Ten Bizarre Visions of 2026 from Fiction

Science fiction creators love to dream up future worlds in which to set their stories. The Back to the Future sequel imagined a version of 2015 populated with hoverboards and flying cars. When 2015 came around, life was a little more mundane. Technology failed to reach the lofty levels the movie’s writers hoped for.

As I write this, we are now a few weeks into a new year: 2026. There is a long catalogue of fiction set in what was then the future, and is now the present. For over a hundred years, storytellers have envisioned what life would be like today. Some of their predictions are wildly far from the mark, but many of their key themes are eerily familiar. Long before smartphones and social media, writers were already worrying about pandemics, climate collapse, authoritarian control, and runaway technology.

This list looks at ten of the strangest visions of 2026 from fiction. We crash from the high-minded space conquest of the novel Red Mars to beat ’em up arcade game hero Captain Commando, defending the galaxy from mutant criminals. We ride the rails over frozen wastelands, visit cities cast into augmented reality mayhem, and uncover a cosmic gateway beneath the Nevada desert. Ten fascinating portraits of our current year lie ahead.

Related: Top 10 TV Shows That Predicted the Future and Got It Right

10 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The second movie in the Planet of the Apes reboot series paints a grim picture of 2026. The action flick only came out in 2014, but its writers predicted a bleak future lay ahead. Set roughly a decade after Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the film shows how quickly civilization can unravel once a crisis takes hold.

Most of humanity is now dead, wiped out by a lethal virus known as Simian flu. Only a handful remain. The apes, meanwhile, live in relative harmony in the Muir Woods until they happen upon a group of surviving humans. What follows is two species torn between the wish for peaceful cooperation and the primal urge for war. Much of the tension comes from Caesar, whose leadership struggles deliberately echo Shakespearean tragedy.

Of course, there are several differences between 2026 in the movie and our modern reality. There are no highly intelligent primates roaming the woods. While coronavirus turned everything on its head, it hardly wiped out the human race. That said, the film’s focus on crumbling infrastructure, medical shortages, and fear-driven conflict feels uncomfortably familiar. Maybe this movie is much closer to reality than we like to think.^[1]

9 Snowpiercer

Jennifer Connelly and Daveed Diggs voyage across a frozen wasteland in another post-apocalyptic portrayal of 2026. Korean director Bong Joon Ho first brought Snowpiercer to the big screen, based on a series of French graphic novels from the 1980s. Bong chose to set his spectacular flick in 2031, but the U.S. TV adaptation brought the timeline forward by five years for a stark look at our current year.

Catastrophic climate change has turned the world into an icy wilderness. Survivors shelter from the peril aboard an ever-moving train. The wealthy and powerful swan it up in the front carriages, while the hoi polloi slum it at the back. The TV series expands this class divide into dozens of distinct train “cultures,” each with its own rules and myths. Though the show received middling reviews from critics, its depiction of 2026 is chilling in more ways than one, especially as a metaphor for rigid social systems that refuse to slow down.^[2]

8 Arena: Maze of Death

This mid-1990s action game paints 2026 as a dystopian hellhole. Corrupt dictators have taken over. They manipulate the media to stop people from finding out about their appalling crimes. Luckily, renegade Guy Freelander has got his hands on a secret tape that exposes just how awful the regime really is. All he needs to do is break into the broadcasting center and play the footage, then everyone will know the truth.

There’s just one problem. The only way to the media station is through a dank concrete jungle, riddled with security guards, robots, and mutant enemies. The game leans heavily into cyberpunk aesthetics and full-motion video cutscenes, a very 1990s way of imagining the future. While its technology now feels dated, the central idea of authoritarian states controlling information is uncomfortably relevant today.^[3]

7 Doom

Of all the cinematic visions of 2026, Doom‘s is one of the most optimistic. Loosely inspired by the shooter games, the 2005 movie imagines our present as a time of stunning achievements, when humanity takes its first steps among the stars. This hopeful framing reflects early-2000s optimism about space exploration and scientific breakthroughs.

At a dig in the Nevada desert, excavators discover a strange portal buried deep underground. The wormhole takes people from our planet to an ancient city on Mars, where they build a research hub. The story then jumps ahead twenty years, where Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson fend off a savage alien attack. While later Doom adaptations would lean more heavily into demonic horror, this movie saw 2026 as the start of a bold new frontier in space travel.^[4]

6 Red Mars

Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy spans nearly two centuries of imagined human activity on the red planet. The 1990s novels are widely regarded as classics of hard science fiction. The odyssey starts in 2026, when a hundred humans set out on a mission to our neighboring planet. They aim to terraform Mars—radically transforming it so it can support human life, using science grounded in real NASA projections of the era.

