Updated Sep 28, 2026: added Endgame: Encore’s $86 million opening, Kathryn Newton, Feige’s Yelena comments and Anthony Russo’s “more cast to come” tease, and re-checked the runtime, rating, writers and IMAX situation.
Avengers: Doomsday hits US theaters on Friday, December 18, 2026. Tickets are already on sale, two official trailers are out, and Robert Downey Jr. is back in the MCU, just not as Tony Stark. He’s Doctor Doom now. Anthony and Joe Russo direct, and it opens the same day as Dune: Part Three, which is why you won’t find it in a US IMAX. Here’s what’s actually confirmed, what’s just hype, and what Disney still hasn’t told us.
Avengers: Doomsday at a glance
| Detail | What we know |
|---|---|
| US release | December 18, 2026 (TheWrap) |
| Directors | Anthony and Joe Russo (Deadline) |
| Writers | Stephen McFeely and Michael Waldron, with Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers also on the team (TheWrap). Final on-screen credits aren’t out yet. |
| Villain | Robert Downey Jr. as Victor von Doom / Doctor Doom |
| Runtime | 165 minutes, per ticketing listings (THR). Disney hasn’t called it final. |
| Rating | Not rated yet. Fandango still lists it as NR as of Sep 28, 2026. |
| Formats | Disney’s Infinity Vision premium screens plus standard showings. No US IMAX for at least the first three weeks. |
| Tickets | On sale now; $50 million in domestic presales by Sep 9 (TheWrap) |
| Next film | Avengers: Secret Wars, December 17, 2027 |
When does Avengers: Doomsday come out?
December 18, 2026. It wasn’t always a Christmas movie. In May 2025 Marvel pushed Doomsday back from May 1, 2026 and Secret Wars from May 7 to December 17, 2027 (Variety, THR). That’s the same holiday corridor Spider-Man: No Way Home owned in 2021, so you can see the logic.
Streaming? Disney hasn’t announced a Disney+ date as of Sep 28, 2026. It’s theaters only for now, and anyone quoting you a specific streaming date is guessing.
Avengers: Doomsday cast: confirmed vs. rumored
Marvel revealed most of the cast on March 26, 2025 in a livestream that ran for about five and a half hours and did nothing but show names on the backs of director’s chairs. Honestly, it was kind of genius. Deadline reported it pulled 275 million views, a Marvel livestream record. Twenty-seven chairs went up (TheWrap’s full list), ending with Downey. The biggest name missing showed up nine months later.
Confirmed
| Actor | Role | Last seen |
|---|---|---|
| Robert Downey Jr. | Victor von Doom / Doctor Doom | New role |
| Chris Evans | Steve Rogers | Avengers: Endgame |
| Hayley Atwell | Peggy Carter | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness |
| Chris Hemsworth | Thor | Thor: Love and Thunder |
| Tom Hiddleston | Loki | Loki season 2 |
| Anthony Mackie | Sam Wilson / Captain America | Captain America: Brave New World |
| Danny Ramirez | Joaquin Torres / Falcon | Captain America: Brave New World |
| Paul Rudd | Scott Lang / Ant-Man | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania |
| Kathryn Newton | Cassie Lang | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania |
| Simu Liu | Shang-Chi | Shang-Chi |
| Letitia Wright | Shuri / Black Panther | Black Panther: Wakanda Forever |
| Winston Duke | M’Baku | Black Panther: Wakanda Forever |
| Tenoch Huerta Mejía | Namor | Black Panther: Wakanda Forever |
| Florence Pugh | Yelena Belova | Thunderbolts* |
| Sebastian Stan | Bucky Barnes | Thunderbolts* |
| David Harbour | Red Guardian | Thunderbolts* |
| Wyatt Russell | John Walker | Thunderbolts* |
| Hannah John-Kamen | Ghost | Thunderbolts* |
| Lewis Pullman | Bob Reynolds / Sentry | Thunderbolts* |
| Pedro Pascal | Reed Richards | The Fantastic Four: First Steps |
| Vanessa Kirby | Sue Storm | The Fantastic Four: First Steps |
| Joseph Quinn | Johnny Storm | The Fantastic Four: First Steps |
| Ebon Moss-Bachrach | Ben Grimm | The Fantastic Four: First Steps |
| Patrick Stewart | Charles Xavier | Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (as an Illuminati Xavier) |
| Ian McKellen | Magneto | X-Men: Days of Future Past |
| James Marsden | Cyclops | X-Men: Days of Future Past |
| Rebecca Romijn | Mystique | X2 / X-Men: The Last Stand |
| Alan Cumming | Nightcrawler | X2 |
| Kelsey Grammer | Beast | The Marvels (cameo) |
| Channing Tatum | Gambit | Deadpool & Wolverine |
Evans got confirmed by the first teaser on December 18, 2025, exactly a year out, which put Steve Rogers back on a motorcycle and holding a baby (Deadline, TheWrap). Atwell took the D23 stage with Downey and Evans in August to show new footage (Marvel.com, Variety). Newton announced herself in April, Doomsday-style, by unboxing a mini director’s chair on X (TheWrap).
