2026 is shaping up to be a packed year on screen, and the calendar for upcoming TV shows 2026 is already stacked.
Between long-running favourites heading into their final chapters and fresh new series angling to become your next obsession, there’s a lot worth tracking. If you like having a game plan for what to watch next, this guide rounds up the biggest upcoming TV shows 2026 has on the way – so you can line up your queue now and skip the endless scroll when the year properly kicks off.
Read More: 2025 Emmys Unwrapped – Big Winners & Your Next Binge-Worthy Shows
The Pitt (Season Two)
When a show feels like it’s physically raising your heart rate, you know it’s doing something right – and ‘The Pitt’ was exactly that kind of watch. The awards attention only confirmed what the first season already made clear: this isn’t comfort viewing, it’s endurance. Season two arrives on 8 January, 2026, and it doesn’t ease you back in, dropping you straight into the same high-pressure world – this time over Fourth of July weekend, when everything is more volatile. Noah Wyle returns as Dr Robby, and the series keeps its real-time intensity, so each episode hits like another hour you have to survive alongside the staff, sitting with the adrenaline – and then the aftermath.
Platform: HBO Max
Premiere Date: January 2026
A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms
Recently announced as HBO Max’s next return to Westeros, ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ is taking a very different route than the dragons and dynasties of ‘House of the Dragon.’ Premiering on 18 January, 2026, the series adapts George R.R. Martin’s ‘Tales of Dunk and Egg’ novellas and follows a wandering hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall, played by Peter Claffey, as he scrapes out a living on the road with a young squire known as Egg, played by Dexter Sol Ansell. What starts as a simple partnership quickly takes on much bigger gravity once it becomes clear Egg is not just any boy, but Aegon Targaryen in disguise, which lets the story zoom in on Westeros at ground level, where reputation is currency, survival is never guaranteed, and the most dangerous things are often human.
Platform: HBO Max
Premiere Date: 18 January
Shrinking (Season Three)
Like a lot of Apple TV’s best shows, ‘Shrinking’ looks deceptively easy at first glance – a comforting dramedy with familiar faces and a light-touch premise – and then it lands the emotional hit and you realise it has been setting you up the whole time. Season 3 brings Jason Segel back as therapist Jimmy Laird, still living with the consequences of the choice that blew open his life after his wife’s death, and still trying to make sense of the damage his unfiltered honesty left in its wake. What makes the show work is the way it keeps you laughing just long enough to lower your guard, then turns around and gets uncomfortably sincere, sitting with grief and loneliness without polishing them into something neat.
Platform: Apple TV
Premiere Date: 28 January
Bridgerton (Season Four)
‘Bridgerton’ is shifting its spotlight to Benedict for season four, and it feels like the show is finally ready to test what happens when its most charming free spirit runs into a love story he can’t keep at arm’s length. Luke Thompson’s Benedict has always been the sibling who hovers at the edges of society, flirting with freedom, art, and anything that doesn’t require permanence – but that changes the night he meets Sophie Baek. Played by Yerin Ha, she arrives at Violet Bridgerton’s masquerade as the ‘Lady in Silver,’ the kind of stranger who stops a room, and Benedict, who usually knows how to glide past feelings, suddenly can’t. From there, the season is set up to do what ‘Bridgerton’ does best: lure you in with fantasy and fun, then let the romance turn into something more cutting, as Benedict is forced to confront commitment, identity, and the unsettling discovery that wanting something real is far more terrifying than wanting nothing at all.
Platform: Netflix
Premiere Date: 29 January
Love Story
Another glossy ‘true story’ that’s really about power, image, and what fame does to people, ‘Love Story’ puts the JFK Jr-Carolyn Bessette Kennedy romance under Ryan Murphy’s direction. Set to arrive in February 2026 during Valentine’s Day week, it casts Paul Kelly as John F. Kennedy Jr and Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn, while Naomi Watts and Grace Gummer step in to widen the lens – bringing Jackie O and Caroline Kennedy into the frame and showing how quickly a private relationship becomes something the public tries to possess. The series is expected to track the rush of falling in love under a spotlight that never softens: the Kennedy name as constant pressure, the tabloids as a daily intrusion, and the slow, intimate fractures that appear when a marriage is treated like public property – building toward the couple’s tragic 1999 plane crash. In the US it’s slated for FX and Hulu, with Disney+ expected to carry it internationally, positioning it as Murphy’s next major pop-culture flashpoint.
