UK and Ireland box office has reached £1.07bn ($1.44bn) for 2026, more than the territory took in any full year since the pandemic, with eight weeks still to run. The Rentrak figures, released on 6 November, cover 2 January to Thursday 5 November. Screen, which published the full breakdown, puts the total ahead of 2025’s final £1,070.5m. Every earlier post-pandemic year finished lower: £1.06bn in 2024 and 2023, £981m in 2022.
The market passed £1bn over the weekend of 10–11 October. According to the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA), only 2016–2019 had reached that mark earlier in the year. The five weeks to 5 November added £100.6m, up 35% on the £74.4m of the same stretch in 2025, and the year is now running 22% ahead of 2025 and 31% ahead of 2024 at the same point.
Key facts
- UK and Ireland box office, 2 January–5 November 2026: £1.07bn, 22% ahead of 2025 and 31% ahead of 2024 at the same point (Rentrak)
- October period (2 October–5 November): £100.6m, up 35%; Verity led with £11.8m
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day leads the year on £100.3m, the first film to pass £100m in the territory this year
- Matching 2019’s £1.354bn takes about £285m in the final eight weeks, against roughly £195m in the same weeks of 2025 and £245m in 2024 (FilmBunch calculation)
- UK admissions, January–September: 107.7 million, 16.5% below the same months of 2019, while UK takings were just 2% short (BFI)
October’s chart
Amazon MGM Studios’ Verity, the Colleen Hoover adaptation starring Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson and released here by Sony, was the only film to pass £10m in the period. It opened on £3.4m and reached £11.8m, second among the four Hoover adaptations only to It Ends with Us (£21.9m).
The strength lay in the depth beneath it. Lionsgate’s Ghosts: The Possession of Button House, the BBC comedy’s big-screen spin-off, took £7m from a £2.4m opening and is now the year’s second-biggest wholly British production after The Magic Faraway Tree (£15.1m). Paramount’s Street Fighter (£5.9m), Universal’s horror Other Mommy (£5.5m), Warner Bros’ Clayface (£5.4m) and Universal’s animated Forgotten Island (£5.3m) followed. Eight of the top 10 passed £4m.
| Rank | Film | Distributor | Released | 2 Oct–5 Nov | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Verity | Sony | 2 Oct | £11.8m | £11.8m |
| 2 | Ghosts: The Possession of Button House | Lionsgate | 23 Oct | £7.0m | £7.0m |
| 3 | Street Fighter | Paramount | 16 Oct | £5.9m | £5.9m |
| 4 | Other Mommy | Universal | 9 Oct | £5.5m | £5.5m |
| 5 | Clayface | Warner Bros | 23 Oct | £5.4m | £5.4m |
| 6 | Forgotten Island | Universal | 16 Oct | £5.3m | £5.3m |
| 7 | Resident Evil | Sony | 18 Sep | £4.7m | £14.6m |
| 8 | Heart of the Beast | Paramount | 25 Sep | £4.4m | £7.4m |
| 9 | Sense and Sensibility | Universal | 25 Sep | £3.9m | £6.7m |
| 10 | Wicker | Black Bear | 30 Oct | £3.2m | £3.2m |
Source: Rentrak, UK and Ireland gross, released 6 November 2026, as published by Screen.
Tom Linay, head of film at the cinema advertising sales house Digital Cinema Media, told The Media Leader that the tenth-placed film had taken more than any No. 10 in a month so far this year. He estimates that October admissions rose about 30% year on year. The official count follows later in November.
The year so far
Spider-Man: Brand New Day (Sony) leads 2026 with £100.3m and now sits third on the territory’s all-time chart. Universal’s The Odyssey is second for the year on £88.3m, and tenth all-time, ahead of Disney’s Toy Story 5 (£58.5m), Universal’s Michael (£53.2m) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (£38.6m). Universal has four of the year’s top 10, Sony and Disney two each.
Summer did most of the work. The 18 weeks from 1 May to 3 September took £527.8m, the biggest summer the territory has recorded, and pushed the year-to-date fractionally past the same point of 2019, £902.8m against £900.4m, Screen reported in September.
What 2019 would take
Comscore’s revised total for 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, is £1,354.4m. Getting there means about £285m over the final eight weeks, or some £35m a week. Working back from Rentrak’s same-point comparisons and the final totals for each year, the same weeks brought in roughly £195m in 2025 and £245m in 2024. Because Rentrak’s total and percentages are rounded, each figure could be out by about £10m either way; the gap is far wider than that.
Admissions show why the money looks healthier than the audience. The BFI’s official statistics, published alongside its production figures and covering the UK only, count 107.7 million admissions from January to September 2026, up 15% on a year earlier but still 16.5% below the 129.0 million of the same months in 2019. UK takings over those nine months were £897.3m, just 2% short of 2019’s £914.4m. On those figures the average ticket brought in about £8.33, against £7.09 in 2019, a rise of 17.5% before inflation (FilmBunch calculation; event cinema included in both years).
November opened with Sony’s Indian epic Ramayana: Rise of a Legend at No. 1 on £2.15m for 6–8 November, ahead of Walt Disney’s release of Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine (£1.48m), according to the Rentrak chart published by the UK Cinema Association. Paramount’s Ebenezer opens on 13 November and Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping the following week, and the FDA lists Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three among the releases still to come before the year is out.
Our reading
The post-pandemic record is banked; 2019 is still a stretch. To get there, the last eight weeks would need to be roughly half as big again as last year’s and about a sixth bigger than 2024’s. A heavy December slate makes that conceivable. Neither of the past two years suggests it is likely.
The admissions gap is the more lasting point. UK takings are almost back at 2019 levels with a sixth fewer tickets sold, so the recovery rests on what each visit is worth as much as on how many people come. For distributors and exhibitors planning 2027, a record gross is not yet a record audience. The next evidence is the BFI’s full-year admissions count in February.
Sources
- Screen International, UK-Ireland box office for 2026 passes totals of every post-pandemic year (11 November 2026; Rentrak figures to 5 November)
- The Media Leader UK, October box office jumps 35% as year-to-date gross passes £1bn (6 November 2026; Rentrak data, DCM comment)
- Film Distributors’ Association, Annual box office 1991–2025 (Comscore; 2019 £1,354,438,163, 2025 £1,070,538,042)
- Film Distributors’ Association, UK & Ireland box office passes £1bn mark ahead of previous three post-pandemic years (12 October 2026)
- Film Distributors’ Association, National Cinema Weekend arrives in UK and Irish cinemas (7 September 2026; 18-week summer £528m)
- Screen International, Highest-grossing summer ever pushes UK-Ireland box office ahead of 2019 (4 September 2026; Rentrak figures)
- BFI Research and Statistics Unit, The UK box office, January to September 2026 (official statistics, 10 November 2026)
- UK Cinema Association, weekend top 10, 6–8 November 2026 (Rentrak)
- European Central Bank, euro foreign exchange reference rates, 5 November 2026 (USD 1.1224, GBP 0.83393; GBP→USD 1.3459)