Public Domain Day 2026 Is Coming: Here's What to Know

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From Nancy Drew to Animal Crackers to The Maltese Falcon, 1930’s greatest works enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026. Expect celebration, confusion, and at least one Betty Boop slasher film. Sorry in advance.

The weather’s getting colder, the nights are getting longer, and Hollywood has decided Betty Boop would be more marketable as a serial killer. It can only mean one thing: Public Domain Day 2026 is upon us.

It wouldn’t be Public Domain Day without a horror reboot, now would it? Devanny Pinn is set to star in Boop, which VMI Worldwide reportedly shopped at last month’s American Film Market.

Regular observers of copyright law’s favorite holiday know the drill: on January 1, 2026, a new crop of creative works from 1930 (along with sound recordings from 1925) will enter the public domain in the United States—ready to be remixed, recycled, or repurposed into B-grade horror films and ill-advised erotica.

This year’s film class is stacked with classics: Howard Hughes’s aviation epic Hell’s Angels (Jean Harlow’s screen debut and, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made); The Big Trail, featuring John Wayne in his first starring role; Greta Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie; Bing Crosby’s film debut in King of Jazz; and 1930 Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front. There’s plenty of comedy too, including the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers, Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess, and Soup to Nuts, best remembered for featuring an early iteration of the Three Stooges.

Hell’s Angels took four years to complete and cost $4 million. Today, that wouldn’t cover the reshoots.

Among the standout literary works in the Public Domain Day Class of 2026 are heavyweights like William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Edna Ferber’s bestseller Cimarron, and Evelyn Waugh’s champagne-soaked satire Vile Bodies. Children’s literature fans can look forward to Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could, and Elizabeth Coatsworth’s Newbery Medal winner The Cat Who Went to Heaven.

I started working on a follow-up called The Little Engine That Couldn’t Be Bothered, but I don’t think I can finish it.

Not to take anything away from Hammett’s Sam Spade, but it’s an especially strong year for female detectives—both young and old. The earliest Nancy Drew mysteries from 1930 hit the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026, as does the first outing of the genteel Miss Marple in Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage. Maybe they can team up to solve the mystery of why Hollywood is only interested in using public domain characters to make schlocky horror films.

In the world of comics and animation, two Disney shorts featuring early versions of Pluto are also set to enter the public domain. The future canine star first appeared as an unnamed bloodhound in 1930’s The Chain Gang before resurfacing later that year as Minnie Mouse’s pet “Rover” in The Picnic. He wouldn’t officially become Mickey’s dog Pluto until 1931’s The Moose Hunt—a film set to enter the U.S. public domain in 2027.

Not yet “Pluto,” not yet Mickey’s dog. He started out as an unnamed bloodhound trying to drag Mickey back to jail. We’ve all had awkward first meetings.

1930 also saw the debut of Chic Young’s Blondie and a certain cartoon flapper who was, at least initially, part poodle. I’ll give you the full rundown on Betty Boop—and why Fleischer Studios is crying foul—a bit later in this post.

Blondie debuted on September 8, 1930: Dagwood Bumstead was still a railroad heir and Blondie Boopadoop was still a flapper. The disinheritance, the day job, and the sandwich obsession came later.

On the music front, iconic compositions entering the public domain in 2026 include jazz standards “Body and Soul” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind,” and the Gershwin brothers’ “I Got Rhythm.” “Dream a Little Dream of Me” also joins the list—a song that was popular in the 1930s before achieving lasting fame when the Mamas & the Papas recorded it nearly 40 years later.

Sound recordings from 1925 also enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026, including Gene Austin’s “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby” and Isham Jones’s “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” each of which spent seven weeks at #1 in 1925. Marion Harris’s chart-topping “Tea for Two” and Bessie Smith’s legendary version of “St. Louis Blues” with Louis Armstrong are other standouts.

Bessie Smith’s recording of “St. Louis Blues” enters the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026.

I’ve listed over 150 notable works entering the public domain at the end of this article. But as always, Public Domain Day 2026 arrives with a number of significant works that deserve a closer look—as well as plenty of caveats, asterisks and traps for the unwary. So before you rush off to put Blondie, Nancy Drew, and Betty Boop in a Charlie’s Angels-style crossover—and one of you absolutely will—here’s what you need to know.

Before we get to the finer points, a quick refresher on how the math works.

