Latest Time Out worldwide features

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

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

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

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 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

There’s no such thing as a perfect city, but you can bet hubs that boast brilliant spots to eat, admire art, dance and shop are all top-tier places to be. And if all those things fall within walking distance of each other? Well, that’s even better.  Time Out conducts an enormous annual city survey – which, for our tenth anniversary edition, quizzed no less than 24,000 urbanites – asking about everything from nightlife to street food, dating to transport, and vitally, how easy it is to discover the city on foot.  We used all that crucial insight from locals to produce Time Out’s Best Cities with Intrepid Travel, which crowned Melbourne as the overall best city for 2026. However, plenty of places were commended for being particularly pedestrian-friendly. We love a walkable city at Time Out – after all, low-traffic streets and the chance to get more steps in is a win-win for people and for the environment – so we’ve compiled a ranking of the planet’s most walkable metropolises. The ranking is based on the highest percentage of locals who rated their city’s walkability ‘good’ or ‘amazing’ in our annual survey. To ensure the list reflects the best pedestrian-friendly cities globally, we included the highest scoring city for each country. So, ready for a stroll? These are the most walkable cities in the world right now, all according to locals who live in them.  RECOMMENDED:🍃 The world’s best cities for green spaces and nature

Sometimes, all you want out of a movie is to make you feel good. It’s a stressful world, especially these days, and the best way to snap out of a funk is to flop on the couch and throw something light and easy on Netflix. And the streamer has plenty of cinematic sunshine waiting to be injected directly into your nervous system.  It’s important to know what you’re putting on, however. Not every movie is designed to provide the dopamine rush to help ease your anxiety; some will make it worse. So before taking a hit of vitamin PG, peruse this list of musicals, romantic comedies and animated flicks comprising the 30 best feel-good movies currently on Netflix. They’re guaranteed to cure what ails you. Recommended: 🤣 The 100 best comedy movies💃 The 40 best musical movies👪 The best family movies on Netflix for all ages