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All the new Marvel Studios movies & TV series upcoming in the MCU
With Phase Six of the MCU in full swing, here's what you can expect in a post-Fantastic Four Marvel multiverse
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So maybe 2025 wasn't exactly the year Marvel had hoped - outings like Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* didn't quite strike a chord with the legions of fans that saw Deadpool & Wolverine a couple times in theaters. But this was the year that Daredevil: Born Again proved there was still plenty of story left on the streets of Hell's Kitchen, and perhaps even more notably than that - the films that did come out made folks even more excited for Avengers: Doomsday.
With all this activity, you might think that you need some kind of guide to what’s coming up in the world of Marvel. Guess what? That’s exactly what you’re reading! Of course, if you’re reading this, then chances are you’re already up to date on the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. (If not, click on that link; we’ll help you catch up.) By this point in time, fans have made it through no less than four-and-a-half “phases” of storytelling, from the debut of Iron Man back in 2008 through the rise and fall of Thanos and the aftermath that followed.
Part of what followed included setting up the next few years of Marvel projects. We’ve had the introduction of Kang the Conqueror, who at one point certainly looked to be the new big bad to threaten reality, as well as the establishment of a multiverse in both Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with 2023’s The Marvels really underscoring what that might mean going forward. The larger story of this second big uber-story for the MCU came into even sharper focus with The Fantastic 4: First Steps, emphasizing the shape of the playing field of the multiverse, right before Doctor Doom comes in to upset everything.
Marvel has been calling the next few years worth of storytelling ‘The Multiverse Saga,’ but what does that mean in practice? Keep reading and we’ll make everything clear.
Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:
Upcoming Marvel movies and TV show schedule
If you're looking for a quick rundown of everything with a date (or at least a year), we have that for you here:
| Release Date | Project | Type | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 27, 2026 | Wonder Man, season 1 | Live-action series | Disney+ |
| March 2026 | Daredevil: Born Again, season 2 | Live-action series | Disney+ |
| July 31, 2026 | Spider-Man: Brand New Day | Live-action movie | Theatrical |
| December 18, 2026 | Avengers: Doomsday | Live-action movie | Theatrical |
| TBD 2026 | The Punisher special | Live-action one-shot | Disney+ |
| TBD 2026 | VisionQuest, season 1 | Live-action series | Disney+ |
| December 17, 2027 | Avengers: Secret Wars | Live-action movie | Theatrical |
Now if you finished this list and thought we forgot about a couple of animated projects - the '97, Friendly, and Spider-Versal kind, in particular - don't worry. We're going to get to projects that don't quite fit into the larger MCU Sacred Timeline narrative in just a moment. But first, let's dive into the current moment of that mainstream cinematic universe, as we get some more details on:
MCU Phase Six: The Multiverse Saga Part Two
Wonder Man
Previously, Marvel announced that a Wonder Man TV show is coming, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman, HBO’s Watchmen) as stunt man/movie star/superhero Simon Williams. Ben Kingsley is also due to return as bad actor/fake super villain Trevor Slattery. Recently, footage from the Wonder Man show was revealed in a new “Look Ahead” video that Marvel Studios posted onto YouTube. The Wonder Man show was promoted alongside other shows on Marvel Studios’s 2025 release slate.
Release Date: January 27, 2026
Platform: Disney+
Daredevil: Born Again, season 2
Wilson Fisk is the Mayor of New York City on the Marvel small screen right now, but he's got something coming to him if he thinks he's gonna keep that title without a fight. Daredevil, AKA Matt Murdock, is 100% back in the horned mask these days, and he's recruiting old friends like Jessica Jones (Kristen Ritter) to help him take his city back.
Release Date: March 2026
Platform: Disney+
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
What happened to Peter Parker after he successfully made the entire world forget all about him? We'll finally get some closure on the astonishingly downbeat ending of 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home with the much-rumored, now-official fourth Tom Holland Spider-Man movie, scheduled for July 2026. Almost everything about the movie remains under wraps, outside of its release date, the fact that it will be directed by Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Daniel Destin Cretton, and the fact that Tom Holland will star in it. What's it called? We don't know. Who's the villain? No idea. Will Zendaya be in it? Well... we certainly hope so.
