7 Upcoming Fantasy Shows, Ranked by Hype

Published Nov 3, 2026, 3:44 PM EST

Remus is a writer, editor, journalist, and author with an eye for detail and an extremely active imagination. He is an enthusiast of everything to do with the graphic medium, whether it's Western comics and their adaptations or manga and anime. Remus is also the author of the sci-fantasy novel Once Upon a Time in Hyperspace and several works of short fiction in the mystery, comedy, and horror genres.

2026 has been a pretty solid year for fantasy television. So far, the year has seen new seasons of shows like House of the Dragon and Interview with the Vampire, as well as brand-new series like Avatar: Seven Havens and Witch Hat Atelier. However, as fun as those shows are, there are several exciting fantasy shows in the pipeline right now that could potentially blow those hits out of the water.

With release dates across the rest of 2026, 2027, and beyond, several upcoming shows have garnered sky-high hype among fantasy fans, drumming up lots of conversations ahead of their premieres. Not all of the conversations are positive, of course, and there’s at least one upcoming project that’s been talked about for all the wrong reasons, but on the whole, the future of fantasy television does look pretty bright. Without further ado, here are some of the most fascinating upcoming fantasy shows ranked by hype.

7 ‘Harry Potter’ (2026–Present)

Release Date: December 25, 2026

Based on J. K. Rowling’s bestselling fantasy books, Harry Potter is an upcoming fantasy series that’s the second adaptation of the novels after the film series. Starring Dominic McLaughlin as Harry, Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley, and Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, the show’s first season adapts the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and details Harry’s discovery of the wizarding world and his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The ensemble cast also includes John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid.

HBO has big plans for Harry Potter, with early reports estimating that the new show could span a decade of production. The series has already been renewed for a second season as well. However, the whole project has been largely met with the opposite of hype. Comparisons to the movies (the last of which came out in 2011), negative public opinion of J.K. Rowling, and the idea that the whole project is a naked cash grab have all led to a generally dismal reception from the core fanbase ahead of the show’s release.

6 ‘Magic: The Gathering’ (TBA)

Release Date: TBA

Created by Richard Garfield, Magic: The Gathering is one of the most successful game franchises of all time. A trading card game that’s expanded to various other media, the franchise is set across multiple realities and centered on Planeswalkers, dueling wizards with the ability to cross between worlds. While the game has been adapted as comics and novels before, it’s yet to get a movie or TV adaptation.

The Magic: The Gathering series adaptation has been in development since 2019 and has undergone many behind-the-scenes changes, but it finally looks like the show might actually make it to screens. The new show will be a Netflix animated series with Terry Matalas (12 Monkeys) serving as showrunner. The series was previewed at the 2025 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, but it doesn’t yet have a release date. Nonetheless, fans of the franchise are certainly excited for the show’s release and for the upcoming movie adaptation directed by Matt Johnson (Tony).

5 ‘Fourth Wing’ (TBA)

Release Date: TBA

One of the bestselling romantasy books of the 2020s, Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing is the first book of the Empyrean new adult fantasy romance series. A series adaptation of the books has been in the works at Prime Video since 2023, with Yarros serving as an executive producer on the project alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan, Liz Pelletier, Athena Wickham, and showrunner Meredith Averill. The show, like the book, follows the story of Violet Sorrengail, who joins the Basgiath War College and trains to become a dragon rider, encountering deadly quests, gruelling competition, and unexpected romance. Esther McGregor will star as Violet, with Emilio Sakraya as her rival/love interest, Xaden Riorson.

Fourth Wing is one of the biggest BookTok hits of the romantasy genre, so its series adaptation has a lot of people very excited, and with good reason. Featuring fast-paced action, high-tension romance, and, of course, dragons, Fourth Wing has all the ingredients to become a fantasy TV landmark to rival Game of Thrones. Whether it will actually achieve that potential remains to be seen.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood

Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.

💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)

👒Grand Line(One Piece)

🐺The Continent(The Witcher)

🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)

FIND YOUR WORLD →

What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.

ASomething ancient and half forgotten that came down through my family. BSomething completely ridiculous that works in a fight and gets a laugh. CNo magic at all, just training, potions and a very sharp sword. DSomething I inherited from a parent I have barely met.

NEXT QUESTION →

Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.

AA fellowship drawn from every corner of the world who barely trust each other. BA crew I picked up one at a time, all of whom would die for me. CTwo or three people I would never describe out loud as friends. DTwo mates from school who are exactly as out of their depth as I am.

NEXT QUESTION →

Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.

AA high city of white stone with the sea somewhere far below. BA ship under sail, with an island ahead that nobody has mapped. CA rented room over a tavern, in a town I am leaving in the morning. DA cabin at a summer camp with everybody else already awake outside.

NEXT QUESTION →

How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.

AI am not, because somebody far older than me decided this was my duty. BTreasure, and I am not always careful about whose it used to be. CI take contracts, since people will pay well for what they will not touch. DI am fifteen and this is all technically a school trip.

NEXT QUESTION →

There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.

ASend word to somebody who has seen this before, then hold the line. BWalk straight in, because it is interesting and possibly edible. CAsk what it has been eating and what the village is willing to pay. DWork out which myth it escaped from, then improvise very badly.

