2026 Sundance Film Festival unveils final Park City line-up

The upcoming Sundance Film Festival (January 22-February 1, 2026) – the final edition in Park City, Utah, before the event decamps to Colorado in 2027 – will feature returning talents including Gregg Araki, Liz Garbus and Alex Gibney, three films with Charli XCX, and new films starring Olivia Colman, Natalie Portman, and Channing Tatum.

Festival organisers have unveiled 90 features and seven projects in the Episodic section, which combine with the previously-announced Park City Legacy programme for a total of 105 projects. There were 16,201 submissions from 164 countries or territories, including 4,255 feature films, of which 1,676 hail from the US and 2,579 from the rest of the world.

Araki, a member of the New Queer Cinema movement who premiered his first film The Living End in Park City in 1992, brings Premieres selection and comedy thriller I Want Your Sex starring Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, Chase Sui Wonders, and Charli XCX.

British superstar Charli XCX is in two other Premieres entries, playing the lead as a pop star on the rise in Aidan Zamiri’s The Moment, and appearing alongside Natalie Portman in Cathy Yan’s art world satirical thriller The Gallerist. Olivia Wilde is the lead in I Want Your Sex, and directed and stars alongside Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Ed Norton in Premieres comedy drama The Invite.

Petra Volpe, whose Late Shift is the Swiss Oscar submission this season, makes her English-language debut in Premieres entry Frank & Louis (main picture) starring Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan. Olivia Colman and Alexander Skarsgård are among a starry cast in Wicker, Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s drama about a fisherwoman who asks a basketmaker to weave her a husband.

Louis Paxton’s UK drama The Incomer premieres in Next and stars Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin and John Hannah. It was backed by BFI-awarded National Lottery funding, Screen Scotland, musician Moby, and Head Gear Films, among others. Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe star in The Weight, Padraic McKinley’s US drama set in 1933 Oregon that tells of a father who gets sent to a brutal work camp.

Sundance is a renowned launchpad for awards season documentary contenders and indeed the Producers Guild Of America’s non-fiction nominees this week include several that premiered at the 2025 festival like The Alabama Solution and The Perfect Neighbor. Returning filmmakers Gibney and Garbus will present, respectively, Knife: The Attempted Murder Of Salman Rushdie and Give Me The Ball!, a profile of tennis great Billie Jean King. Both play in Premieres.

The festival’s fierce social conscience is writ large across the selection. Sharon Liese’s Seized explores abuse of power and journalistic ethics, and J M harper’s Soul Patrol focuses on the Vietnam War’s first Black special operations team (US Documentary Competition); Suzanne Andrews Correa examines violence against women in Mexico in The Huntress (World Cinema Dramatic Competition); and Antoine Fuqua’s documentary Troublemaker in Premieres recounts Nelson Mandela’s struggle against Apartheid through Mandela’s own voice, drawn from recordings that South Africa’s first Black president made while writing his autobiography Long Walk To Freedom.

Selina Miles follows Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson in Silenced in World Cinema Documentary Competition. The same section brings Birds Of War from Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak, about the love story between a London-based Lebanese journalist and a Syrian activist and cameraman, and To Hold A Mountain from Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić, about a Montenegrin shepherd and her daughter defending their ancestral mountain from a multinational corporation.

US Dramatic Competition brings Channing Tatum in Beth de Araújo’s Josephine, about a child who witnesses a crime. Chris Pine stars in Rachel Lambert’s Carousel, a drama about a second chance for a divorced doctor. And Josef Kubota Wladyka’s Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! is set in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene and stars Rinko Kikuchi.

All competition titles form the bulk of the online programme available from January 29 to February 1, which will include selections from other strands and the short films, which will be unveiled on December 15.

The 2026 edition is certain to be an emotional affair. Not only is the festival staging its final hurrah in the Utah mountains before the 2027 event moves to Boulder, Colorado, but it will play out following the death of two important figures in the Sundance annals: founder Robert Redford and communications head Tammie Rosen.

“As we prepare to gather for this landmark edition of our festival in a cherished locale, we’re also honoring the enduring impact of our beloved founder, Robert Redford, and celebrating what he created: a dynamic home for independent, global storytelling,” Eugene Hernandez, director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming, said.

Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival director of programming, noted: “The upcoming edition will be especially profound in introducing brand-new works while concurrently marking the significance of the many films we have been fortunate to present and gone on to have a long-lasting impact on independent film and culture.”

The 90 features announced on Wednesday represent 28 countries and territories. The 2026 programme comprises 36 out of 90, or 40%, first-time films. Fourteen of the entire feature and projects selection were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs.

The Beyond Film talks and additional programming announcements will be announced through January. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival jury and audience awards will be presented on January 30 at a ceremony at The Ray Theatre in Park City.

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival Feature Films and Episodics appear below. All are world premieres unless stated otherwise.