Jasmine Jobson fronts one of the new films in the London Film Festival lineup, playing Ramla Ali in In the Shadows. The 70th BFI London Film Festival unveiled its full 2026 program on September 2, with nine feature world premieres set across the October 7-18 run.
That premiere count is slightly higher than last year’s seven, and the festival’s scale is broader too: 169 feature films inside 251 titles from 88 countries. For buyers, sales teams and filmmakers, the number matters because it shows where the festival is placing its attention before the first screenings begin.
Jobson and Cole in In the Shadows
In the Shadows pairs Jobson with Finn Cole, who plays Ali’s husband, and True Brit will release the film in the UK on October 30. The casting gives the lineup one of its most immediate real-world hooks, with Jobson portraying the UK’s first female Muslim boxing champion rather than a fictional composite.
Sean Mathias’ Frank And Percy brings Ian McKellen and Roger Allam back to their stage roles as two older men who meet while walking their dogs on Hampstead Heath and develop an unexpected friendship. Icon will release it in the UK, while Kaleidoscope is handling international sales, which is the sort of split that usually signals a film aimed at more than one market at once.
Gala titles stretch from Ink to Fjord
23 Gala screenings will play at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, and six Special Presentations are also on the slate. Among the galas are Danny Boyle’s Ink, with Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch alongside Jack O’Connel and Claire Foy; Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, with Pedro Pascal, Olivia Wilde and Will Arnett; and Susanna White’s Prima Facie, starring Cynthia Erivo.
The gala list also includes Cristian Mungui’s Palme d’Or winner Fjord, Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. That mix pushes the program toward a familiar festival trade-off: the lineup is slightly bigger than last year, yet the competition slate was already set at 10-strong, including Carol Morley’s world premiere 7 Miles Out.
Wildwood, Ray Gunn and Screen Talks
Travis Knight’s Wildwood arrives as a stop-motion fantasy from Laika about friends drawn into a magical forest to find a kidnapped infant, with voice performances from Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan and Mahershala Ali. Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn is an animated science fiction mystery starring Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson, and it will stream on Netflix from December.
The Screen Talks series will also feature Andrew Scott. For audiences, the practical takeaway is simple: the lineup now gives a full map of what plays in October, and the next real pressure point is which of these titles can turn gala placement into wider release momentum.
