberg have said that after a season that featured key entertainment industry events like the Golden Globes and CinemaCon, they’ve identified other big cultural moments to feature. And Rogen himself revealed what one of those might be when he popped up at the Venice Film Festival in the fall.

Speculation about a fourth Ted Lasso season began immediately after (or, let’s face it, before) the show’s third season seemingly wrapped up the story of an American football coach (Jason Sudeikis) brought in to lead a down-on-its-luck London soccer club. After a couple years of speculation and months of signs that it was gearing back up, Ted Lasso officially got the green light for a fourth season in March 2025. Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Jeremy Swift and Brendan Hunt will all reprise their roles in season four; Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely are new additions to the cast.

The coming season of the Emmy-winning show will follow Ted as he takes on coaching a women’s soccer team (which was hinted at in the closing episode of season three). Contrary to the show’s theme song by Marcus Mumford and Tom Howe, three seasons will not be all that we get.