Public Domain Day 2026!

Here we are again. We have made it through yet another year, and you know what that means. The time has come to celebrate one of my favorite holidays. No, not New Year's Day—Public Domain Day!

This PDD is a momentous one because it marks the beginning of a new decade in the public domain timeline. 2026 is the year when the copyrights on all creative works from 1930 expire in the US, meaning those works are free for people in the US to use and remix as they see fit. As I mentioned in my article on this subject last year, copyright law varies between countries, and a person living outside the United States will have access to a different set of newly copyright-free works.

Books

Some of the prominent books entering the public domain in 2026 include the following list:

• The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, which was the first full-length Miss Marple story. The character had previously appeared in the 1927 short story "The Tuesday Night Club."
• Speaking of ladies who solve mysteries, Nancy Drew! The first four stories featuring the young detective, created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and published under the pseudonym "Carolyn Keene," all enter the public domain this year. These include The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery and The Mystery at Lilac Inn. Do note that only the original 1930 versions of the books will be available now; the revised versions from the late 1950s/early 1960s are still under copyright.
• And for one more mystery, the novel version of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is also included this year. The serialized version of the story, published across five installments in the magazine Black Mask, entered public domain last year.
• We've also got William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, the tale of a Southern family's trials and tribulations as they journey to their late matriarch's hometown to bury her body. Faulkner jumps back and forth between fifteen different characters, revealing their personalities and interpersonal dynamics through stream of consciousness narration.
• On the theatrical side of things, there is Noël Coward's comedy Private Lives, in which a divorced couple is unexpectedly reunited at the French hotel where they are both honeymooning with their new spouses. Hilarity and romance—of a strange sort—both ensue.
• For children's literature, there is Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, an adventure story about several children spending a summer together in the English countryside.
• Finally, there is the most famous version of The Little Engine That Could, written by publisher Arnold Munk under the pseudonym "Watty Piper." So now if you're faced with a difficult task, you won't be committing copyright infringement if you tell yourself "I think I can, I think I can…!"

Film

There's a fun lineup of movies for this year's public domain list, including comedies, musical, war dramas and not one but two Best Picture Winners.

• The most famous entry is perhaps Universal's Oscar-winning adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. Even after almost a century, this gutwrenching film still holds up as one of the quintessential cinematic depictions of the First World War.
• Another WW1 movie that's now in the public domain is Hell's Angels, a drama about two brothers who serve in the Royal Flying Corps. It included the first major role for movie star Jean Harlow. While Howard Hughes is the sole credited director on the film, its dialogue sequences were directed by future Universal Horror legend James Whale.
• Also in the public domain this year is…a movie from 1931? That would be RKO's Cimarron, an epic Western which won Best Picture the year after All Quiet on the Western Front. The reason it enters public domain this year and not in 2027 is because the actual copyright registration was completed late in 1930, before the film's release in January 1931. The novel on which the film is based also enters the public domain in 1930.
• Another (much less successful) Western entering the public domain is The Big Trail, an epic intended as a star vehicle for a 23-year-old actor named John Wayne. The decision to shoot in an early form of widescreen may have inadverdently doomed the film at the box office, since many theaters during the Great Depression simply didn't have the ability to screen the film or the money to upgrade their equipment. Wayne's big break as an actor wouldn't arrive until the end of the decade in 1939's Stagecoach.
• On the opposite end of the cinematic spectrum from all this, we also find Animal Crackers, an early Marx Brothers film. Adapted from a musical of the same name, it's essentially a series of comedy sketches structured a plot involving a convoluted art theft and a high society party held in honor of famed explorer Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding.

Animation and Comics

• Dizzy Dishes from Fleischer Studios, a short cartoon featuring the unofficial first appearance of Betty Boop. This example's a little complicated since it's just the earliest incarnation of Betty Boop, in which she was depicted as a sort of human-poodle hybrid rather than her more recognizable human design.
• Another dog who's now in the public domain is Mickey Mouse's dog Pluto! You can't call him Pluto, though: the character was called Rover when he first showed up in the Disney cartoon The Picnic.
• 1930 also marks the debut of the long-running comic strip Blondie. The strips published in that year are now public domain, along with the earliest incarnations of the strip's title character and her partner Dagwood Bumstead.

Music

Because of the Music Modernization Act in 2018, sound recordings and musical compositions are on a slightly different schedule when it comes to copyright expiration. I'll be focusing on the compositions in this write-up, since those entries are a little more interesting this year.

• Several songs by George and Ira Gershwin are now public domain, including the jazz classic "I Got Rhythm."
• "Georgia On My Mind" by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell, which was later recorded by Ray Charles and became the official state song of Georgia.
• "Dream a Little Dream of Me" by Fabian Andre, Wilbur Schwandt and Gus Kahn, a still-popular standard recorded by artists like Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Mancini, The Mamas & The Papas and Robbie Williams.
• "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight" by Al Sherman and Al Lewis. People my age most likely know this one via the 1968 recording by Tiny Tim, which was used in the pilot episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

As a creative person, I like to think of Public Domain Day as a reward for making it through another long year. Every January 1st, another great batch of art and literature from generations past gets released from copyright so the people of today can enjoy these pieces and save them for future generations. In an age when corporate overlords are more transparent than ever about their desire to control our viewing habits and rule over pop culture forever, it's important to identiy and preserve the pieces of humanity's history and culture that cannot be owned. Or rather, the pieces owned by everyone.

Next year's Public Domain Day is going to be a major one, and one which I'm very excited about. But for now, let's enjoy the works we now have access to in 2026. I hope you have a wonderful year!

For more information about Public Domain Day and works entering the public domain in 2026, take a look at these articles from Public Domain Review, the Internet Archive and Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

—Dana