Release Date: July 31, 2026
Platform: Theatrical
Avengers: Doomsday
The first Avengers film in 7 years was originally titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, but Marvel pivoted away from that title - and seemingly from the Kang storyline it's been building to over the past few years - due to Jonathan Majors being found guilty of assault and harassment of a former girlfriend. Instead, the new title of the movie reflects the movie's new nemesis, who is a character audiences have been waiting a very long time for: Doctor Victor Von Doom. Almost nothing is known about this version of the iconic Marvel villain (perhaps this iconic Marvel villain), other than one all-important fact: he'll be played by Robert Downey Jr., as revealed at SDCC 2024. How? Why? That remains to be seen, but it's going to be a trip finding out.
Downey Jr. isn't the only one returning for this fifth Avengers movie: the film (and its sequel, 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars) will be directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, and written by Stephen McFeely. This particular creative team have worked together before on a handful of little-known movies, such as Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.
Release Date: December 18, 2026
Platform: Theatrical (Buy tickets on Fandango or Atom Tickets)
VisionQuest
Fans have been waiting for four years to find out just what happened to the Vision after he flew off in the final episode of 2021's WandaVision, but an answer is finally forthcoming... as long as we can wait a couple of years. Terry Matalas, who was showrunner for the final season of Star Trek: Picard, will step into a similar role for an as-yet-untitled show that sees Paul Bettany reprise his role as the synthezoid Avenger. No further details are known as yet, but it's good to know it's happening, if nothing else...
Release Date: TBD 2026
Platform: Disney+
The Punisher special
As you might've guessed, Daredevil's return this past year meant that Frank Castle's wasn't too far behind, and you'd have been right had you thought that. Much beloved Punisher actor Jon Bernthal returned to the role in Born Again, and shortly after the first season wrapped, it was announced that the character would be getting his own one-episode spinoff. Combined with the fact that Bernthal has been confirmed to appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, we feel like there's a bright future for Marvel's darkest antihero.
Release Date: TBD 2026
Platform: Disney+
Avengers: Secret Wars
The second half of the climax to the current era of the MCU will have the same writer/directors team as Doomsday, and according to Kevin Feige on stage at SDCC 2024, will feature the casts of The Fantastic 4: First Steps, Thunderbolts*, and Captain America: Brave New World, plus (I suspect) some more special guests. (I mean, Deadpool's got to show up, right?) Beyond that, we have no idea what to expect from this one, but we're very excited to find out when it happens.
Release Date: December 17, 2027
Platform: Theatrical
Not exactly part of the MCU
As we mentioned earlier, there are a couple of projects bearing the Marvel logo that don't exactly fit into the MCU proper coming down the barrel - Here they are:
Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse
How is Miles Morales going to escape not just his alternate reality villainous self, the Prowler - it's just like that Mirror Universe episode of Star Trek, but with more costumes? - but also the wrath of the Spider Society and Miguel O'Hara? We'll have to wait to find out; what had initially been set for a spring 2024 release was entirely taken off Sony's release schedule last year, in light of production slowdowns and the writers and actors strikes.
Platform: Theatrical
X-Men '97, season 2
Even ahead of their aforementioned entrance into the MCU, the X-Men are gearing up to be the most popular supergroup in the next couple of years. Case in point, the second season of X-Men '97, the show that picked up where the classic X-Men: The Animated Series left off, changing the stakes and (very slightly) upping the animation quality after the landmark Marvel series that introduced Stan & Kack's Mighty Mutants to a new generation.
Platform: Disney+
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Season 2
After a successful firs season, the almost-but-not-quite MCU saga of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is coming back for a second season. In case you haven't been watching, the stakes were quite high by the end of season 1 (and pretty unexpected for casual Spidey fans), with Peter's relationship to ex-mentor Norman Osborne taking on a new flavor. We expect the additions of Venom and Spider-Gwen, as were recently confirmed, to mix things up even more.
Platform: Disney+
Movies & TV Shows With No Dates Yet
Armor Wars
Marvel originally announced Armor Wars in 2020 as a TV mini-series to star Don Cheadle’s James 'Rhodey' Rhodes, aka War Machine. Word on the street now is that it’s going to be a movie instead. According to producer Nate Moore, the project just got too big for a series. “When you’re talking about a show that wants to be about seeing all the cool armors and, you know, Don Cheadle interacting with all these armors and sort of the legacy of Tony Stark, that became kind of cost prohibitive to do as a show.”
Kevin Feige has indicated that the series will somehow follow on the events of Secret Invasion, and that it will involve War Machine having to deal with Tony Stark’s tech falling into the wrong hands.
Platform: Disney+
Shang-Chi 2
The sequel to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has been greenlit since December of 2021. So far that’s all we know.
