The New Shows of the 2026 Summer TV Season

The beach? It's just a bunch of sand. Road trip? Gas prices. Visiting family? Too much family. Sitting in front of the TV? Now that sounds like a good vacation. The summer TV season is here, and your questions of where to go should be replaced with what to watch. 

Our list of the shows we can't wait to see includes several returning favorites, but what's more exciting than a brand new series? Here we bring you all the noteworthy new shows coming this season, including Damon Lindelof's latest superhero drama, Larry David's next comedy, and Will Ferrell's return to television. 

And for those of you who want something new but also familiar, may we interest you in a Big Bang Theory spin-off or a Legally Blonde prequel? Or how about some of your favorite books being adapted for the screen? There are plenty of those, too.

Read on for all the new shows you should keep an eye on this summer.

ALSO: The most anticipated TV shows of the summer

If there were a cult composed of people who loved documentaries about cults, I'd say, "Pass me the Kool-Aid." The newest addition to the creepy genre focuses on the relationship between Hoyt Richards, who would go on to become one of the most famous male models of the 1980s, and Frederick von Mierers, a charismatic socialite who preyed on attractive young people with promises of spiritual enlightenment and claimed to be possessed by an alien. 

Premieres Monday, June 1 at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max

Another docuseries about a cult — my bad, this one is a "community" — Devotion: Obedience or Betrayal goes inside New Zealand's isolated Gloriavale religious sect, which allegedly helped inspire the TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale thanks to its patriarchal society and charges of abuse. The series interviews former members who left and gets inside access to Gloriavale, where those who remain are adamant that they've intentionally chosen this life. 

Premieres Tuesday, June 2 on Paramount+

Not Suitable for Work was created by Mindy Kaling, so you already know part of what you're getting with it: a young, attractive cast who can all star in their own rom-com. What makes NSFW unlike what you might expect is that these post-college New Yorkers are more interested in their careers than they are in making out in the rain or dashing through an airport trying to stop their crush from boarding a flight to Italy after a change of heart. Buuuuuuuut we give it about three episodes until Kaling can't contain her beloved rom-com tropes.

Premieres Tuesday, June 2 on Hulu

Michael Jackson's complicated legacy as the King of Pop and an accused pedophile was sanded down in the 2026 biographical film Michael, but those who felt the movie didn't tell the whole story might want to check out this Netflix docuseries, which goes into detail about the Michael Jackson abuse trial, interviewing those who were in the courtroom.

Premieres Wednesday, June 3 on Netflix

Based on a true story that dominated tabloids in the U.K. in the early 1990s, this Netflix miniseries follows a young boy who was the only witness to his mother's murder, the father who tries to protect him from reliving the heinous crime, the media that wouldn't move on from the tragedy, and the legal system that tries to use the boy to solve the case. 

Premieres Thursday, June 4 on Netflix

If it worked for Presumed Innocent, then it could probably work for another '90s crime thriller, right? Apple TV is adapting Cape Fear — the 1991 film starring Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte that itself was adapted from the 1962 film and a 1957 novel — as a TV series, starring Amy Adams as a Georgia lawyer who is stalked by her former client, played by Javier Bardem, who was jailed for heinous crimes and released several years later. No word on how many prison-style dips Bardem can do.   

Premieres Friday, June 5 on Apple TV

Good friends Alice (Nicola Walker) and Steve (Jemaine Clement) watch their friendship crumble after Steve starts dating Alice's 26-year-old daughter (Yali Topol Margalith) in this comedy. Clement was always delightfully awkward; now he's awwwwwwkwarrrrrrrrd!   

Premieres Monday, June 8 on Hulu

Carley Fortune's novel The Summer I Turned Pretty Every Summer After gets adapted by the streaming industry's most prolific book-to-show manufacturer, continuing Prime Video's love of digitized pages, particularly those in the YA romance beach read genre. In Every Year After, a woman (Sadie Soverall) returns to her Canadian lakeside summer house, where she's reacquainted with the love triangle she shared with two brothers during her teenage years. If the story sounds familiar, that's exactly what Amazon wants.    

Premieres Wednesday, June 10 on Prime Video

Outlast, a survival competition series that forces lone wolf survivalists to work together in teams, spent its first two seasons in the chilly confines of Alaska. Now it's headed to the sweaty jungles of Panama, where the dangers of bears are replaced by snakes. However, you can expect the biggest threat to still be the players themselves, who have resorted to some nasty tactics in previous seasons.    

Premieres Wednesday, June 10 on Netflix

NBC is the rare broadcast network to dabble in the primetime nature docuseries, following last year's The Americas with Surviving Earth. The eight-part docuseries educates viewers on how various creatures survived the cataclysmic environments of Earth 450 million years ago. Though from the looks of the cute guy above, it wasn't all a struggle.     