For twenty years—from 1998 to 2018—no new works entered the U.S. public domain, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). At the time, pre-1978 works received up to 75 years of copyright protection, meaning works from 1923 were set to enter the public domain on January 1, 1999. But the CTEA added another 20 years, extending the term to 95 years and pushing public domain entry back to January 1, 2019. The freeze finally thawed that year, when works from 1923 became free to use.

Since then, Public Domain Day has ushered in a steady stream of new arrivals each January 1. Works first published in 1930 will see their copyrights expire in 2025—but because copyright protection lasts through the end of the calendar year, those works don’t actually become public domain until January 1, 2026.

That’s why Nancy Drew’s debut in The Secret of the Old Clock won’t be free to use until that old clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day—even though the character officially celebrated her 95th birthday on April 28, 2025, the anniversary of the book’s original publication.

Foreign Affairs

The infamous toe-sucking scene from L’Âge d’Or (which would be recreated by David Bowie in a Tin Machine video from 1991).

Some of the most powerful and enduring films of 1930 were first released outside the United States—and are subject to foreign copyright protection that in many cases will continue beyond 2026, even as they enter the public domain here. Among them are Luis Buñuel’s provocative L’Âge d’Or (The Golden Age), a surrealist satire that caused riots at its Paris premiere and was banned in France for nearly fifty years, and Josef von Sternberg’s Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), the German production that launched Marlene Dietrich to international stardom.

Der blaue Engel (1930)

Von Sternberg, already an established Hollywood director, convinced Paramount to sign the young German actress sight unseen. Dietrich left Berlin the night of Der blaue Engel’s German premiere in April 1930, and Paramount—hedging its bets on an unknown actress—held back the English-language version until after releasing her first American production, Morocco, later that year. Both films were hits, Dietrich became a star, and both enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026.

Interestingly, Der blaue Engel is actually making its second trip into the U.S. public domain. The film’s copyright originally lapsed in 1958 when it wasn’t renewed at the end of its initial 28-year term. It was resurrected in 1996 by the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which restored protection for foreign works that remained under copyright in their source countries but had fallen into the U.S. public domain due to noncompliance with U.S. formalities. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 further delayed the film’s return to the public domain for another 20 years. Now, nearly three decades after its resurrection, Der blaue Engel is set to reenter the U.S. public domain—this time for good.

It’s All Relative

IMPORTANT Public domain is country-specific. Just because a work is in the public domain in the United States doesn’t mean it’s free to use elsewhere—and vice versa.

A profoundly influential book that I have never read and neither have you.

An example I’ve long used in my Copyright Myth Project to illustrate this point is Albert Einstein’s seminal Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. It was first published in German in 1916 and translated into English in 1920. That English edition entered the U.S. public domain in 1995—seventy-five years after publication, back when that was the term of protection for pre-1978 works (before the Copyright Term Extension Act tacked on another twenty).

So Relativity has been in the U.S. public domain for thirty years now, but not in Einstein’s native Germany, or in most of the rest of the world, where copyright lasts 70 years after the author’s death. (The United States now follows a life-plus-70 term too, but only for works created on or after January 1, 1978.) Since Einstein died in 1955, his works have remained protected in life-plus-70 countries through the end of 2025.

That means on January 1, 2026, Relativity will finally enter the public domain across Europe and most of the world—more than a century after it was first published.

Looks like I’m going to need to find a new example.

A Matter of Character

As noted above, Public Domain Day 2026 will see the first appearances of Chic Young’s Blondie and early incarnations of Walt Disney’s Pluto. They’ll be joined by Ub Iwerks’ Flip the Frog and early French-language comic strips from Hergé’s Quick & Flupke, a gag comic about two Brussels street urchins perpetually tormenting a local policeman that ran alongside Hergé’s better-known The Adventures of Tintin. 

Ub Iwerks co-created Mickey Mouse, then left Disney to create Flip the Frog, which debuted in Fiddlesticks (1930)—one of the first cartoons filmed in Technicolor.
Hergé’s Quick & Flupke

In last year’s article on works entering the public domain in 2025, I highlighted Tintin, whose earliest French-language serialized comic strips began to enter the public domain despite protestations to the contrary from Tintinimaginatio, the entity that manages Hergé’s estate. The original serialization of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets ran from January 1929 to May 1930, meaning the 1929 installments entered the U.S. public domain last year—and the remaining 1930 installments follow on January 1, 2026, along with the earliest installments of Tintin in the Congo.

Mickey’s first comic appearance

The first daily comic strips featuring Mickey Mouse debuted on January 13, 1930, and those early strips will also enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026. The Mickey Mouse comic strip would ultimate run until July 29, 1995.