Platform: Theatrical
Untitled Wakanda/Okoye Show
Marvel hasn’t officially announced this, but in 2021 Ryan Coogler announced he’s working on a Wakanda TV show for Disney+. A few months later Hollywood Reporter reported that the series will be an Okoye origin story. And recently on the Late Show Okoye actress Danai Gurira told Stephen Colbert that she can "gently allude to this possibility."
Platform: Disney+
Thor 5
No one at Disney has said anything about a fifth Thor movie, but Love and Thunder did end with Jane Foster’s surprising death, Thor adopting a super-powered daughter, and the introduction of Hercules, who is missioned by Zeus to destroy Thor. So there’s a lot there...
Chris Hemsworth has said he might be open to doing another one, but only if it takes a very different tone from the last two.
Platform: Theatrical
X-Men
The first (and so far, only) piece of news regarding the X-Men's official introduction into the MCU (beyond Deadpool & Wolverine, who are carryovers from the 20th Century Fox universe) came to us May 21, 2024, when Marvel Studios announced that Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes scribe Michael Lesslie would be writing the screenplay for the film.
At the moment, that's all we know about this project, but we're keeping our mutant ears to the ground.
Platform: Theatrical
What’s coming out next for Marvel?
If you’re wondering what the next movie set in the MCU is going to be, that’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, out July 31, 2026. You won't have to wait quite as long for the small-screen MCU, though, as Wonder Man comes to Disney+ January 27, 2026.
Is Tony Stark coming back?
Ever since his tragic demise at the climax of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, fans have wondered if there could ever be a return for Robert Downey Jr. to the MCU — a question that gained extra weight with the introduction of a multiverse that presumably includes worlds where Tony Stark didn’t sacrifice himself for the good of reality. A 2023 Vanity Fair profile of Downey offered what looks like a definitive answer, and it might not have been what people were expecting: Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said that there would not be a reversal of the character’s death.
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige was quoted as saying, seemingly closing the door on Downey Jr.’s return as Iron Man. Of course, with Downey now returning to the MCU as Victor Von Doom, it's a very fair question to ask whether or not Doctor Doom is an alternate world's Tony Stark...
Is Kang still in the MCU?
Following Jonathan Majors’ conviction of of 3rd degree assault, 2nd degree harassment, and recklessly causing physical injury in late December 2023, Marvel officially cut ties with the actor — despite his having appeared as Kang or variants thereof in Loki seasons 1 and 2, as well as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, all of which were intended to set up the next major story arc for the MCU, which would culminate in the two movies Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Quite what this means remains open to question, especially considering Marvel has removed the “Kang Dynasty” subtitle from the fifth Avengers movie, and replaced Kang as the villain of the movie. Will we ever see Kang again, or should we just accept that his story ended in the second season of Disney+'s Loki?
Will Loki return?
There’s no denying that the Trickster God proved his worth to the MCU — and reality as a whole — at the end of the second season of his Disney+ series, but his fate at the end of that season left a lot of people curious about whether or not we’ll ever see Tom Hiddleston’s version of Loki ever again. After all, surely he’s going to have stay the keeper of time for awhile to stop reality collapsing, right…? Of course, that doesn’t mean that Hiddleston can’t show up as another Loki from elsewhere in the multiverse when we least expect it. After all, the Loki of the Disney+ series was himself a variant of the original…
Will there be an Echo season 2?
One of the most recent projects from Marvel Studios was on Disney+; Echo — the first Marvel Spotlight project, which is the banner to signify projects intended to have more of a character focus than a connection to the larger MCU storyline.
In fact, the show was developed as a miniseries that could very well stand on its own - perhaps this is why there's been no official word of an Echo season 2 heading to streaming. However, fans of Vincent D'Onofrio's Wilson Fisk (who appears in Echo), will show up in the MCU again, as the character is confirmed to be a part of Daredevil: Born Again.
What will Secret Wars be about?
As things previously stood, it was expected that Avengers: Secret Wars would mirror the 2015 Secret Wars comic book series, with the incursions of multiple Earths resulting in one patchwork planet made up of different timelines being all that remained of all reality, with one villain controlling everything as an omnipotent despot… before things go wrong and the good guys try to restart existence itself. Curiously enough, onstage at SDCC 2024, Joe Russo explicitly referenced the 1984 Secret Wars series when talking about the inspiration for the story the movie will be telling, so... huh. Consider this one purposefully vague, I suspect.
Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:
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