One more thing worth knowing: Kevin Feige told Vanity Fair that Doomsday is “anchored” by Florence Pugh’s Yelena (AV Club). So if you skipped Thunderbolts*, fix that.
Rumored, teased or still a mystery
- Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Deadpool crashed Marvel’s Comic-Con panel to ask Downey if it’s too late to join (THR), and Jackman showed up in a D23 video offering to help “round out the cast” (MovieWeb). Very funny. Also not casting. Neither has been officially announced as of Sep 28, 2026.
- More names are coming. At an Endgame: Encore Q&A, Anthony Russo said “we haven’t announced some of the cast,” and admitted he gets confused himself about who’s been revealed (GamesRadar+).
- Tom Holland, Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen. None of them got a chair (TheWrap), and Marvel hasn’t confirmed any of them as of Sep 28, 2026.
- Endgame: Encore’s bonus scenes. The four new minutes in the re-release (Variety) put a few more familiar faces into play, according to fan outlets. We’re keeping those names out of this page until our two-week spoiler window closes on Oct 9.
- Leaked set photos have been floating around all year. We don’t link them, and they don’t confirm anything.
Need a refresher on the mutants? Here’s our guide to every X-Man confirmed in the MCU.
Plot: what’s official
Marvel’s synopsis is short: heroes from three distinct universes end up on a collision course and face an existential threat unlike anything they’ve seen (ABC News, quoting Marvel). You can read the three teams straight off the cast list: the main-MCU Avengers, Wakandans and New Avengers; the Fantastic Four from their retro-future Earth; and the Fox-era X-Men. Doom is the threat.
Everything else is officially unexplained. How is Steve back? Why does Doom have Tony’s face? Where does Loki fit after taking his seat at the end of time? No answers yet. Disney says Endgame: Encore “features exclusive new footage that directly sets up Doomsday,” but we’re not describing those scenes until the spoiler window passes.
Why Downey as Doom is a big swing
Casting the MCU’s founding hero as its final boss is the most confident move Marvel has made since Endgame. It’s also a tell. Jonathan Majors’ exit blew up the saga’s original plan (Variety), and Marvel needed a villain audiences would take seriously on day one. It didn’t have six movies to build one. So it borrowed 11 years of Downey goodwill instead.
Our take: this works if the movie treats Downey’s face as a question the plot has to answer. It falls apart if it’s just a wink at the audience. Doom is one of the most serious villains in Marvel’s comics, so the material is there. Whether the movie commits to it, we’ll find out in December.
Trailers
Two official trailers are out, plus the teasers that ran in theaters in December 2025. Marvel hasn’t released a final trailer as of Sep 28, 2026.
Official trailer (July 20, 2026):
Special look (debuted at D23 in August 2026):
Theater owners also got footage at CinemaCon in April (Deadline). And per Disney, the July trailer is the most-viewed trailer in the company’s history (TheWrap).
Tickets, IMAX and Infinity Vision
Tickets opened July 20 for Infinity Vision screens and July 25 for everything else (ABC News). On Sep 9, Disney CFO Hugh Johnston told investors the film already had $50 million in presales, and Disney said about 70% of advance tickets were for Infinity Vision (TheWrap, IndieWire).
