‘Star Wars’ New Release Calendar Adds Two Films in 2026, Removes December 2025 Date
Disney has announced that they will no longer be releasing a Star Wars film on December 19, 2025. Instead, they are planning on releasing two feature films in 2026, seven months apart, on May 22, 2026, and December 18, 2026.
The first film on that list will come out just three weeks after Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is released in theaters (Disney has also moved around Marvel’s release calendar). The company has not announced which movies will come out on each date. However, the most likely scenario is that this is the Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy-directed film they were targeting for 2025 and that due to the writers’ strike, they had to press Pause on for the moment. Meanwhile, the December date is likely the Dave Filoni-directed film that will culminate the overarching story told in The Mandalorian and spin-off shows during the New Republic era.
There is a third Star Wars theatrical release marked on the calendar on December 17, 2027, which as far as we know, hasn’t been moved. Given recent production updates, it’s likely this is the James Mangold-written-and-directed film. There are two more Star Wars films that we know are in development, one written and directed by Taika Waititi and another by Shawn Levy. Waititi said recently that he was in the middle of the writing process and a report by Deadline stated that he was targeting a 2024 production start. Meanwhile, Shawn Levy is waiting to finish Deadpool 3 to start working on Star Wars. (The Ryan Reynolds-led Marvel film just was pushed up to May 2024 from November 2024, which means the filmmaker could start working on Star Wars sooner than we thought.)
There are a lot of dates floated around here, so let’s make a quick breakdown of what the next Star Wars films will look like on the calendar:
May 2026
5/1: Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
5/22: Untitled Star Wars film (likely: New Jedi Order movie)
December 2026
12/18: Untitled Star Wars film (likely: Mandalorian culmination event)
December 2027
12/17: Untitled Star Wars film (likely: Dawn of the Jedi movie)
The December 2026 date was previously held by the yet-untitled Avatar 4. That film has now been delayed three years to December 2029 (yes, that is as dizzying to read as it is to write). Marvel has also reshuffled its release schedule for next year and beyond, but we covered that on our sister site MovieNewsNet.com.
For now, there are a few things to take away from this announcement. First, it looks like Lucasfilm is keen on waiting as long as they need to have a solid script for their return to theaters. A scoop by Jeff Sneider earlier this year stated that Kathleen Kennedy’s job security depended on whether or not she could have a movie open in December 2025. Whether Disney has cut her some slack because of the strike, or Kennedy decided it was best to push it regardless, we don’t know yet.
But this is also a situation we’ve been in before. The May 2026 date is going up against an Avengers movie, much like Solo was released a month after Infinity War back in May 2018. It’s not a matter of Star Wars eating up Avengers’ money, but rather that last time Disney focused their entire marketing money to promote Marvel’s big culmination event and we hope history will not be repeating itself again. (The truth is that given how unstable Marvel Studios is at the moment, even The Kang Dynasty could be pushed into 2027.)
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