Betty Boop’s Poodle-to-Pinup Evolution

Public Domain 2026: Dizzy Dishes (1930)
Dizzy Dishes (1930)

And then there’s the cartoon flapper I’ve been teasing. Betty Boop’s earliest incarnation in 1930’s Dizzy Dishes was actually half flapper, half poodle—human from the torso down but sporting floppy dog ears, large jowls, and a small snout, all framed by Helen Kane-style spit curls. By 1932, those floppy ears had morphed into hoop earrings and the snout into a button nose; by the mid-1930s, the hemlines dropped and the Hays Code sanded down her more risqué edges. The Betty of 1930 is recognizably the same character, but not quite the streamlined, fully human icon you see on modern merch—which is bound to spark disputes about which aspects of the character are fair game when Dizzy Dishes enters the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026.

“Becoming Betty Boop” (Fleischer Studios)

Characters Enter the Public Domain in Waves

So it’s as good a time as any for my usual disclaimers about fictional characters that evolve over time.

In a case involving the now-public domain Sherlock Holmes, the court in Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. clarified that a copyrighted character begins to fall into the public domain when the first published story featuring that character enters the public domain. Once that happens, “story elements—including characters covered by the expired copyright—become fair game for follow-on authors.” But copyrightable aspects of a character’s evolution that appear in later, still-protected works may remain off-limits until those later works themselves expire.

Applying that to Betty Boop: once Dizzy Dishes is in the public domain, the Betty who appears in that film—dog ears and all—is available for others to use. Later films that refined her design may still be protected until their own terms expire, though some early-1930s shorts are already public domain because their copyrights were never renewed. Bottom line: the public domain doesn’t arrive in one clean, character-shaped package; it comes in waves, tied to specific works and specific iterations.

Fleischer’s “Fact Check”

This legal nuance tends to bring out aggressive posturing from rights holders eager to wring every last ounce of protection from their expiring copyrights before the clock runs out.

Case in point: Fleischer Studios recently launched a “Fact Check 2026” page on its website insisting that reports of Betty Boop entering the public domain are “actually not true.” A statement from Chairman and CEO Mark Fleischer dismisses Dizzy Dishes as featuring merely “a precursor of the BETTY BOOP character,” not to be confused with “the distinctively different and independently protectible expression of the character in use by Fleischer Studios today.”

Fleischer is right that some cartoons featuring later, fully-human versions of Betty remain protected—and that modern merchandising designs are drawn from those later iterations. But the suggestion that the 1930 cartoon doesn’t “really” feature Betty Boop, or that the public domain release of Dizzy Dishes is essentially meaningless, echoes the same losing argument the Conan Doyle estate made about Sherlock Holmes.

The studio’s confident assertions are also curious given its own legal history. In Fleischer Studios, Inc. v. A.V.E.L.A., Inc. (2011), the Ninth Circuit agreed that Betty Boop is a “separate copyrightable component” of the films in which she appears—but held that the present-day Fleischer Studios couldn’t prove it actually owned that copyright. The court traced ownership from the original studio to Paramount in 1941, but found that a 1955 agreement explicitly carved out the character rights when Paramount sold the cartoon library. Where the character copyright ended up remains murky.

The Trademark Caveat

Fleischer’s “Fact Check 2026” page also notes that “the BETTY BOOP name and various related character designs” remain protected by trademark law “unaffected by the expiration of the Dizzy Dishes copyright or any other copyright.” That’s true, but only up to a point. Trademark law protects against consumer confusion about source or sponsorship; it likely doesn’t prevent the use of a public domain character in a new expressive work that doesn’t mislead consumers about its origin. As the Supreme Court cautioned in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox, trademark can’t be used to “create a species of mutant copyright law” that blocks the public’s right to use expired copyrights. Courts haven’t fully tested how far this principle extends to expressive works based on public domain characters, but the Dastar framework suggests trademark holders face an uphill battle—at least with respect to expressive works. (Use on merchandise is likely a different story, giving rise to stronger trademark concerns.)

Of course, legal reality and practical reality aren’t always the same thing. Campaigns like Fleischer’s “Fact Check” often succeed not by winning in court, but by creating enough uncertainty to make creators think twice about pursuing new adaptations—and that may be the point.

Public Domain 2026: Fleischer Studios recently launched a "Fact Check 2026" page on its website insisting that reports of Betty Boop entering the public domain are "actually not true."
Statement from CEO Mark Fleischer which “offers the true picture of Betty Boop’s status and how she will continue to enjoy copyright and trademark protection for years to come.”

