New York 42 New York Film Festival 2026
Lincoln Center and venues in all five boroughs, New York City · Organized by Film at Lincoln Center
- Dates
- Sep 25, 2026 – Oct 12, 2026
- Format
- In person
- Where
- Lincoln Center and venues in all five boroughs, New York City
- Organizer
- Film at Lincoln Center
The New York Film Festival does not hand out a top prize. It has no competition, no jury and no winner — which is unusual enough among major festivals to be the first thing worth knowing about it. What it has instead is a Main Slate: a selection, argued over by programmers, that is the whole statement.
The 64th edition runs from 25 September to 12 October 2026.
The Main Slate
32 films, including 17 directors making their Main Slate debut. The selection brings together new work by returning NYFF filmmakers and titles from festivals earlier in the year.
Dennis Lim, the festival’s artistic director, said it is «hard to recall a prior Main Slate program in which the state of the world has been as urgently reflected in so many creative ways».
Among the names in the slate: Pedro Almodóvar, Mike Leigh, Lee Chang-dong, Paweł Pawlikowski and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.
The three tentpole slots
Opening Night — Paper Tiger, directed by James Gray.
Centerpiece — Behemoth!, directed by Tony Gilroy.
Closing Night — 14th, a documentary directed by Ava DuVernay.
It is not only a Lincoln Center festival any more
Screenings take place across all five boroughs: at Lincoln Center, BAM in Brooklyn, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, and AMC Bay Plaza Cinema in the Bronx.
That spread changes the practical shape of the festival. A Main Slate title screening at Bay Plaza is the same film with the same print as the one at Alice Tully Hall, usually with a fraction of the queue.
New York Film Festival tickets
Passes went on sale first. Single tickets go on sale 15 September at noon.
The rush line is the part regulars use and visitors miss. Sold-out NYFF screenings routinely release returned seats at the venue shortly before the show, and the outer-borough venues almost never reach the point of needing one. If a title is gone at Lincoln Center, check the same film’s second screening in Queens or the Bronx before assuming it is unavailable.
Source: Film at Lincoln Center checked against the source
