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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

Updated for 2026: The year 2025 gave us two new great sports movies, about two entirely different sports: ping-pong in the feature-length panic attack of Marty Supreme and, well, F1 in F1: The Movie, a more straightforward car-racing drama that nevertheless features some of the most breathless race scenes ever put on film. For non-fans, sports might seem trivial – frivolous games played by millionaires who make more money than teachers and doctors. On the surface, those detractors aren’t entirely wrong. But if you look closer, sports are also a natural conduit for drama, for triumphant displays of the human spirit and, sometimes, for reminders that things don’t always turn out the way we want them.  Clearly, it’s no surprise why filmmakers often look to sports for inspiration. Sure, it’s a genre built on clichés. But the best sports movies are able to surprise us, either by turning the tropes inside-out or delivering them with such emotional authenticity, they punch audiences in the hearts regardless. On this list of the 50 greatest sports movies of all-time, you’ll find examples of both. Scotchgard your couch, because you’re going to be jumping on it a lot. RECOMMENDED:🤾 The best Olympics movies🏀 The best basketball movies🌊 The 15 most epic surf movies🔎 The best biopics of all-time, ranked

Updates for 2026: It's not surprise that the Ryan Gosling-starring megahit Project Hail Mary has been added to our space movie canon — it's both a major-league blockbuster and an extraordinary piece of entertainment.  Space may be the final frontier, but filmmakers have been dreaming of it ever since the medium was invented. Indeed, even after humans made it there, cinema’s obsession with the universe beyond our small rock hasn’t abated, nor has interest from the general public – see the recent Artemis II mission, a rare moment of collective awe in a time of constant anger and unrest.  It’s not hard to understand why. Its infinite vastness is essentially a blank canvas on which to ponder all sorts of big ideas, whether it’s mankind’s place in the void, the human desire for exploration or the simple fear of the ultimate unknown. That’s why the ‘space movie’ deserves to be considered its own genre. Yes, many science-fiction movies are set in space. But not all movies about space are necessarily science fiction. Here are our picks for the 30 best movies that travel to infinity… and in many cases, beyond. Recommended: 👽 The 100 best science fiction movies of all-time😬 The 100 best thriller films of all-time💣 The 101 best action movies ever made🦄 The 50 best fantasy movies of all-time 

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)

War has long fascinated filmmakers, going back to the birth of cinema, but none have proven so endlessly enthralling as World War II. It’s understandable, given the remarkable scale of the destruction, the atrocities involved and what it represented in the grand scheme of human history. So many movies have been made about the conflict, it almost stands apart from other war movies as a genre unto itself – and we’ll almost certainly see many more over the coming decades. It’s a daunting task, then, to choose the best World War II movies ever made. That’s why, along with polling our well-studied Time Out writers, we also called in an outside expert to come up with this definitive list: Quentin Tarantino, a man who knows a thing or two about making a great WWII film. Among the selections, you’ll find wide-scale epics, personal dramas, devastating documentaries, historical revisions and even a comedy or two. War, as we all know, is good for absolutely nothing – but at least we have these films to help make some sense of it. Written by Tom Huddleston, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Anna Smith, David Jenkins, Dan Jolin, Phil de Semlyen, Alim Kheraj & Matthew Singer Recommended: ⚔️ The 50 best war movies of all-time🎖️ The best World War I movies, ranked by historical accuracy🇺🇸 The 20 best Memorial Day movies

From the calming landscapes and detailed fantasy worlds of Studio Ghibli classics to the cyberpunk chaos of manga adaptations Akira and Ghost in the Shell, anime films have come to rule our imaginations with their sprawling worldbuilding, hand-drawn designs and stirring heroes. And there aren’t just for children: Studio Ghibli legend Hayao Miyazaki has given us childhood classics like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service, but don’t neglect the likes of Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Paprika), whose animations explore the human condition and our technological anxieties in stunning style.Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks still offer animated Hollywood fare but anime has become a rival not just in terms of quality but box office too. The ten highest-grossing Japanese films worldwide are all anime hits: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, Your Name, Spirited Away and more. For the uninitiated, it can be a lot to take in, but we’re here to help with our list of the best classic and contemporary anime films. Fire up Crunchyroll and prepare to get obsessed. Recommended: ✍️ The 100 best animated films of all-time🇯🇵 The best Japanese movies ever made🤖 The 10 best Pixar movies🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all-time

Hiking is having a moment right now. Brand-new trails – including the world’s longest coastal path – are opening left, right and centre. Plus, more of us than ever are choosing active, mindful and sustainable experiences when we travel. To help you plan your next great hike, we’ve rounded up the best hiking holidays the world over, from Europe’s very own Jurassic Park to the bonnie lochs of the West Highland Way and desert landscapes in the Middle East. Each hike has been tried and tested by our globetrotting network of travel writers, so read on for all the info on where to go, when to go and how long to set aside, plus tips and tricks and the best sights to look for along the way. All you need to do is pack your bags. These are the world’s greatest hikes, according to Time Out. Updated April 2026: We’ve added two Spanish hikes to the list to help you plan your summer treks. RECOMMENDED:🌲 The best national parks in the world ⛰️ The best destinations for solo female travellers🌊 The most spectacular places to swim in the world🏝️ The best beaches in the world🚂 The best train journeys around the world

Want to get away? Of course you do. After all, the real world isn’t exactly giving most of us too many reasons to want to stay put. Film is a powerful tool for escaping reality, and no genre can transport you to a different place better than fantasy. Need to forget all the war and oppression and violence and learn some spells, slay dragons or just get stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over until you discover the true meaning of love? Just refer to walk with elves and orcs? A great fantasy film won’t just show you a different universe – it will take you there. Yes, fantasy is the ultimate form of escapism. But for the purposes of this list, we’re not limiting the definition of ‘fantasy’ to epics set in alternate dimensions and faraway planets. You’ll also find movies of a more surreal bent, and some that reimagine our own planet as a place where magic, mystery and adventure is hiding in plain sight. Recommended: 🦸🏿 50 amazing comic-book movies🛸 The 100 best sci-fi movies of all time👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made👾 The 50 best ’80s movies, ranked

Updated February 2026: There’s been a drought of standout studio comedies over the last five to 10 years, which makes the Liam Neeson-starring remake of The Naked Gun even more of a comedic miracle. It joins both the 1988 original and director Akiva Schaffer’s previous spoof, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, on our list of the funniest movies ever. As a general rule, comedy doesn’t age well. It’s a medium highly dependent upon context, and what’s considered funny now might be met with blank stares 100 years from now. So when a movie can still crack audiences up decades or even a century down the line, that’s the sign of a classic comedy – and given how hard it is to pull off a truly timeless comedy, it’s really one of the most impressive accomplishments in cinema.  Perhaps it’s the degree of difficulty that’s made successful comedies so rare in recent years. Gradually, though, the laughter drought is starting to recede. In 2025, absurd farces like the rebooted Naked Gun and Tim Robinson’s Friendship found enthusiastic audiences, and the first quarter of 2026 has already brought the instant cult classic Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. Will they still have us LOLing years down the line? Hard to say. These 100 great comedies, however, have already stood the test of time. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🤣 The best comedies of 2024🥰 The greatest romantic comedies of all time

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