Latest Time Out worldwide features

Is it safe to say movies are back? Sure, there’s still plenty of anxiety around the film industry and its future. But cinematically speaking, 2026 has gotten off to, arguably, the most blazing hot start since the pre-pandemic glory days, both critically and at the box office.  Of course, for our purposes, we like to focus on the creative successes, and it’s rare for the first quarter of any year to produce so many achievements of various scopes and budgets. Any time you get both a Project Hail Mary and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – not to mention leftfield triumphs like The Testament of Ann Lee, Sirât and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain – all before the calendar’s halfway point, you know it’s a good time to be a film fan, especially when there are new spectacles from Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Marvel and the Dune franchise on the horizon.  But that’s later. Here’s the best of what we’ve seen so far.  📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)📕 15 book-to-movie adaptations to get excited about in 2026🔥 The 40 best movies of 2025

One of the greatest advantages of living in a city is having world-class art and culture right on your doorstep. On any given day, you can spend the morning seeing world-famous works of art, the afternoon browsing bookshops and poking around indie galleries, and the evening at a comedy night (or the theatre, or a gig). Then there’s all the other stuff, like neighbourhood cinemas, street art, traditional festivals and museum lates. The best bit? In many of the world’s best cities, you can experience all that wonderful human creativity for free.  Every year, Time Out sets out to find today’s cultural capitals, where enviable art collections, brilliant theatre, music and cultural celebrations are accessible and affordable to locals and visitors. To create the list this year, we asked 24,000 locals in over 150 cities to rate the quality and affordability of the culture scene where they live, and to tell us exactly what their city does best, from comedy and carnivals to live music and literature. We then combined their responses with the insight of Time Out’s culture panel – editors, writers and local experts – who voted for the cities they think are particularly exciting places to visit for culture and the arts right now. To ensure the list reflects the best cities for culture globally, we included only the highest-scoring cities for each country. In every city on this list, you’ll find legendary arts venues and absolutely jam-packed cultural calendars. Time Out’s local...

With the return of popular animes like Jujutsu Kaisen and Frieren in January, this year in anime kicked off pretty early with heroic characters, cutting-edge animation, and rave reviews from dedicated fanbases. But if the spring anime calendar offers any hints for what is to come, anime fans (or otakus and weebs, as the vernacular goes) are eating good in 2026. New titles like Witch Hat Atelier and Daemons of the Shadow Realm have already won over audiences with their early episodes, while cult favourites like Hell’s Paradise and Dorohedoro are returning to our screens after an overlong hiatus. There’s a lot to catch up on. So, here’s how to get started with the best anime of the year so far.  📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)🇯🇵 The best anime movies of all time, ranked🔥 The best movies of 2026 (so far)

Updates for 2026: Indisputably, the two most talked-about movies of 2025 were also among the best of the century. Ryan Coogler’s gangster-vampire-blues-musical-period-piece Sinners proved that original stories can still draw huge audiences, while One Battle After Another confirmed Paul Thomas Anderson as the brightest filmmaking mind of his generation. Movies entered the 21st century riding a high. It’s been argued – notably in Brian Raftery’s book ‘Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen’ – that 1999 was, well, the best year for mainstream movies ever. And by and large, the films of the new millennium have kept that same energy. Sure, the combination of internet piracy, the rise of streaming, the pandemic, and ongoing corporate consolidation may have pushed movies out from the centre of the cultural conversation. But in terms of cinematic innovation, it’s hard to think of a more progressive two-decade span. Genres have become mixed, matched and broken down to create brand new forms of movie language, and more diverse stories are being told than ever before. Blockbusters have reached Godzilla-levels of hugeness, while small, strange indies have reached mass audiences that were once considered unattainable. If cinema in the 21st century has been defined by tumult, it’s also proven the ability of filmmakers to rise to the moment. These 100 movies represent the best of the quarter century so far. Written by David Fear, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich, Stephen...

