BFI London Film Festival Adds Ray Gunn and Wildwood World Premieres
The 70th BFI London Film Festival will run October 7–18, 2026, with Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn and Travis Knight’s Wildwood leading a 251-title program from 88 countries. The animation-heavy lineup also brings new work from Duncan Jones, Louise Bagnall and Alejandra Pérez González to U.K. audiences.
Travis Knight, Hailee Steinfeld, Jorge Lendeborg Jr. and John Cena speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Bumblebee", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. · Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The BFI London Film Festival has set its 70th edition for October 7–18, 2026, and its latest lineup announcement puts two animated features at the front: Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn and Travis Knight’s Wildwood will have their world premieres in London. The festival now counts 251 titles from 88 countries, including features, shorts, series and immersive projects. For animation fans, the news is bigger than a pair of red-carpet premieres: Bird’s long-delayed film arrives before its December Netflix release, while Laika’s stop-motion fantasy reaches audiences weeks ahead of its theatrical opening.
Ray Gunn and Wildwood give London two major animation premieres
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ray Gunn is an animated detective caper from Bird, whose last animated feature was Incredibles 2. The project has been in development in different forms for more than 30 years. Skydance Animation produced the film, and Netflix will release it worldwide on December 18.
That timing gives the London screening a particular charge. The festival will be the first place to see whether Bird’s retrofuturist crime story can turn a famously long gestation into a finished film with its own pulse. The premise and full story details remain closely held in the material announced here, but the combination of Bird’s name, the project’s history and a global streaming date makes this one of the festival’s clearest appointment screenings.
Wildwood has a different kind of pressure around it. Cartoon Brew reports that Knight’s film is Laika’s first feature since 2019’s Missing Link. The stop-motion fantasy follows a young girl who enters a forbidden forest to rescue her kidnapped brother. It adapts the novel by The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis. Fathom Entertainment will release it theatrically on October 23, only a few weeks after the festival premiere.
For Laika, London offers an early public test for a handmade production arriving after a long gap. Knight, who previously directed Kubo and the Two Strings, returns to the medium with a story built around a child, a dangerous woodland and a missing sibling. The release schedule makes the festival screening part of the film’s launch, not a distant preview.
Photo: Crawford, C. G., artist; Bradly, Horace, artist · Public domain · source
The animation lineup reaches beyond the two headliners
The festival’s animation selection is unusually broad. Pérez González’s Mexican-Brazilian feature My Friend the Sun will have its international premiere. The film follows a father and daughter drawn into Tollan, the realm of the Mexica gods.
Louis Clichy’s hand-drawn Iron Boy comes to London after premiering in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and winning both the jury and audience awards at Annecy. Louise Bagnall’s Julián, adapted from Jessica Love’s picture book Julián Is a Mermaid, is the Irish filmmaker’s follow-up to her Oscar-nominated short Late Afternoon.
Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper, a performance-capture adaptation of the British comic, also joins the program after its Annecy premiere. Fernanda Salgado’s Brazilian animated debut Ana, en Passant will screen in the Journey section, which the festival describes as a home for stories that shift perspectives.
Two animated shorts programs widen the frame. One is aimed at younger audiences; the other gathers films about connection to people, the surrounding world and the self. The announced titles include Lucia Bulgheroni and Michele Greco’s Aller & Retour, Lena von Döhren’s Bats & Bugs, Chris Callus’ Grounded and Hanneke van der Linden’s LouLou. The adult shorts program includes Elizabeth Hobbs’ Daughters of the Late Colonel, Aisha Boudjillouli’s Eyeliner and Anna Mantzaris’ Please.
Photos: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source; The Conmunity - Pop Culture Geek from Los Angeles, CA, USA · CC BY 2.0 · source
A 251-title festival with 33 world premieres
The wider LFF program includes 33 world premieres: nine features, two series, two mid-length films, 19 shorts and one immersive project. There are also 16 international premieres and 20 European premieres. All features and series will screen to U.K. audiences for the first time.
Other world premieres named by the festival include Anthony Wonke’s British boxing biopic In the Shadows, Carol Morley’s semi-autobiographical 7 Miles Out, Sean Mathias’ adaptation Frank and Percy, Federico Borgia’s Prince, Mohsen Amiryousefi’s The Banning Curse, Siu-pong Wong’s The Whisper of Sunlight and Ken Fero and Tariq Mehmood’s documentary Rebellion, about the Bradford 12. Michael Winterbottom’s series The Trip to the Northern Lights, starring Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, and comedian Leo Reich’s It Gets Worse are also set for world debuts.
The festival’s immersive strand will premiere Red the Ocean Around U from CrossLucid and Orion Facey. Female filmmakers account for 109 works, or 43 percent of the program.
Photos: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America · CC BY-SA 2.0 · source; The Conmunity - Pop Culture Geek from Los Angeles, CA, USA · CC BY 2.0 · source
Galas bring Boyle, Waititi, Leigh and returning festival names
The gala program includes Danny Boyle’s Ink, about Rupert Murdoch’s Fleet Street career, as the Mayor’s Gala. Other gala titles include Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter, James Gray’s Paper Tiger, Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, Susanna White’s Prima Facie and Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care.
Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial and Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid are also among the gala screenings. Filmmakers returning for the anniversary edition include Paweł Pawlikowski, McDonagh, Waititi, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Cristian Mungiu, Lee, Boyle, Haigh, Leigh, Florian Zeller and Ava DuVernay.
The festival’s artistic director, Kristy Matheson, described a program shaped by social change, moral questions and recurring attention to care and community. The clearest practical promise is simpler: London will be the first U.K. stop for 251 films and series, with Ray Gunn and Wildwood arriving before most audiences can see them anywhere else.
Every factual claim above is drawn from these. The reading of them is ours.
BFI London Film Festival 2026 lineupRay Gunn world premiere London Film FestivalWildwood Laika premiere October 2026Travis Knight Wildwood release dateBrad Bird Ray Gunn Netflix December 2026animated films at BFI London Film Festival