The format situation, quickly:
- No IMAX in the US at launch. Warner Bros. locked US IMAX screens for Dune: Part Three for at least its first three weeks (USA Today via The Spokesman-Review). Doomsday is expected to play IMAX only in select international markets (Screen Rant), but Disney hasn’t named those markets as of Sep 28, 2026.
- Infinity Vision is Disney’s own badge for premium rooms, unveiled at CinemaCon. It’s a certification, not new tech. To qualify, a room needs a screen at least 50 feet wide, laser projection and 7.1 Dolby surround sound (Moneywise via Yahoo Finance).
- Dolby Cinema, ScreenX, 4DX and the rest. Disney hasn’t published a format-by-format list as of Sep 28, 2026. Check your chain’s showtimes page, since the Infinity Vision label goes on existing premium rooms run by the chains themselves.
Want the biggest screen in week one? Book the Infinity Vision room, not IMAX. Our Doomsday vs. Dune box office breakdown gets into what all this means for opening weekend.
The December 18 showdown with Dune: Part Three
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three, adapting Dune Messiah, opens the same Friday. It’s the biggest same-day collision of two franchise tentpoles since Barbie and Oppenheimer, and the internet has already named it “Dunesday” (Screen Rant).
We don’t think it hurts Doomsday much. The audiences overlap, sure, but Dune fans plan around IMAX, and Marvel fans will see Doomsday wherever it’s playing on Thursday night. The real losers might be the smaller movies trying to open that week. Get caught up on the other side with our Dune: Part Three primer.
Let’s be real: Marvel is leaning hard on the past
We’re excited. We’re also not going to pretend everything about this rollout is great.
- It’s a nostalgia machine. Downey is back, Evans is back, Atwell is back, and so is a big chunk of the Fox-era X-Men cast. Marvel needed a win after Majors’ exit, and it went straight for the old playbook instead of building new stars. That can work once. It’s not a long-term plan.
- The homework keeps growing. Disney re-released Endgame with four minutes of new scenes that “directly set up” Doomsday. That did $86 million worldwide in its opening weekend (Deadline). Great business. But when a movie needs a paid re-release of a seven-year-old film as a prologue, casual fans have a right to feel a little squeezed.
- Infinity Vision is marketing with a laser projector. Disney didn’t build new screens. It put a sticker on existing premium rooms after losing IMAX to Dune, and 70% of presales went to those pricier tickets. Smart move for Disney. Your wallet may feel differently.
- The cast is huge, maybe too huge. Thirty confirmed names and counting, and even the director says he loses track of who’s been announced. Infinity War and Endgame pulled that off with 10 years of setup. Doomsday is doing it with characters who, in some cases, got one movie.
- A lot of cooks. Four writers across two films, with Waldron stepping in and out between his TV work (TheWrap). That’s not unusual for a movie this size, but Marvel declined to comment on who’s doing what (TheWrap).
To be fair, the Russos have landed this exact kind of giant crossover twice before, and the presales say audiences are ready to show up. The pressure is all on the movie now.
How to prepare
You don’t need to rewatch the entire MCU. Our Marvel movies in order guide has a short “Doomsday homework” list. At minimum: Avengers: Endgame, Thunderbolts*, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and both seasons of Loki. Disney is clearly pushing the same list. Loki jumped to No. 1 on Disney+ the day after Encore opened (Screen Rant).
What comes after: Avengers: Secret Wars
Avengers: Secret Wars opens December 17, 2027, also from the Russos, and wraps up the Multiverse Saga. Production is set to start later this year, and Marvel has already added Noah Jupe in a key role (Deadline). Anthony Russo said in June that, for now, their plan ends with Secret Wars (Deadline).
We’ll keep this page updated with the rating, the final runtime, the review embargo and any final trailer. Once the movie’s out, our Avengers: Doomsday review and ending explained take it from here.
So what’s your bet: does Downey as Doom pay off, or is Marvel leaning on nostalgia one time too many? And are you booking Infinity Vision on opening weekend, or holding out in case IMAX screens open up later? Tell us in the comments.
