2026 public domain movies, cartoons, comics and books include Betty Boop, Nancy Drew

Betty Boop and Nancy Drew are joining Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain. The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year US copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on January 1. That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment. The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations does not quite have the sparkle of other recent years’ entries like Mickey or Winnie. But ever since 2019, which saw the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on by congressional copyright extensions, every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public. “It’s a big year,” says Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of the Centre for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School, in the US state of North Carolina. “It’s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.” Jenkins says that, collectively, this year’s work shows “the fragility that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression”. Here is a closer look at what is now in the public domain, based on the research of Jenkins and her centre. Cartoons and comics Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously. When she first appeared in the 1930 short Dizzy Dishes, one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she was already totally recognisable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialised in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She had her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and a miniature mouth. But she also had dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose. She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine – and push aside. She had a supporting role in Dizzy Dishes, performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She is not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop”. The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios, and the shorts were released by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl”, thanks to the hit 1929 song I Wanna Be Loved by You. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop’s character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings, the defence alleged that the singer Esther Lee Jones used similar phrases first. Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar work. But making merch will not be free. In an important distinction often raised by Disney over Mickey Mouse, a character’s trademark is distinct from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions trademark of Betty Boop remains intact. Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop was, like Betty, a young flapper and the central character of Chic Young’s newspaper comic strip, which debuted in 1930. It inspired a film series and radio show, and is still running today in papers. The strip followed her carefree breeze through life with her boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in 1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy familiar to later readers. Though the strip was meant to be based on a woman’s life, Dagwood would in many ways become its breakout star. Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons are also becoming public domain, two years after Steamboat Willie made the first version of him public property. He is joined this year by his dog Pluto, who, in 1930, was known as Rover. (He would get his long-term moniker the following year.) Books The books entering the public domain this year open the door to three iconic detectives from the 20th century. There is the teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930, starting with The Secret of the Old Clock. They were written by Mildred Benson (and others) under the pen name Carolyn Keene. Then there is Sam Spade, a sleuth who debuted via the full-book version of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Finally there is elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage. Meanwhile, a year after his The Sound and the Fury became public, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying becomes public domain. It would help lead to his Nobel Prize in Literature. Films A year after their film debut, The Cocoanuts, entered the public domain, the Marx Brothers’ beloved Animal Crackers joins it, as they entered their prime of high cinematic antics. The film finds Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating an explorer of Africa. Other films entering the public domain include The Blue Angel, a German film from Josef von Sternberg that emblazoned Marlene Dietrich’s top-hatted image into film lore; and King of Jazz, featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby. There is also a pair of Oscar best picture winners: All Quiet on the Western Front, which won in 1930, and Cimarron, which won in 1931. The coming decade will bring a huge bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films into the public domain. The year 2027 will be a truly monster one, literally, with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of Dracula and Frankenstein among the titles due. Music As in the past several years, a whistle-worthy stream of tunes from the Great American Songbook will become public, including four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his brother Ira: “Embraceable You”, “I’ve Got a Crush on You”, “But Not for Me” and “I Got Rhythm”. Different laws regulate the actual recordings of songs, and those newly in the public domain this week date back to 1925. They include Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” by the Knickerbockers, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” by Marian Anderson, and “The St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong.

2026 public domain movies, cartoons, comics and books include Betty Boop, Nancy Drew

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}With their 95-year copyrights finished, iconic characters, films and musicians from the Jazz Age can be used without permission or payment

With their 95-year copyrights finished, iconic characters, films and musicians from the Jazz Age can be used without permission or payment