10 Best New TV Shows to Watch This Fall 2026

As far as Summers go, 2026 offered plenty of reasons to get out of house, from the surprisingly fantastic Minions & Monsters to two Earth-shattering blockbusters in The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Even August had its highlights with the very fun The End of Oak Street and the long-anticipated — and incredibly funny — Coyote vs. ACME.

But that’s all over now and it’s time to turn our primary attention from the big screen to the small screen. The fall season is jam-packed with new TV shows like VisionQuest and Crystal Lake, as well as returning favorites like Scrubs and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Here are the 10 most anticipated shows of the fall with a focus on sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and animation — and you can find even more shows and scoops in our 2026 Fall Preview.

10

Scrubs

Image: 20th Television

The early 2000s hospital comedy about quirky doctors returned last year for its first season since 2010 (or 2009 if you correctly don’t count the ninth season). While there was skepticism about whether the reboot could recapture the charming voice of the original, pretty much everyone agreed it did. The revival began with Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley) appointing his former protégé J.D. (Zach Braff) as the new Chief of Medicine at Sacred Heart Hospital, a position which, surprisingly, didn’t rob the character of how fun he had been in the original series. The revival also managed to bring a fair amount of heart, particularly with the reveal of Dr. Cox’s medical condition.

Season 11 of Scrubs will premiere on ABC on Sept. 30.

9

Dig

Image: Colleen Hayes/Peacock

Not to be mistaken with Tom Cruise’s upcoming comedy Digger, Dig is a new sitcom starring Amy Poehler. Not much is known about the series except that Poehler is playing an archaeologist who, along with a few other archaeologists, uncovers a big secret on a dig in Greece. Despite the scant details, there’s good reason to be excited. For one thing, Amy Poehler is returning to television, and she’s doing it with executive producer Mike Schur, one of the co-creators of Poehler’s beloved sitcom Parks and Recreation. So with Schur and Poehler onboard, this show seems very promising.

Dig will premiere on Peacock on Nov. 23.

8

Crystal Lake

Image: A24

Few horror franchises are as iconic or successful as the Friday the 13th films, but it’s been 17 long years since we’ve seen Jason Voorhees onscreen due to various legal rights issues. Thankfully, that drought is finally over — sort of. Crystal Lake from Callum Vinson (It: Welcome to Derry) is bringing the franchise back to the beginning — actually, before the beginning.

If you recall the original 1980 film Friday the 13th, the iconic hockey-mask-wearing Jason was not yet the villain of the franchise. In that first movie, it’s Jason’s mom who’s doing the killing around Camp Crystal Lake summer camp as she seeks vengeance for the death of her son. Crystal Lake series will tell the story before the events of the first film, with Linda Cardellini as Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees.

The eight-episode first season of Crystal Lake will drop all of its episodes on Peacock on Oct. 15.

7

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Photo: Aidan Monaghan/HBO

Nobody wanted HBO Max’s new Harry Potter show. The celebrated series of movies starring Daniel Radcliffe is still very fresh in people’s minds, and it hardly seems necessary to re-adapt the saga right now, especially while Harry Potter creator J. K. Rowling is an unrepentant transphobic bigot. Still, the sheer volume of talent involved with the upcoming Harry Potter series can’t help but attract attention.

Nick Frost is an extraordinarily good casting choice for Hagrid, and Paapa Essiedu is an intriguing pick for Severus Snape. The actor I’m most excited to see, though, is John Lithgow as Dumbledore. I also tend to think that it’d be interesting to see how much more from the books the series will be able to include, as the movie necessarily had to cut a lot out. Perhaps this series will end up being as pointless as everyone originally thought, but so far, it’s definitely not looking that way.

The eight-episode first season premieres on HBO Max on Dec. 25.

6

South Park season 29

Image: South Park Studios

For much of its run, South Park had mostly stayed out of politics, with creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker generally choosing to lampoon popular culture instead. However, for seasons 27 and 28, which aired back-to-back last year, the show about four vulgar young boys in Colorado went all-in on its bashing of President Donald Trump. Frequently depicting him entirely naked, the show portrayed Trump as a petulant, evil narcissist with a small — well, it’s South Park, so you can probably figure out what part of Trump’s anatomy they repeatedly portrayed as being too small.

The weekly swipes at Trump were so relentless that they made headlines each week and even got some direct attention from Trump himself. While some fans — likely Trump supporters who can’t take a joke — rankled at the political turn, many found it hilarious and it gave South Park the most relevance it’s had in years.

The show will return on Sept.16 for its 29th season, with semi-weekly releases after that. The release schedule may change mid-season, too, just like it did last year. Regardless of how quickly the episodes come out, I can only hope they double-down on what they did last season, which is often what Stone and Parker do when people tell them not to do something.