Platform: Disney+
Premiere Date: 14 February
Daredevil: Born Again (Season Two)
Fantastical in the way it turns pain into pulp entertainment, ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ is bringing Marvel back to the dirty end of the street when season two lands in March 2026. Charlie Cox returns as Matt Murdock, trapped in that familiar double life where the courtroom never stops and the mask never really comes off, with Hell’s Kitchen pressing in on him from every side. The most exciting development is Krysten Ritter stepping back in as Jessica Jones – a return that instantly shifts the chemistry and adds another jagged voice to the mix, one that’s always been better at calling the truth than playing nice. If season one reintroduced the grit, season two looks ready to tighten the screws: digging into old rivalries, new threats, and the kind of character-first darkness where every win still leaves a bruise.
Platform: Disney+
Premiere Date: 4 March
One Piece (Season Two)
‘One Piece’ has always sounded like an impossible assignment in live action, and yet Netflix pulled it off, winning over both first-time viewers and longtime fans who care a lot about getting this world right. Now it’s back for season two in March 2026, and it looks set to go bigger in the ways that matter, not just louder. Luffy and the Straw Hats push further into the Grand Line, where every island feels like its own world and the fights come with real consequences, but the draw is still the same. You get the scale, sure, but you also get the characters growing up in real time, testing loyalties, tightening bonds, and figuring out what they are willing to lose for the dream. If season one proved it could work, season two is where it gets to expand the map and raise the emotional weight at the same time.
Platform: Netflix
Premiere Date: 10 March
The Comeback (Season Three)
With its last season airing more than a decade ago, ‘The Comeback’ is doing the most Valerie Cherish thing possible and returning anyway. Lisa Kudrow is back for a third and final season in March 2026, landing almost 20 years after the show first debuted in 2005, and the long gap is part of the joke and the sting. Valerie is once again trying to stay relevant in an industry that keeps rewriting the rules, this time with a storyline that leans straight into the current moment as she books the lead in a new sitcom written by AI. It is still biting, still painfully on the money, still built around that familiar mix of secondhand embarrassment and real tenderness, and if this really is the goodbye, it’s set up to give Valerie one last wild, oddly moving send off.
Platform: HBO Max
Premiere Date: March 2026
The Boys (Season Five)
Supes, scandals, and bloodshed: ‘The Boys’ is gearing up for its fifth and final season, and it looks set to go out in the messiest way possible. After season four left loyalties scrambled and the line between hero and villain basically erased, the endgame is now in sight, with a mid 2026 release expected to bring the main storylines to a head. This is still the show’s sweet spot, savage humour, brutal action, and twists that feel like a dare, but there’s also real pressure on the finale to stick the landing after years of escalation. Add in the growing crossover weight of ‘Gen V,’ and season five has to do two jobs at once, deliver a satisfying ending for the core crew and prove the wider universe was worth building.
Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Premiere Date: 8 April
Euphoria (Season Three)
Another long-delayed return that feels like a moment, ‘Euphoria’ is finally back in April 2026, and the time away since season two is part of what makes the comeback feel so loaded. After four years of Rue’s story sitting in limbo, the series is set to slip back into that familiar haze of euphoria and dread, where every high has a cost and every choice echoes louder than you expect. Zendaya returns as Rue, still carrying the weight of everything she’s survived and everything she’s broken, with Sam Levinson’s show leaning back into its unflinching heat. Season three is also expected to jump the timeline forward, pushing these characters into a different chapter of their lives where the mess doesn’t disappear – it just changes shape.
Platform: HBO Max
Premiere Date: April 2026
Lanterns
Definitely one of the most intriguing DC projects on the slate, HBO’s ‘Lanterns’ looks like it’s aiming for something moodier and more stripped-back than the usual superhero playbook. Instead of leaning into colourful cosmic flash, it takes the Green Lantern mythology and reframes it as a detective story, with the kind of atmosphere that’s closer to ‘True Detective’ than capes and quips. The appeal is watching multiple Lanterns work the same case, following clues that hint at something bigger than any one hero, while the show carves out its own identity in the wider DC lineup, especially next to the more chaotic, joke-heavy energy of ‘Peacemaker.’
