The 2026 summer box office wasn’t just hot, it generated a record-breaking heatwave.
Domestic ticket sales reached $4.76 billion by the end of the Labor Day holiday, making this the highest-grossing domestic summer on record, according to final figures released Tuesday by Rentrak.
The box office tracking company noted the 2026 total narrowly surpassed the previous record set in 2013.
Adding up the numbers, summer 2026 finished with $4,765,071,855, beating the previous record of $4,755,775,084 by $9.3 million.
“2026 now stands as the highest-grossing domestic summer on record,” Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak, said in a statement to Urban Hollywood 411. “Even bigger than the milestone itself is what this remarkable moviegoing season meant to studios, theater owners, and most importantly, moviegoers.”
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The record-setting summer was powered by a mix of superhero movies, family films, dramas, horror releases and sequels.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day led the summer moviegoing season with a massive $923.5 million in the U.S. and Canada. The Marvel and Sony blockbuster accounted for 19.38% of all domestic ticket sales over the summer season.
A side note, the superhero saga generated even more money overseas for a worldwide total of $2.4 billion.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey finished in second place domestically with $589 million, representing 12.36% of the summer box office. Together, the two films accounted for nearly one-third of all domestic ticket sales during the summer frame.
Other movies that helped bring film fans to theaters included Toy Story 5, Michael, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Obsession and Backrooms.
The record tally comes six years after the COVID-19 pandemic forced theaters across the country to close, leaving the industry’s future uncertain. Now, the domestic box office is back and super strong based on this summer’s ticket sales.
The final push came over the four-day Labor Day weekend, when domestic ticket sales reached $121.4 million.
The milestone arrived after Rentrak reported in August that the summer box office had already surpassed 2019 levels and was closing in on the record set in 2013, when Iron Man 3 topped the seasonal chart.
This year’s final numbers also produced an unusual bit of numerical magic. The old record rounds to $4.756 billion, while the new record rounds to $4.765 billion — the same digits rearranged into a new all-time high.
The summer movie season officially ran from May 1 through Labor Day, which fell on Sept. 7 this year.
Check out the summer box office history chart below from Rentrak:
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