7 massive sci-fi shows coming in 2026 you need to know about

2025 is over, and despite a few let-downs it was a banner year for TV. Sci-fi shows shone especially bright in 2025, with Apple in particular bringing the heat with series like Severance and Pluribus.

2026 could be an even bigger year for sci-fi, with Apple, Paramount, HBO, Netflix, and more all stepping up to the plate. So get out your calenders and check out our guide to the most exciting sci-fi shows coming your way over the next 12 months.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy (January 15)

The new final frontier

Sci-fi franchises don’t get much bigger than Star Trek, and next year, Paramount is planning a big new swing: Starfleet Academy will be set later in the Star Trek timeline than any show or movie before it, and will revolve around young cadets training to be officers. The show features some serious star power, with Oscar winner Holly Hunter as Starfleet Academy chancellor Nahla Ake and Paul Giamatti as the villain. And of course, there will be a whole new cast of cadets to get to know.

Later in the year, we’ll also get to watch the fourth and final season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, an episodic series that harkens back to the franchise’s early days. There’s no release date for that one yet.

Release Date: January 15, 2026
Network: Paramount+
Showrunner: Alex Kurtzman, Noga Landau

Karim Diane

Jay-Den Kraag
Kerrice Brooks

Series Acclimation Mil ‘Sam’

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2 (February 27)

Kaiju party

Apple has mostly made original sci-fi series, but their one big IP play is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, set in a world populated by Godzilla, King Kong, and other gigantic kaiju. The second season will focus more on Kong, as our cast of monster researchers spend time on Skull Island.

The biggest stars in Monarch are Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell, who play present and past versions of military man Lee Shaw. Shaw appeared to sacrifice himself at the end of season 1, but he appears in the trailer for season 2, so…stay tuned, I guess.

Release Date: November 16, 2023
Network: Apple TV+
Showrunner: Chris Black, Matt Fraction

Kiersey Clemons

Michelle Duvall

X-Men ‘97 season 2 (summer)

Astonishing

Mutants are created through genetic mutations, so I’m counting X-Men ’97 as a sci-fi show on the barest of technicalities. The first season of this animated nostalgia fest stranded members of the superhero team throughout time, setting up a second season that will bring in popular characters like Apocalypse and Cable.

Marvel will be busy in 2026. They also have a show about the superhero Wonder Man, set to debut on January 27, and another about the synthetic android Vision, coming later in the year: VisionQuest.

Release Date: March 20, 2024
Directors: Jake Castorena
Writers: Beau DeMayo
Franchise(s): X-Men

Lanterns

DC on TV

Not to be outdone by Marvel, DC is also readying a couple of shows for 2026, the biggest of which is Lanterns, a live-action HBO series about two members of the Green Lantern Corps, a peacekeeping organization with agents placed throughout the entire universe. The main characters are Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), who, like all Green Lanterns, can use their wills to create weapons, shields, and other tools. Nathan Fillion is also on hand to reprise his role as Guy Gardner from 2025’s Superman movie. May the best superhero cinematic universe win.We don’t know exactly when during the year Lanterns will come out, which is true of all the remaining entries on this list. Sticking with DC, there’s also a third season of the animated show My Adventures With Superman coming sometime in 2026.

Network: HBO
Directors: James Hawes
Writers: Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof
Franchise(s): DC Universe

Aaron Pierre

John Stewart
Kelly Macdonald

Sheriff Kerry

Blade Runner 2099

A sci-fi classic comes to the small screen

That’s enough superhero stuff; let’s get back to proper sci-fi. Blade Runner 2099 is a new show in the long-running Blade Runner franchise, about a dystopian future where bio-engineered humanoid beings called replicants are exploited for their labor. The new show is a sequel to both the original Blade Runner movie and Blade Runner 2049, which means it has a lot to live up to because those movies are both classics.

But we know very little about Blade Runner 2099, which is why that’s a trailer for 2049 above; they’ve released basically nothing about this series as of yet. The biggest thing we know is that Oscar-winning Michelle Yeoh will play a replicant named Olwen who’s nearing the end of her life cycle. Production started way back in 2024, so smart money has this show coming out in 2026.

Network: Prime Video
Directors: Jonathan van Tulleken
Writers: Silka Luisa
Franchise(s): Blade Runner

3 Body Problem season 2

Earth to aliens: bring it on

3 Body Problem, the smartest sci-fi show on Netflix, is set to return in 2026 and continue the story about how Earthlings push back against an alien civilization that’s decided to make Earth its new home. They show every sign of being hostile, but it will take them hundreds of years to reach us, which gives us time to prepare.This show is based on Liu Cixin’s novel trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The second season will adapt the second book, The Dark Forest, with a third and final season wrapping things up with an adaptation of Death’s End sometime later. The books just get weirder as they go, and considering how solid the first season was, I expect the show to keep pace.

3 Body Problem Netflix Show Poster Featuring a Close-Up of an Eyeball with the release date 3-21-24 on the Pupil

Release Date: March 21, 2024
Directors: Minkie Spiro, Derek Tsang
Writers: David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Alexander Woo

Neuromancer

The original cyberpunk story finally comes to TV

Apple will bring us more original sci-fi in the form of Neuromancer, an adaptation of William Gibson’s seminal sci-fi book about a near-future dystopia where corporations act as sovereign nations, people augment their bodies with technology, data is power, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is frighteningly cavernous. With our world catching up to Gibson’s vision, it seems like the right time to finally adapt this classic for the screen.

The actual plot of Neuromancer involves a hacker named Case (Callum Turner) who’s recruited to help with a high-stakes heist. There’s an outside chance this show might be pushed to 2027, but it’s been filming since early 2025, so I’m hopeful.

5 sci‑fi thrillers that unravel one episode at a time

Prepare for a thrilling journey through time and space as these expertly crafted sci-fi series build tension with every episode, leading to jaw-dropping revelations.

3 minor sci-fi shows coming in 2026 you could know about

I tried to focus on some of the big tent-pole sci-fi shows coming out in 2026, but there are a few more, including these series spun off from major franchises:

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord: An animated series about Darth Maul, covering what he was doing during the height of the Galactic Empire
Star Wars Visions Presents: This spinoff of Star Wars: Visions will expand on the animated short The Ninth Jedi from the original Visions show.
Stranger Things: Tales from ’85: This animated spinoff is set between the second and third seasons of Netflix’s Stranger Things, which is coming to an end.