The voyagers each have different views on what form the project should take. The book jumps from one character’s perspective to another. Some see Mars as a chance to escape capitalist greed and build a new society. Others want to plunder its minerals and riches. Power-hungry colonists are desperate to be in charge, and many are willing to go to extreme lengths to get their way. Robinson sets out an ambitious vision for our present. While it’s unlikely we’ll see a manned mission to Mars this year, the novel’s themes of ideological conflict and political chaos feel worryingly familiar.^[5]

5 Den-Noh Coil

Den-Noh Coil envisions 2026 as a time of endless technological growth. In this 2007 anime series, the digital world has crashed into the physical one. A vast internet interface is projected across Daikoku City, and this new augmented reality can only be seen using special cyber glasses worn by children and adults alike.

On the surface, it’s an incredible feat. But all is not as it seems. Children vanish from the “real world,” then somehow show up inside the city’s so-called “electric brain.” Shadowy glitches stalk the streets, urban legends become real threats, and a young underground hacker network thrives beneath the glossy surface of the tech. The show blends coming-of-age drama with eerie science fiction, using its child protagonists to explore themes of identity, grief, and digital addiction. With its AR goggles and sinister tech underbelly, Den-Noh Coil‘s depiction of 2026 might be the closest to our world today.^[6]

4 Captain Commando

This beat ’em up arcade classic offers another crime-ridden, cosmic vision of our current year. First released by Capcom in 1991, Captain Commando imagines 2026 as a lawless future where vile mutants have taken over the Milky Way. Their leader, Scumocide, is a power-crazed maniac bent on seizing control of the universe.

Few have the guts to stand up to him. That is, until a small team of dissidents from Metro City, Earth, rises up to defend the galaxy from tyranny. Despite its Saturday-morning-cartoon tone, the game taps into very real fears about unchecked criminal power and institutional collapse. Its exaggerated sci-fi setting reflects early-1990s anxieties about urban crime, corruption, and societal decay. Captain Commando‘s portrayal of 2026 may be the most ludicrous on this list, but its core theme—powerful criminals hellbent on domination—still resonates today.^[7]

3 Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale

Digital death games, AI presenters, and cybernated villains—Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale has it all. The 2017 anime film imagines a world transformed by augmented reality rather than full virtual immersion. The broader Sword Art Online franchise, created by Reki Kawahara, began as a web novel in the 2000s and has since expanded into novels, television series, films, video games, and even live-action adaptation discussions.

The name SAO comes from a fictional VR “death game” that killed thousands of players. Four years later, in 2026, Japan’s young gamers are obsessing over a new device called Augma, which projects video game elements directly onto the real world. All seems fine until old enemies from the original game begin to appear. Augma devices belonging to SAO survivors behave strangely, players start losing their memories, and it becomes clear that the past is bleeding into the present. By shifting the threat from virtual reality into everyday life, Ordinal Scale offers a high-tech yet deeply unsettling portrait of 2026.^[8]

2 There Will Come Soft Rains

Ray Bradbury is recognized as one of the great American writers of the 20th century and a master of science fiction. His 2026-set tale There Will Come Soft Rains was first released as a short story in Collier’s magazine before being reworked as one of the final chapters of The Martian Chronicles. The title itself is drawn from a 1918 poem by Sara Teasdale, which imagines nature carrying on peacefully after humanity’s extinction.

Nuclear war has decimated Earth. The lucky ones resettled on our neighboring planet. The rest died in the turmoil. Atom bombs laid waste to the fictional city of Allendale, California, and now all that remains is one house. “Today is August 4, 2026, in the city of Allendale, California,” an automated voice calls from the kitchen ceiling, unaware that its inhabitants were incinerated long ago. The story’s true horror lies in its focus on automation continuing without purpose, a chilling meditation on smart homes, artificial routines, and a world that no longer needs its creators.^[9]

1 Metropolis

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is a towering classic of German silent cinema. Released in 1927, the pioneering film imagines life nearly a century into the future, rendering 2026 as a dazzling society split along rigid class lines. The rich and powerful live among skyscrapers, gardens, and luxury, while workers labor underground to keep the city’s machines running.

Many of the film’s ideas come from screenwriter Thea von Harbou, who released Metropolis as a novel two years earlier. Among its visions of our current year, one scene in which a group of men leer over a dancing female robot feels especially prescient, foreshadowing modern anxieties about artificial intelligence and objectification.

As the film nears its end, the workers rise up from the depths, smashing machines and setting the automaton Futura ablaze. Is something similar about to happen in our version of 2026? Is this the year humanity pushes back against big tech and runaway automation? Lang’s century-old nightmare still feels uncomfortably close to home.^[10]