By Dan Brown

Like a cornered she-wolf protecting her pups, the New Year is upon us.

This week, I’m in the mood to look ahead and ask – what’s going to be the biggest thing in pop culture in 2026?

What event, person, or product will define the next 12 months?

Will movie theatres sell even fewer tickets? Will Taylor and Travis tie the knot? Will people continue to exit social media? What will the song of the summer be? What will the most-popular film, meme, TV series, book, and podcast be?

Only someone who is deluded or dangerous would give answers to those questions with 100 per cent certainty.

So while I don’t have an all-powerful crystal ball, I do have some thoughts.

For starters, AI. 

If last year is any indication, the advocates who are pushing artificial intelligence on the rest of us will crack on. Their goal: Making the general public think AI is inevitable.

But from what I’ve seen so far, I’m not impressed by tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. I’m a skeptic on this one, so the question for me is: What are the odds the AI bubble will burst before 2027 a la the dotcom downturn of the 1990s?

Merriam-Webster Dictionary got it right when their editors chose “slop” as the one word that defines 2025. If present trends continue, perhaps the word of 2026 will be “crap” or “crud.”

At the movie theatres, people are buying fewer tickets. The entertainment data firm EntTelligence, quoted in the Los Angeles Times this week, says there were 800 million theatre tickets sold in 2024, but 760 million sold in 2025. (Those figures are for the U.S., I’m assuming.) Even the higher figure doesn’t match pre-pandemic levels.

There may be more people watching movies this year, they just aren’t watching them at the multiplex.

One motion picture that I am looking forward to seeing on the big screen is Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey, which is not a prequel to 2001. It arrives July 17. It could be interesting. As for the much-memed Avengers: Doomsday, I’m still on the fence.

Other questions on my mind: Which entertainment figure will the Trump administration go after, as the U.S. President did with Jimmy Kimmel last year? What effect will Trump have on the proposed sale of the venerable Warner Bros. studio to Netflix? (He’s already said he will be involved in the federal government’s approval process.)

You also can’t discount the stuff that happens in any given year that nobody saw coming. 

The obvious example from last year would be the December slaying of director Rob Reiner, whose filmography included one of the best motion-picture comedies of all time, This is Spinal Tap, as well as The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Stand By Me, and Misery.

What will the big concert tour be? Which comedian will survive being cancelled? Will a seeming generation of stars – last year it was Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Brigitte Bardot, and Ozzy Osbourne – pass into history before our eyes?

Will something as simple as an album cover provoke controversy, as Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend did last August?

Whatever happens, I will be here to document it all. 

And here’s hoping 2026 brings us more happy surprises than tragic ones!

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.