James Whitbrook is the Lead Editor of io9, with an expertise in covering Stars of the Wars and Trek varieties, as well as anime, games, and collectibles. You can follow his coverage here, and email tips to [email protected].

The Top Story:

Since 2019, Star Wars has found itself a new form as a primarily streaming franchise, as plans to use the series to anchor Disney’s then-new streaming service with high-profile universes gave us a whole new slice of Star Wars in the form of The Mandalorian. In the years since, we’ve gotten giddy highs and dizzying lows for Star Wars TV, but behind the scenes, a regular cycle of movie project announcements crumbling into dust has all but eroded confidence in Lucasfilm and Disney’s ability to actually release a Star Wars movie—a wild thing to consider for a franchise that has spent generations revolutionizing the moviemaking world.

All that changes in May 2026, but maybe not quite as much as we think it could. The Mandalorian & Grogu, the first Star Wars movie in the best part of a decade, jetpacks the series that made Star Wars a streaming stalwart (for better or worse) into movie theaters for the first time. Even with five months to go, the film is tightly under wraps with just a singular, vibes-heavy teaser to its name so far—but all eyes will be on its performance as the galaxy far, far away tries to chart its way back to the big screen in a major way.

What We’re Waiting For

Another interesting aspect of Star Wars‘ transitory year back to the box office is that, for now at least, Star Wars‘ streaming TV future is uncertain in a way that it hasn’t felt like during any point in the last seven years. Just three TV projects have projected 2026 dates—the animated miniseries Maul: Shadow Lord and the series-length continuation of the Star Wars: Visions short “The Ninth Jedi”, as well as the sophomore season of Ahsoka—but little has been revealed about any of them beyond early initial details showcased at last year’s Celebration Japan.

On the book and comics horizon, with the High Republic series having wrapped up last year, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see Random House Worlds and Lucasfilm put the spotlight on another new era for a major publishing project (perhaps it’s time to go back even further and explore the Old Republic in earnest, after last year’s late shock announcement of Fate of the Old Republic, the first Star Wars media set in the era since the reboot of continuity back in 2014). On the comics front, Marvel finally moved its main Star Wars series beyond the events of the original trilogy last year, with its current volume set to wrap up in February. Will it continue, or will Marvel already jump ship to another era of Star Wars storytelling?

Star Wars is also going to have a fun year in video games, with two intriguing genre explorations for the franchise set to launch at some point this year: Bit Reactor is set to bring Star Wars to turn-based tactics with the arrival of Zero Company this year, while Fuse Games will speed us back into Star Wars racing games with Galactic Racer.

While 2027 will be a huge year for Star Wars, celebrating its 50th anniversary, things could potentially kick off this year thanks to a related one: 10 years since the launch of the New Hope prequel, Rogue One. Even as Star Wars prepares to go beyond the original trilogy elsewhere, it won’t be surprising to see the celebrations start kicking off a little early this year.

Unconventional Wisdom

While most of Star Wars‘ plans this year will lean more towards the celebratory, Disney’s deal with OpenAI last year is set to cast a challenging shadow over all the subsidiaries in the House of Mouse—and given the deal’s restriction to masked and non-human characters (as well as prior Star Wars-affiliated experimentations with generative AI, like the sale of James Earl Jones’ voice allowing it to be used to—albeit briefly—yell slurs in Fortnite last year), it wouldn’t be surprising if Star Wars is a prime candidate for exploitation as Disney pitches its AI investments to the public.

Whether that will go down well, of course, remains to be seen. While Disney spent 2025 broadly facing a lot of successes (including netting not one, but three films in the billion-dollar box office club), it also faced a sea of withering criticism as various backlashes surrounded the studio’s broader capitulations to the demands of the Trump administration and the explosive backfiring of its decision to briefly suspend talk show host Jimmy Kimmel over comments made in the wake of the killing of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Given a broad public pushback against generative AI’s increasing encroachment elsewhere in our daily life, when Star Wars becomes a battlefront in that particular debate, expect things to get loud and messy very fast.

Longshot Bets

With the release of The Mandalorian & Grogu this year and Star Wars: Starfighter in 2027, one thing is very clear from the last nearly seven years of waiting for a Star Wars movie project to happen: Lucasfilm’s plans have changed almost constantly as the studio has moved on from one idea to the next. Neither a Mandalorian movie nor Starfighter was on the cards as the vanguard of Star Wars‘ theatrical return until the last couple of years, but their arrivals beg a big question: what, if anything, is still going to be moving forward from the ambitious slate of films Lucasfilm announced back at Celebration Europe in 2023?

There’s definitely some projects likely safer than others out of that trio—David Filoni’s “Mandoverse” Thrawn vs. New Republic film, James Mangold’s “Dawn of the Jedi” origin film, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s New Jedi Order film with Daisy Ridley’s return as Rey—but as Star Wars charts a different path back to theaters, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see some of these original plans shuttered for good.

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