2026 will be the year that makes or breaks Marvel. Yes, this same sentiment has been said about 2024 and 2025, so it feels like the goalposts are always being moved. While Deadpool & Wolverine’s $1.3 billion in 2024 should have been a rebound after The Marvels flopped the previous year, many labeled that as a one-off fluke. 2025 saw Marvel Studios movies like The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Captain America: Brave New World perform pretty well for a post-COVID-19 blockbuster, but nowhere near the heights audiences had grown accustomed to from the Marvel Cinematic Universe during the Infinity Saga and a pre-pandemic box office.
Yet, in 2026, Marvel Studios is aiming big. For the first time in over a decade, Marvel Studios is only releasing two MCU films. They aren’t messing around, though, as these are big ones: Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday. In addition to bringing out their two most popular film franchises, they are stocking each film with some of Marvel’s biggest names. Spider-Man, Hulk, The Punisher, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and Doctor Doom are being rolled out to draw back audiences who might have jumped ship from the franchise. All eyes are on the MCU in 2026 to return to its former glory. Can it pull it off?
Marvel Is Pulling Out the Big Guns
When the MCU launched, it used characters largely composed of the (at the time) B-list, like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, to build out its universe. Then they went to a formula of using one established hero and one new character. 2014 had the risky Guardians of the Galaxy follow the established Captain America: The Winter Soldier. In 2015, Ant-Man was one of the lower-performing MCU films, but it was bolstered by Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, in 2026, Marvel Studios is going with the biggest names in the company’s history.
Spider-Man is easily Marvel Comics’ most popular character. Across a variety of media, Spider-Man has generated $26.8 billion in combined box office, home video, merchandise, and video game sales. He is Marvel’s flagship character, and aside from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 underperforming, Spider-Man solo films have always done well at the box office. Since joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man has become a billion-dollar box-office franchise, so it looks good for the Wall-Crawler, even if he might face more competition from The Odyssey. In addition to Spider-Man, the movie will also feature Hulk and The Punisher. While their solo films might not be the biggest box office draws, Hulk and Punisher are two of Marvel’s most iconic characters to general audiences, and putting them in a Spider-Man movie helps make this soft relaunch feel like an event picture.
Then there is Avengers: Doomsday. While the individual heroes who made up the Avengers might have been B-list characters to general audiences before the MCU, after The Avengers opened in 2012 and smashed box office records, it became Marvel’s biggest franchise. The Avengers have not only become Marvel’s biggest team, but their movies are also synonymous with box-office smash hits, with three of the four Avengers movies being the highest-grossing films worldwide in the years they were released.
To make sure audiences know this Avengers movie is a big deal, Marvel Studios is not only bringing back franchise star Robert Downey Jr., but casting him as Marvel’s most famous villain, Doctor Doom. As if the Avengers were not enough, Marvel Studios is bringing in the X-Men. Avengers: Doomsday is now being positioned as much as an X-Men movie as an Avengers movie, and not just any X-Men movie, but a legacy sequel to the original trilogy. The X-Men films helped kick off the modern era of superhero movies.
Disney has given Avengers: Doomsday the coveted week-before-Christmas date, one that has been saved for Star Wars and Avatar films by Disney. Notably, Avengers: Doomsday‘s Dec. 18 release date is the exact same date that Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened back in 2015, and that Avatar opened in 2009. Those two films are the highest-grossing films at the domestic and worldwide box office, respectively, so Avengers: Doomsday has some big shoes to fill in occupying this release date. The hope, though, is that “Avengers meet the X-Men” and “Avengers fight Marvel’s most famous villain” will be enough of a draw for audiences during the holiday season.
Spider-Man, the Avengers, X-Men, and Doctor Doom; Marvel Studios is not taking any chances and bringing out their most famous names. But even if these movies deliver the biggest box office numbers for the MCU in some time, is that enough? After all, Deadpool & Wolverine grossing $1.3 billion wasn’t enough to make people say Marvel is back. Can anything anymore? Despite Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday both being expected to be big hits, will they be big enough? Or have fan and industry expectations gotten too great?
Even if They Are Hits, Is Marvel’s Own Reputation Its Own Worst Enemy?
Spider-Man: Brand New Day could easily be the biggest movie of summer 2026 and gross $1 billion worldwide. But if it performs less than Spider-Man: No Way Home, which it most likely will, will people consider it a failure? Will it be interpreted as a sign that Marvel Studios is losing its touch, or will there be enough understanding that the multiversal crossover between Tom Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home was a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic moment that could not be replicated?
One would think, but there are people who claim Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s $1.3-billion worldwide total was a disappointment because it grossed less than The Force Awakens‘ record-breaking $2.06 billion. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever grossed $859 million worldwide and has often been labeled a disappointment and a sign of Marvel’s weakening brand because it was below the $1.3-billion total of the first film, despite the sequel not getting released in China and not having the same once-in-a-generation event momentum behind it that the 2018 film had.
The same holds true for Avengers: Doomsday; if one assumes Avengers: Doomsday is the biggest movie of 2026 but comes in below Avengers: Endgame‘s record-breaking $2.7 billion, will it be labeled a letdown? The unique circumstances that made Avengers: Endgame a cultural moment are no longer present, but will that be acknowledged? If it performs closer to, say, the box office of The Avengers’ $1.5 billion or Avengers: Age of Ultron‘s $1.4 billion, will that be seen as a downgrade? Kevin Feige and the Russo brothers have hinted that Doomsday is not a conclusion like Endgame, but instead the beginning of something new, so should its box office be compared more to The Avengers or does each entry only need to go up so as not to be seen as a failure?
In 2015, many saw Avengers: Age of Ultron underperforming after the first film and being beaten at the box office by Jurassic World and The Force Awakens as a sign that superhero fatigue was setting in. Now people can look back on that and scoff, but a $1.4-billion movie was treated as a disappointment. Nor did anyone acknowledge the unique circumstances behind both The Force Awakens and Jurassic World‘s box-office performance, or why they might have outperformed Avengers: Age of Ultron. In 10 years, have audiences learned their lesson, or will any nuance be lost in favor of eye-catching headlines and major proclamations?
Obviously, if the movies bomb at the box office, that is concerning. But far too often, not performing as well as the previous movie, while still coming close, is seen as a box-office flop. With Silicon Valley and tech culture taking control of both the film industry and the average person’s day-to-day life, the emphasis is now on the bottom line, no matter how unrealistic that metric is. Sometimes there is a ceiling, and coming just below that, but above the competition, should be enough. Yet it can’t be enough to be good; it has to shatter expectations. Everyone has adopted the Ricky Bobby mantra: “If you’re not first, you’re last.”
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