ANAHEIM, Calif.
For three days every other year, this stretch of Southern California becomes the epicenter of one of the most efficient hype machines entertainment has ever built. D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event returned to the Anaheim Convention Center and Honda Center this weekend, running August 14 through 16, and by Saturday evening — the event's marquee "Disney Experiences Showcase" night — it had already reset expectations for the next several years of Disney movies, television, and theme parks.
The energy inside the Honda Center on Friday, when the Disney Entertainment Showcase opened the weekend, set the tone: this was not a trade show. It was closer to a communal fan pilgrimage, thousands of attendees in costume and matching ears, many having flown in from outside the U.S. specifically for the reveals that would only be confirmed onstage.
A very big Friday night
The entertainment slate alone would have justified the trip. Disney confirmed that "Zootopia 3" is officially in development, with stars Ginnifer Goodwin and Ke Huy Quan appearing together to break the news to a roaring crowd — a sequel few had expected to be greenlit so soon after the second film's box-office success. "Star Wars: Starfighter," director Shawn Levy and star Ryan Gosling's original entry into the galaxy far, far away, was confirmed for a May 28, 2027 release, with a first-look reel that leaned hard into practical effects and dogfight choreography reminiscent of the franchise's earliest films.
Animation fans got two more headline reveals: "The Bluey Movie," arriving in theaters August 6, 2027, premiered its first teaser and poster to an audience that included more than a few parents wiping their eyes before the lights even came back up, and "Incredibles 3" was confirmed for summer 2028, with Pixar teasing that the Parr children — now teenagers in the story's timeline — will carry a significant share of the narrative for the first time. A new original feature titled "Clay," starring Kieran Culkin, was unveiled for a November 2028 release, offering few plot details but establishing itself as one of the studio's more unconventional swings in years.
Television got its moment too. "Ahsoka" Season 2 was confirmed, with Rosario Dawson, Eman Esfandi, and Hayden Christensen joining showrunner Dave Filoni onstage for a panel that ran long on both nostalgia and new footage. And in one of the weekend's more unexpected announcements, Disney revealed "Kingdom Hearts," an original anime series inspired by the beloved video game franchise, heading to Disney Channel and Disney+ — a reminder that the company's IP appetite now stretches well beyond its traditional film and television pipelines.
When Frozen came back to life
If there was a single moment that defined the weekend online, it was musical. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel took the Honda Center stage together for a live rendition of "Frozen Heart," the film franchise's opening number, joined shortly after by Josh Gad performing a new song titled "Samantha." For a fanbase that has spent more than a decade building its identity around "Frozen," the sight of the franchise's two lead voices singing together, unscripted and clearly moved by the crowd's reaction, became the moment clipped and re-shared across every platform before the night was even over.
Saturday: the parks take center stage
Saturday shifted the spotlight from screens to physical space, with "Horizons: A Carousel of Progress" — this year's Disney Experiences Showcase — taking over the Honda Center at 7 p.m. Pacific, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris alongside Walt Disney Imagineers and senior executives, and livestreamed on Disney+ for fans who couldn't make the trip. The showcase built directly on ambitious park expansion plans first teased back in 2024, offering updates on Disney Parks and Disney Cruise Line projects around the world, along with what organizers promised would be "surprises" — a word Disney fans have learned not to take lightly at these events.
Harris, a veteran of Broadway spectacle in his own right, leaned into the theatricality of the format, framing the presentation less as a corporate roadmap and more as a guided tour of "the stories shaping the future of Disney Experiences." Imagineers used the stage time to walk through both near-term additions rolling out at existing parks and longer-horizon concepts still in early design, continuing a strategy the company has leaned on heavily since 2024: treating park announcements with the same theatrical build-up once reserved exclusively for film trailers.
Why a biennial convention still matters in the streaming era
It would be easy to assume that in an age of constant online leaks and instant social media news cycles, a ticketed, in-person convention would have lost some of its power to command attention. D23 2026 suggested the opposite. By concentrating years of announcements into a single, tightly stage-managed weekend — complete with live performances, surprise guest appearances, and Imagineer-led deep dives — Disney has effectively turned its own fan convention into appointment viewing, both for the roughly hundred thousand attendees on the ground and for the much larger audience following along through livestreams and near-instant social recaps.
For a company navigating an entertainment landscape reshaped by streaming economics, theatrical uncertainty, and a famously demanding theme park expansion calendar, D23 functions as something close to a State of the Union address — a chance to reassure investors, delight the fan base, and set the cultural conversation for the next two years all at once.
What this means for fans
For casual observers, the headline takeaway is simple: a genuinely dense slate of new film and television content is now confirmed through 2028, spanning nearly every corner of the Disney portfolio, from Pixar to Star Wars to Disney Channel anime experiments. For theme park devotees, Saturday's showcase offered the clearest signal yet of where the company's Imagineering resources are headed over the next several years, with more specifics expected to trickle out from press coverage of the Honda Center panel throughout the week.
And for the thousands who traveled to Anaheim simply to be in the room when Kristen Bell picked up a microphone, D23 2026 delivered the thing conventions like this are actually selling: not information, which increasingly finds its way online within minutes anyway, but the feeling of being present for it. Sunday's closing day brings the Disney Legends Award Ceremony, honoring the industry figures who built the world this weekend's announcements will live in next.
D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event concludes Sunday, August 16, at the Anaheim Convention Center and Honda Center.