Platform: HBO Max
Premiere Date: Early 2026
House Of The Dragon (Season Three)
Possibly the biggest fantasy TV event on the horizon, ‘House of the Dragon’ returns in summer 2026 with season three, and the Dance of the Dragons is finally tipping into its most brutal stretch. The new run is expected to open with the Battle of the Gullet, throwing us straight back into a war that is no longer simmering, it is fully boiling over. Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), Daemon (Matt Smith), and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) remain at the centre of the fallout, as alliances harden and every move starts to feel like a point of no return. There are new faces stepping into the conflict too, including more knights and power players entering the board just as the stakes widen, and with HBO already mapping this story to end at season four, season three looks like the chapter where the series really swings for scale.
Platform: HBO Max
Premiere Date: Summer 2026
Elle
Chances are, if you grew up on ‘Legally Blonde,’ you’ve wondered what Elle Woods was like before she walked into Harvard in pink and made everyone look silly for underestimating her. That’s basically the hook of Elle, Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming prequel series that rewinds the timeline to Elle’s teenage years, when she’s still figuring out who she is and why she refuses to fit into anyone else’s idea of grown-up. The interesting challenge here is the one every prequel has, we already know where she ends up, so the pull has to come from the getting-there: the friendships, the heartbreaks, the small moments that build the confidence she’s famous for. Done right, it could land like a bright, fun coming-of-age story with a built-in destination, more ‘Carrie Diaries’ energy than retread, and still leave room to surprise us with a few new dimensions along the way.
Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Premiere Date: Summer 2026
Only Murders In The Building (Season Six)
Surely one of streaming’s most reliably entertaining comfort watches, ‘Only Murders in the Building’ is coming back for season six and it is doing the smartest thing it can do: pulling Charles, Oliver, and Mabel out of their New York routine and dropping them into a brand new mystery in London. The renewal was announced right as season five closed with its classic final twist, the sudden death of true crime rival Cinda Canning, putting Tina Fey’s character at the centre of the next case. After years of keeping the show rooted in the same world, the London switch feels like a smart way to keep the formula fresh without losing what people actually come for, the trio’s bickering chemistry, the cosy comedy, and the way the show can turn a murder setup into character drama you weirdly care about. Hulu has not locked a premiere date yet, but season six is expected to land sometime in 2026.
Platform: Disney+
Premiere Date: Late 2026
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Season Two)
Definitely one of the more ambitious fantasy returns on the calendar, Netflix’s live action ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ is back in 2026, and it feels like the story is about to widen in a big way. After season one did the heavy lifting of introducing Aang and the stakes of a world at war, season two moves into the Earth Kingdom era, where the choices get messier and the show has room to go deeper with its characters without losing that sense of wonder that made the original resonate. Netflix has already confirmed the introduction of Toph, and with seasons two and three filmed back to back and season three wrapped as the final season, it is clearly building toward something more committed and larger in scope.
Platform: Netflix
Premiere Date: TBA 2026
Hollywood Arts
‘Hollywood Arts’ is tapping straight into the ‘Victorious’ nostalgia machine, but it’s not trying to simply replay the old hits. Daniella Monet returns as Trina Vega, now older, louder, and somehow even more convinced she’s destined for greatness, only this time she’s back at Hollywood Arts as an unqualified substitute teacher. The setup basically writes itself: Trina trying to command a room full of genuinely talented kids, clashing with them, occasionally inspiring them by accident, and spiralling into the kind of mayhem that made her a fan favourite in the first place. Monet is also on board as an executive producer, and the show is set to introduce a new cast of students while keeping the same high school backdrop that made the original feel like its own little universe. If it works, it’ll be the rare spinoff that feels like a love letter and a new chapter.
Platform: Netflix
Premiere Date: TBA 2026
Born in Korea and raised in Hong Kong, Min Ji has combined her degree in anthropology and creative writing with her passion for going on unsolicited tangents as an editor at Friday Club. In between watching an endless amount of movies, she enjoys trying new cocktails and pastas while occasionally snapping a few pictures.