Music Matters: Two Rights, Two Timelines

Figuring out when a piece of music hits the public domain can also be surprisingly complicated. As I’ve explained before, every recorded song comes with two distinct copyrights. One covers the musical composition, which protects the song’s melody, lyrics and arrangement. The other covers the sound recording, which protects a specific recorded performance of that composition. When you stream a track or hear it on the radio, you’re technically experiencing both—the songwriter’s underlying composition and the artist’s recording of it.

The Classics Protection and Access Act and Pre-1972 Sound Recordings 

The distinction matters because compositions and recordings don’t enter the public domain at the same time. The copyright in a musical composition, like most other pre-1978 works, lasts for 95 years from publication.

For example, Isham Jones’s jazz standard “I’ll See You in My Dreams” entered the U.S. public domain in 2020, 95 years after the composition was first published. But Jones’s 1925 sound recording of the song follows a different schedule under the Classics Protection and Access Act, part of 2018’s Music Modernization Act (MMA). That law brought certain pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright for the first time and established a tiered system of extended terms:

  • Recordings first published before 1923: entered the public domain on January 1, 2022.
  • Recordings first published between 1923 and 1946: protected for 100 years (95 years + 5-year extension).
  • Recordings first published between 1947 and 1956: protected for 110 years (95 + 15 years).
  • Recordings first fixed between 1957 and February 15, 1972: protected until February 15, 2067.

As a result, sound recordings first released in 1930 will remain protected through the end of 2030 (95 years + 5 additional years = 100 years). Meanwhile, earlier recordings from 1925—like Isham Jones’s “I’ll See You in My Dreams”—will enter the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026, once they hit the 100-year mark. (Later versions, like Pat Boone’s 1962 recording, will stay protected much longer.)

The Isham Jones recording of “I’ll See You in My Dreams” (1925) enters the U.S. public domain on January 1, 2026.

For another example, take the classic “Georgia on My Mind.” Written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, the song was published in 1930 and made Georgia’s official state song in 1979. The composition enters the public domain on January 1, 2026, 95 years after publication.

But the original 1930 sound recording receives an extra five years of protection under the MMA and won’t be public domain until January 1, 2031.

Meanwhile, copyright in the most famous version of the song—Ray Charles’s 1960 recording—won’t expire until February 15, 2067, more than a century after its release.

Sound recordings won’t enter the public domain at the same time as their underlying musical compositions.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or on social media @copyrightlately. Meanwhile, here are just some of the notable works that you can copy, distribute, or adapt starting on January 1, 2026:

Notable Films Entering the Public Domain in 2026

  • All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone, starring Lew Ayres (Academy Award for Best Picture; Best Director)
  • Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) (original German version and English-language version), directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings (launched Dietrich to international stardom)
  • Animal Crackers, directed by Victor Heerman, starring the Marx Brothers
  • Dizzy Dishes, directed by Dave Fleischer (first appearance of Betty Boop)
  • The Chain Gang, directed by Burt Gillett (first appearance of Pluto, as unnamed bloodhound)
  • The Picnic, directed by Burt Gillett (Pluto’s second appearance, as “Rover”)
  • Fiddlesticks, directed by Ub Iwerks (first Flip the Frog cartoon; first color sound cartoon)
  • Another Fine Mess, directed by James Parrott, starring Laurel and Hardy
  • Anna Christie, directed by Clarence Brown, starring Greta Garbo (Garbo’s first talkie)
  • Hell’s Angels, directed by Howard Hughes, starring Jean Harlow and Ben Lyon (Harlow’s breakthrough role)
  • Morocco, directed by Josef von Sternberg, starring Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, and Adolphe Menjou (Dietrich’s Hollywood debut; four Oscar nominations)
  • L’Âge d’Or (The Golden Age) (original French version), directed by Luis Buñuel (banned in France for nearly 50 years)
  • Earth (Zemlya), directed by Alexander Dovzhenko (U.S.S.R.; landmark of Soviet cinema)
  • The Big House, directed by George Hill, starring Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, and Robert Montgomery (Academy Award for Best Writing, Best Sound)
  • The Divorcee, directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring Norma Shearer (Academy Award for Best Actress)
  • Min and Bill, directed by George Hill, starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery (Academy Award for Best Actress)
  • The Dawn Patrol, directed by Howard Hawks, starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
  • Holiday, directed by Edward H. Griffith, starring Ann Harding and Mary Astor
  • Murder!, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Herbert Marshall
  • Juno and the Paycock, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Barry Fitzgerald and Maire O’Neill
  • The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh, starring John Wayne (Wayne’s first starring role; early widescreen production)
  • King of Jazz, directed by John Murray Anderson, starring Paul Whiteman (early two-strip Technicolor)
  • People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) (original German), directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, written by Billy Wilder
  • Under the Roofs of Paris (Sous les toits de Paris) (original French version), directed by René Clair
  • Westfront 1918 (original German version), directed by G.W. Pabst
  • Up the River, directed by John Ford, starring Claire Luce, along with Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart in their feature-film debuts
  • City Girl, directed by F.W. Murnau, starring Mary Duncan and Charles Farrell (Murnau’s last American film)
  • Feet First, directed by Clyde Bruckman, starring Harold Lloyd
  • Journey’s End, directed by James Whale, starring Colin Clive (Whale’s feature directorial debut)
  • Ladies of Leisure, directed by Frank Capra, starring Barbara Stanwyck
  • Monte Carlo, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Jack Buchanan and Jeanette MacDonald
  • Raffles, directed by George Fitzmaurice, starring Ronald Colman and Kay Francis
  • A Notorious Affair, directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring Billie Dove and Basil Rathbone
  • The Bat Whispers, directed by Roland West, starring Chester Morris (influential early horror film)
  • Liliom, directed by Frank Borzage, starring Charles Farrell (basis for the musical Carousel)
  • Whoopee!, directed by Thornton Freeland, starring Eddie Cantor (early two-strip Technicolor)
  • The Royal Family of Broadway, directed by George Cukor, starring Fredric March (Cukor’s co-directorial debut)
  • Born Reckless, directed by John Ford, starring Edmund Lowe
  • Madam Satan, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Kay Johnson
  • Prix de Beauté (Beauty Prize), directed by Augusto Genina, starring Louise Brooks (France)
  • The Unholy Three, directed by Jack Conway, starring Lon Chaney (Chaney’s only talkie; released shortly before his death)
  • Doughboys, directed by Edward Sedgwick, starring Buster Keaton
  • Free and Easy, directed by Edward Sedgwick, starring Buster Keaton
  • Tom Sawyer, directed by John Cromwell, starring Jackie Coogan
  • Billy the Kid, directed by King Vidor, starring Johnny Mack Brown and Wallace Beery
  • Borderline, directed by Kenneth Macpherson, starring Paul Robeson
  • The Three from the Filling Station (Die Drei von der Tankstelle) (original German version) directed by Wilhelm Thiele, starring Lilian Harvey
  • Just Imagine, directed by David Butler (early science fiction musical)
  • Manslaughter, directed by George Abbott, starring Claudette Colbert and Fredric March
  • Paid, directed by Sam Wood, starring Joan Crawford
  • Street of Chance, directed by John Cromwell, starring William Powell, Jean Arthur, and Kay Francis
  • The Vagabond King, directed by Ludwig Berger, starring Dennis King and Jeanette MacDonald (early two-strip Technicolor)
  • Outside the Law, directed by Tod Browning, starring Edward G. Robinson
  • Three Faces East, directed by Roy Del Ruth, starring Constance Bennett and Erich von Stroheim
  • True to the Navy, directed by Frank Tuttle, starring Clara Bow and Fredric March
  • The Big Pond, directed by Hobart Henley, starring Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert
  • The Devil to Pay!, directed by George Fitzmaurice, starring Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, and Myrna Loy
  • Lightnin’, directed by Henry King, starring Will Rogers
  • Laughter, directed by Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, starring Nancy Carroll and Fredric March (critically acclaimed; often cited as an overlooked gem of early talkies)
  • War Nurse, directed by Edgar Selwyn, starring Anita Page and Robert Montgomery (female-fronted WWI drama)
  • Let Us Be Gay, directed by Robert Z. Leonard, starring Norma Shearer
  • Follow Thru, directed by Lloyd Corrigan, starring Nancy Carroll and Charles “Buddy” Rogers (one of the first all-Technicolor sound musicals preserved in full color)

Notable Literature Entering the Public Domain in 2026

Literary Fiction:

Mystery & Crime:

Drama:

Children’s & Young Adult:

Poetry:

Nonfiction:

Notable Musical Compositions Entering the Public Domain in 2026

Notable Sound Recordings Entering the Public Domain in 2026