5

Blade Runner 2099

Image: Amazon MGM Studios

Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel Blade Runner 2049 may have been liked by critics, but the movie failed to be the massive blockbuster it needed to be to make back all the money poured into it. Still, for those who turned out for the movie, they saw that the Blade Runner franchise still had some good stories to tell in its neon-lit dystopia populated with replicants (bio-engineered slave laborers).

This go-around, executive producer Ridley Scott (who directed the original 1982 film), has teamed up with Shining Girls creator Silka Luisa for the Prime Video series Blade Runner 2099, an eight-episode miniseries with an intriguing twist. Instead of the replicants being the second-class citizens, they’ve now taken over the city of Los Angeles and the humans are the ones that are oppressed.

All episodes of Blade Runner 2099 will drop on Nov. 25.

4

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 3

Image: Amazon MGM Studios

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before the Lord of the Rings movies and tells the story of Middle-earth’s Second Age (as opposed to the Third Age covered by Peter Jackson’s films). In the course of the series, Sauron’s Rings of Power are forged as part of a plot to sneakily conquer all of Middle-earth and subjugate its many inhabitants. Season 3, which premieres on Nov. 11 on Prime Video, will see Sauron forge the One Ring, a powerful weapon that will help him defeat his enemies.

Response to the series has been mixed thus far, perhaps because, unlike the more faithful films which were directly based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s novels, The Rings of Power extrapolates a lot more, building its own mythology based loosely on the appendices of the original books. Some don’t see it as canon for this reason, but The Rings of Power has properly captured the scale and scope of The Lord of the Rings, even if it is a television series and not a theatrical film. And because of the sheer size of the production, and some interesting story choices, it’s at least worth checking out.

Four episodes will drop on Nov. 11. After that, the season’s remaining four episodes will drop soon after, with two episodes on November 18 and another two on Nov. 25.

3

Carrie

Image: Robert Falconer/Prime Video

Stephen King’s 1974 novel Carrie, and its 1976 adaptation directed by Brian De Palma, are still as good as ever. The supernatural thriller story about a telekinetic teenager who lashes out at her bullying classmates at prom has spawned a number of remakes, and now there’s a TV miniseries in the works with the prolific Mike Flanagan at the helm. If you’re unfamiliar with Flanagan, he’s the showrunner behind a bunch of Netflix horror series like The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club, and The Fall of the House of Usher. He’s also behind the Stephen King film adaptations Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. While yet another Carrie adaptation hardly seems necessary, in Flanagan’s hands, it automatically becomes one of the fall’s most anticipated shows. Flanagan’s choice to set the series in modern times in a setting where school shootings and cyber-bullying have sadly become the norm also puts a clever twist on the iconic tale.

The six-episode series will drop all at once on Prime Video on Oct. 7.

2

VisionQuest

Image: Disney/Marvel Studios

Most Marvel Cinematic Universe shows have been pretty bad or forgettable, but both WandaVision and Agatha All Along were fun stories that didn’t drag in the middle, unlike the majority of the others. With that, the hope is VisionQuest, which is being marketed as the conclusion to the WandaVision trilogy, will be on-par with those two. Paul Bettany’s work as Vision in various Marvel movies and TV shows has always been intriguing and entertaining. He’s a strong lead, so, assuming the writing is on-point for this series, VisionQuest looks promising.

The story is about Vision re-discovering who he is after coming back online in WandaVision. While the now-white-colored android has his memories back, he still has to restore his personality and humanity. The show looks like it’s tackling this in a trippy, experimental way, with the inclusion of a human version of Ultron (James Spader) residing in Vision’s programming.

Whether this is an interesting link in the chain which leads to Avengers: Doomsday or merely a conclusion for Vision’s journey, it should prove interesting to see.

The eight-episode series VisionQuest will have a weekly rollout and debut on Disney Plus on Oct. 14.

1

Avatar: Seven Havens

Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the greatest animated series of all time. In a world where tribes of “benders” can manipulate the elements of water, earth, fire, or air, a young boy named Aang is the last airbender and the current “Avatar,” the only person who can bend all four elements. Over three seasons, the show told a complete and pretty much perfect story, which is why some feared that its 2012 sequel series, The Legend of Korra, wouldn’t measure up. Fortunately, The Legend of Korra, which followed the story of Aang’s Avatar successor, Korra, was on par with the original.

Hopefully the third series, which follows the new Avatar named Pavi, can replicate the success of its two predecessors.

The new series will premiere on Oct. 9, on Paramount Plus, with a 13-episode first season. A second season will be coming sometime in the future, with another 13 episodes.