When you have as many moving parts as Walt Disney (DIS +0.43%), there's always something going on. There's never a dull week, month, or certainly not a year.
A lot will happen to the entertainment bellwether in 2026. I'm going out on limbs -- some safe and some wild -- to make predictions related to Disney businesses and the stock itself in the year ahead. Check it out, and let me know if you agree with a few, none, or all of them.
Image source: Disney.
1. Disney will announce an internal CEO this year
CEO Bob Iger is set to step down at the end of 2026. The board even made the unusual move of declaring that it will go public with Iger's eventual replacement early this year. The move to give the succession strategy a long tail is deliberate. When Iger initially stepped down from his first term in early 2020, the abrupt handoff to Bob Chapek as his replacement was anything but smooth.
Chapek's arrival in late February of that year came weeks before the country's multiplex operators and Disney's domestic theme parks would be shut down in response to the COVID-19 crisis. After a couple of misfires, the media giant's boardroom secured Iger's return from retirement. In 2023, his contract was extended through the end of 2026.
This may seem like a safe prediction, but there are two limbs that I'm going out on here. Iger routinely pushed out his exit date a couple of times during his first CEO tenure. If he feels that there is still a lot in the air -- and isn't that the case with Disney that always seems to be the balloon-raised house from Up --he might try to negotiate an extension. I'm saying he won't.
The other part of this prediction is that Iger's replacement -- when announced in the first few months of this year -- will already be a high-ranking Disney executive. This is the way things have typically been done at the company, but this time, things are different.
Disney shares are up just 26% since Iger returned to the helm on Nov. 20, 2022. The S&P 500 has soared 72% in that time. You don't normally get a curtain call and a chance to tap your own replacement when the general market has nearly tripled your return. Giving the next CEO almost a year to get acclimated makes it even easier to bring in an outsider, but I still think the replacement call will be coming from inside the House of Mouse. This is a massive company that would take a long time for an outsider to firmly grasp the reins. The business is also holding up better than its stock chart, so there is no need for an external search.
NYSE: DIS
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2. It will stay out of the media buying frenzy
Last year saw a pair of prolific Disney rivals come up for sale on the bidding block. Paramount was acquired by the renamed Paramount Skydance this summer. Netflix came out ahead in the contentious battle for Paramount Skydance for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Disney was never a serious bidder for either deal. It's not because Disney has a penchant for homegrown content. It hasn't had a problem cutting a check for Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox. But Disney will likely stay out of the market for any media stock deals that may emerge in 2026, due to a combination of still digesting its latest purchase and concerns about antitrust regulators blocking a needle-moving content grab.
3. Disney will have this year's biggest movie
Avatar: Fire and Ash became the third 2025 theatrical release from a U.S. studio to top $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide. Disney just happened to put out all three of them. It also released the only three films that exceeded $1 billion in global box office receipts in 2024. It's a hit factory.
Recent momentum is strong, but the highest-grossing film worldwide among 2025 releases continues to be China's Ne Zha 2. In fact, Disney has had the top film globally just twice in the past six years. I think Disney is poised to come out on top, just as it did in 2022 and 2024.
The pipeline is rich for Disney this year. Avengers: Doomsday should dominate the 2026 holiday season. It wasn't even close in 2019, with Avengers: Endgame as the undisputed global leader in multiplex ticket sales that year.
4. The stock will beat the market
Disney stock rose 3% last year, coming woefully short of the S&P 500's return. Disney has fallen short of the market in four of the past five years. I believe that 2026 will be able to buck the bearish trend.
I have already written an entire article detailing the reasons why Disney will beat the market this year. To sum it up, Disney's revenue may be growing slowly, but it has years of double-digit earnings growth ahead. The profitable turn of its streaming operations in fiscal 2024 has reshaped the narrative. In an era of content creators being bid up, the value of Disney has never been higher.