NEXT QUESTION →

Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.

AAn ancient evil that has been patient for several thousand years. BA government that has spent a long time calling itself the good guys. CA man who turns out to be far worse than anything I hunt for money. DA god, or possibly my own family, and quite likely both at once.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.

ASome things are worth defending even when the odds are hopeless. BNobody gets to tell me where I can go or what I am allowed to want. CPick the lesser evil, and never pretend afterwards that it was not evil. DMy friends come before anything a prophecy has to say about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.

AIn a song, in a language hardly anybody still speaks. BAs the one who got there first and proved the whole thing was possible. CBarely, and mostly wrongly, in ballads I would absolutely hate. DOn a plaque at a camp, read by kids about to do the same thing.

REVEAL MY WORLD →

The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…

Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return.

Middle-earth

You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.

This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat, fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.

The Grand Line

You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there.

One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of it.

The Continent

You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated.

Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story got told wrong.

Camp Half-Blood

You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you.

Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners, which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

4 ‘The Dark Tower’ (TBA)

Release Date: TBA

the dark tower the gunslinger stephen king

Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower is an upcoming multi-season series adaptation of the fantasy book series by Stephen King. Published between 1982 and 2012, the books revolve around Roland Deschain, a gunslinger on an unending quest across a surreal landscape in search of the titular tower, which sits at the center of a vast multiverse. The books were previously adapted as a 2017 film, which was widely panned by critics, but the series is a complete reboot of the story, and it’s been reported that it will star Sam Strike and Jasper Pääkkönen.

Spanning eight connected novels, one novella, a children’s book, and connections to almost all of King’s celebrated novels, The Dark Tower is the holy grail of Stephen King adaptations. It’s easy to see why the upcoming series has so many people excited, even though it doesn’t have a release date or any concrete details as yet. What little we know about The Dark Tower so far suggests an in-depth adaptation that could prove to be Flanagan’s most ambitious project yet and one of the most fascinating fantasy shows ever made. Or, like the movie, it could just be an expensive failure; only time will tell.

3 ‘The Stormlight Archive’ (TBA)

Release Date: TBA

The Stormlight Archive Wind and Truth cover

It’s no exaggeration to say that Brandon Sanderson is one of the biggest names in fantasy literature today, and The Stormlight Archive novel series, part of Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, is one of the author’s most popular hits. Currently comprising five novels and two novellas (with plans for a total of 10 novels), it’s an expansive saga set on the battered world of Roshar, which is threatened by magical storms, political tensions, and a looming cataclysm. The books have already inspired a VR experience and a tabletop game, and will soon become an Apple TV series.

As part of Sanderson’s deal with the streaming platform, the author will be personally leading adaptations of his Mistborn novels and The Stormlight Archive, the first as a movie and the second as a TV show, the first season of which will consist of 10 episodes. It’s still early days — the project doesn’t even have a showrunner yet — but it’s easily one of the most hotly anticipated fantasy shows currently in development. With complex character dynamics, intricate worldbuilding, and a fascinating magic system, The Stormlight Archive series has all the potential to become one of the biggest fantasy shows of all time, though, of course, right now, that’s all just speculation.

2 ‘God of War’ (TBA)

Release Date: TBA

Developed by Sony Pictures Television, Amazon MGM Studios, and PlayStation Productions, Prime Video’s God of War is the first series adaptation of the video game franchise. Based on the franchise’s Norse mythology era, the show follows Kratos and his son Atreus on a journey to the highest peak of the nine realms, where they hope to spread the ashes of their wife and mother, Faye. Ronald D. Moore serves as the showrunner, and the series stars Dave Bautista and Callum Vinson as Kratos and Atreus, respectively.

God of War fans have been waiting for a live-action adaptation for a long time, and the series is quite highly anticipated as a result. The production has had some significant delays, with original Kratos actor Ryan Hurst suffering an injury during filming, which has prompted a recasting and reshoots. We don’t know when the show will finally arrive, but Prime Video has given it a two-season order, and production is currently expected to end sometime in October 2027.

1 ‘The One Piece’ (2027–Present)

Release Date: February 2027

Luffy smiling and raising his arms in THE ONE PIECE

The second anime adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, The One Piece is a new original net animation show produced by Studio Wit and set to release on Netflix in February 2027. The series is a fresh reboot of the franchise adapted directly from the manga (not the iconic 1999 anime), and it will follow the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka), an aspiring pirate who sets out in search of the titular treasure alongside his motley crew, the Straw Hats. Directed by Masashi Koizuka and written by Taku Kishimoto, with character designs by Kyoji Asano and Takatoshi Honda, the show’s seven-episode first season will adapt the first 50 chapters of the manga.

One Piece is one of those anime/manga franchises that’s so big it’s recognizable even to people who’ve never seen an anime before, so it’s pretty understandable why Wit’s The One Piece is so highly anticipated. The new adaptation is expected to fix the classic anime’s pacing issues and elevate the animation style, giving the manga the fully modernized adaptation it deserves and bringing a new generation of viewers to the franchise.