The horror business is booming right now. Over the last few years, it’s become one of the movie industry’s most bankable genres, financially and creatively. Ryan Coogler has already made Oscar-nomination history with a vampire flick of all things, while the combination of Barbarian and Weapons has made director Zach Cregger one of Hollywood’s most exciting new voices – and that’s to say nothing of the huge box-office success of franchise entries like The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination Bloodlines and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.Only a few months into 2026, and the year in horror is already off to another good start, between 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, entertaining killer monkey ripper Primate and Sam Raimi’s return-to-form, Send Help. Nothing on the docket for the rest of the year immediately screams ‘blockbuster,’ but that’s the great thing about horror: like a bump in the night, the hits often come from unexpected places. Here’s what has stood out like a bloody knife so far. 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)🧟 The 100 greatest horror movies ever made

If you were lucky enough to grow up pre-Y2K, you would have likely known little about Korea beyond the conflict in the back pages of your school history book. But that all changed when, in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the country doubled down on funding exportable pop culture in an attempt to rebrand the country on the world stage. The gambit, part designed to attract big business and tourism, was a wild success – and now we have K-Pop, K-dramas and kimchi pouring out of our ears. One of the biggest proponents of the ‘hallyu’ wave, though, has always been filmmaking – with Hollywood-style action blockbuster Shiri; brutal revenge thriller Oldboy; and Academy Awards triumph Parasite among the most resounding victories of a national cinema revitalised from the brink of anonymity. We simply can’t get enough of it today. And for good reason: South Korea is a goldmine of original ideas and storytelling talents who show no signs of taking their feet off the gas as the industry thrives. So why not huff on the metaphorical fumes? Our list of the best Korean movies of all time billows below.Recommended:🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies of all-time🇯🇵 The 50 best Japanese movies of all-time🇭🇰 The 100 best Hong Kong movies of all-time🇮🇹 The best Italian movies of all time: from Bicycle Thieves to The Great Beauty

It’s not easy being a teen. The specifics change from generation to generation, but the struggle is universal: you’re perched between childhood and adulthood, trying to figure out the world and yourself, as your hormones rage and your peers are at their cruellest. So it’s no surprise that filmmakers continually return to their high-school years for inspiration – it’s at once the most dramatic and hilarious time in anyone’s life. Unsurprisingly, Netflix has a ton of movies exploring the trials, tribulations and emotional turbulence of adolescence. And it isn’t all awkward sex and overblown emotions – though there’s plenty of both, of course. On this list of the best teen movies currently streaming on Netflix, you’ll find good-natured romcoms, young-adult dramas, movies about superheroes, basketball, vampires and cheating on college entrance exams.  Recommended: 🧒 The 100 best teen movies of all-time🤣 The 100 best comedy movies👪 The best family movies on Netflix for all ages🤗 The best feelgood movies on Netflix

Look, long movies are great. Luxuriating in a slow-moving epic that spans generations? It’s the stuff cinephiles live for. But sometimes, life intervenes, and plonking down on the couch for two-plus hours and drifting off into another world isn’t an option. In the situations where time is tight, or you just don’t have the brain capacity or attention span for anything longer, you might simply be in the market for a quick-hit dose of entertainment before moving on with your life. If that’s the case, these 25 sub-90-minute gems are exactly what you’re looking for.  Recommended: 🆓 35 legitimately great movies you can watch for free on YouTube🔥 The best movies of 2026 (so far)📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2026 (so far)

At this point, Wes Anderson needs no introduction, nor do many movie fans need to be convinced how to feel about his work. Either you find his delicate, immaculate world-building good enough to eat, or you react to his twee sensibilities with nausea. No matter where on the spectrum you fall, though, Anderson is one of the most distinctive filmmakers of his generation, if not all-time. We’ve ranked his movies from worst to best – and despite his detractors’ claims, his films are different enough to distinguish between.   Recommended: 🎬 The best Quentin Tarantino movies, ranked 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time📽️ The best films of 2025 (so far)

With the return of The Night Manager, Industry and Hulu’s A Thousand Blows, the home viewing year has kicked off in head-spinning style. And with HBO’s Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Netflix’s How to Get To Heaven From Belfast, the latest from the creator of Derry Girls, the array of small-screen offerings are landing at dizzying speeds well into the spring. We have stopped at nothing – not sleep, not family responsibilities – to watch all of it and curate this list of the best shows to give your limited spare time over to. You don’t have forever to spend on the sofa so make it count with something from our list of the best of the year so far. Recommended: 📽️ The best movies of 2026 (so far)🔥 The best TV and streaming shows of 2025📺 The 100 greatest TV shows of all time