The Gotham has announced its 2026 Gotham Week programming, and the Project Market — the oldest and largest curated marketplace for film and TV creators in the United States — is bringing 80 narrative and documentary projects into the room with industry executives this autumn in Brooklyn. The week runs Sunday, September 27 through Saturday, October 3, with the Gotham Week Honors set for Wednesday, September 30, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

A meetings-driven forum is the format: selected creators with unfinished films sit down across from distributors, financiers and festival programmers, trying to move a project from development toward a screen. The Gotham's managing director Kia Brooks called the Project Market a long-standing launching pad for film and media creators, and the alumni list backs that up — Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (A24), Sean Wang's Dìdi (Focus Features), Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar's American Factory (Netflix) and Erica Tremblay's Fancy Dance (Apple TV+) all passed through in earlier years.

This year's feature slate includes The Curse of Silver, produced by Liz Cardenas with Lily Gladstone attached to star, alongside High Steel, a feature from Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs, who broke out on the series Reservation Dogs. The documentary side draws heavily on well-known names working behind the camera: Geeta Gandbhir executive produces three projects, including one titled Taxi Driver; Katie Couric backs Zoe Potkin's Daddy's Girls; Julianna Margulies supports Emily Harrold's Sister Senators, from producer Robin Hessman; and Rachel Maddow is behind Nancy Kates' An Everyday Riot.

A shorts-to-features section expands short films into full-length works, and the producer names there are equally notable. Lin-Manuel Miranda backs Joel Perez's Villa Encanto. Sam Rockwell partners with Laith Nakli on Julian Joslin's Otherwise Innocent. Bob Odenkirk and Jane Schoenbrun executive produce She's Nonbinary.

Beyond the U.S. slate, a Global Producers Hub section brings in international partners: NFVF South Africa, Telefilm Canada, EAVE, French in Motion and the Red Sea International Film Festival. Some projects in this section come from producers who have already passed through the development labs at Cannes and Rotterdam — the two largest European festival markets.

Gotham Week is not only a deal-making floor. The 2026 edition includes a day of artist and industry conversations presented by Filmmaker Magazine, community activities through the Gotham Edu programme screening winning short films from the past two years, and a Gotham Week Expo connecting nonprofit partners, colleges, universities and film offices.

For context, last year's 2025 Gotham Week featured projects from Margaret Cho, Sean Baker and Andrew Ahn, with Honors recognising filmmakers including Derek Cianfrance and Laura Poitras. The structure repeats; the names rotate.

What makes the Project Market worth watching is the distance between a Brooklyn meeting room and a cinema marquee. Films arrive as scripts and rough cuts with no distribution attached. Some leave with deals. Most do not. But the ones that break through tend to surface two or three years later on a festival schedule, then on a streaming platform or in theatres — by which point few remember the week in September when the introductions were made.