The 10 Highest-Grossing Movies of 2026: Spider-Man's $2.5B and Endgame's Revenge

Spider-Man: Brand New Day made $2.5B in 2026, and Avengers: Endgame retook the all-time crown from Avatar. The full top 10, ranked.

2026 was one of the biggest box office years in history — five films crossed $1 billion, a superhero re-release dethroned Avatar for the all-time crown, and Christopher Nolan made the highest-grossing R-rated film ever. Here's the full ranking.

Top 10 Highest-Grossing Movies of 2026 (Worldwide)

Rank	Movie	Worldwide gross	North America
1	Spider-Man: Brand New Day	$2.496B	$950.7M
2	The Odyssey	$1.751B	$616.5M
3	Toy Story 5	$1.145B	$480.3M
4	Michael	$1.021B	$372.3M
5	The Super Mario Galaxy Movie	$1.013B	$429.8M
6	The Devil Wears Prada 2	$693M	$220.6M
7	Project Hail Mary	$685M	$344.1M
8	Pegasus 3	$641M	—
9	Minions & Monsters	$524M	$183.2M
10	Obsession	$517M	$263.5M

Spider-Man Swings Into History

Spider-Man: Brand New Day didn't just win 2026 — at $2.496 billion worldwide, it became the highest-grossing film ever in North America ($950.7M) and sits among the top five films of all time globally. Against a reported $225 million production budget, it's one of the most commercially dominant releases ever.

The Records Behind the Ranking

Biggest R-rated film ever: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey ($1.751B) shattered the R-rated ceiling.
Biggest music biopic ever: Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic, crossed $1.021B — a first for the genre.
Family animation's reign: Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie both cleared $1B, proving the most reliable bet in Hollywood is still a four-quadrant cartoon.
The $1M wonder: Obsession grossed $517M worldwide on a reported $1 million production budget — possibly the best ROI of the year.

Endgame vs. Avatar: The Rematch

The year's wildest box office story wasn't a 2026 film at all. The Avengers: Endgame — Encore re-release (September 25, 2026) earned $86M in its opening weekend — the second-biggest re-release ever — pushing Endgame's lifetime total to $2.9255 billion and retaking the all-time crown from Avatar ($2.9237B). The two films have now traded the record three times. With Avengers: Doomsday arriving December 18, 2026, Marvel clearly knows how to work a calendar.

What the Box Office Tells Us About Hollywood

Franchises still rule. Eight of the top 10 are sequels, adaptations, or franchise entries. The exceptions — Michael (a biopic) and Obsession (a $1M-budget original that made $517M) — prove originals can break through, but the odds are long.

The mid-budget movie is back — sort of. Obsession's $517M on a $1M budget and The Devil Wears Prada 2's $693M show there's life between $200M tentpoles and streaming filler. But notice: both had built-in IP or star power.

R-rated isn't a ceiling anymore. The Odyssey's $1.75B demolished the idea that adult ratings cap earnings. Nolan bet audiences would show up for a demanding epic — and they did, in IMAX, repeatedly.

The re-release economy is real. Encore's $86M opening — the second-biggest re-release ever — shows studios have learned to monetize nostalgia as event cinema. Expect every major franchise to try it.

The Numbers Behind the Magic

A quick reality check on what "gross" means: theaters keep roughly half of ticket revenue, marketing costs sit outside reported production budgets, and a $2.5B gross doesn't mean $2.5B in profit. Spider-Man: Brand New Day's $225M production budget likely came with $150M+ in global marketing — still an astronomical return, but the real profit math is Hollywood's most guarded secret. The only number that truly matters to studios: would they greenlight the sequel? For all five billion-dollar films of 2026, the answer was already yes before opening weekend ended.