Premieres Thursday, June 11 at 8/7c on NBC

This South African drama is comin' in HOT. Jonasi Gomora (S'dumo Mtshali) is a successful self-made CEO with a dream life... that includes multiple wives and mistresses who don't know about each other. Until they do. Whoops! The Polygamist also has the best 20-second trailer of the summer.     

Premieres Friday, June 12 on Netflix

Hear ye, hear ye: This limited series stars Rebecca Hall as a woman who becomes obsessed with a low-frequency hum that only she and a few others can hear, forming the perfect central mystery that will surely end in disappointment when the answer is revealed. (Sorry, that's years of experience with sci-fi mysteries talkin'.) The Listeners originally aired in the U.K. in 2024.      

Premieres Friday, June 12 at 9/8c on Starz and the Starz app

Another season, another Harlan Coben adaptation. This time, it's I Will Find You, which stars Sam Worthington as a man wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his son who is presented with evidence that his son may still be alive, prompting him to break out and prove his innocence. Britt Lower and Milo Ventimiglia also star.      

Premieres Thursday, June 18 on Netflix

Larry David has complained enough about the modern era, so he's going back in time for some fresh fodder. In Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness, the Curb Your Enthusiasm star helps producers Barack and Michelle Obama celebrate the 250th birthday of the Land of the Free by making fun of its most important historical events in this sketch series. 

Premieres Friday, June 26 at 9/8c on HBO

Finn the human and Jake the dog return for more adventurous times around the land of Ooo in this spin-off of the Emmy-winning animated series Adventure Time. These episodes will be self-contained and aimed at bringing in a new audience, which is why they're modeled after the early seasons of the mothership show. And yes, it's weird that it's not airing on Cartoon Network or HBO Max, where previous iterations of Adventure Time aired. 

Premieres Monday, June 29 on Disney+ and Hulu

This prequel to the hit Reese Witherspoon film franchise Legally Blonde follows a teenage Elle (newcomer Lexi Minetree) in her high school years to show how she became the iconic character who proved all those stuffy lawyers wrong. I smell a mock trial coming!

Premieres Wednesday, July 1 on Prime Video

Author Elin Hilderbrand scored Netflix a big hit with the adaptation of her book The Perfect Couple, so naturally other streamers were banging on her door for more. Peacock's adaptation of Hilderbrand's 2023 novel The Five Star Weekend has a title-worthy cast, including Jennifer Garner, D'Arcy Carden, Regina Hall, Chloë Sevigny, Timothy Olyphant, and Gemma Chan, and is about a celebrity food influencer (Garner) who, following a tragic loss, invites some pals to her luxurious Nantucket home, where things don't go as planned.

Premieres Thursday, July 9 on Peacock

Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic Little House books get Netflixified in this eight-episode first season that's another reminder of how big a hit Yellowstone and its prequels were. The semi-autobiographical tale follows a family forging their lives in the American West in the 1800s. The series has already been renewed for Season 2. 

Premieres Thursday, July 9 on Netflix

J.K. Simmons goes to the mean and intimidating side of his incredible acting range as a mob boss in this crime drama from Godfather of Harlem creator Chris Brancato. Set in the 1980s, The Westies follows the titular Irish gang, whose notoriously violent methods kept the Italian mafia's Five Families at bay despite being greatly outnumbered. Titus Welliver also stars. 

Premieres Sunday, July 12 at 9/8c on MGM+

"Let's make a reality show out of it!" is a common mantra in the TV business, and ABC's new Dancing with the Stars spin-off is the perfect example of making an entirely new series for something instead of just putting out a press release. Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro, hosted by Robert Irwin, pits professional dancers in a competition against each other to become to next DWTS pro, and to increase the drama, they're living in the same house. Let's see how they like it when someone is doing the foxtrot all night in the room above them.

Premieres Monday, July 13 at 8/7c on ABC

Anya Taylor-Joy stars in this crime thriller about a woman (Taylor-Joy) on the run from the feds after her boyfriend screws her over on a huge score and absconds with the cash. It was created by Banshee's Jonathan Tropper, who has never met a bone he didn't like to break in one of his memorable action sequences.

Premieres Wednesday, July 15 on Apple TV

In this primetime game show, celebrities — including Ice-T, JoJo Siwa, Carmen Electra, and more — play a quiz show with slightly different rules: The more questions you get right, the quicker you're eliminated, and the more you get wrong, the longer you stick around, with one contestant hailed as the nation's dumbest. The stupider you are the more screen time you get? This just about sums up America.

Premieres Wednesday, July 15 at 9/8c on Fox

The all-too familiar action-comedy trope of someone learning their bestie is an assassin is on full display when Debbie (Octavia Spencer) discovers her gal pal Judith (Hannah Waddingham) kills people for a living, and the two go on the run in Europe while being chased by bad guys. Laughter follows. Maybe.

Premieres Wednesday, July 15 on Prime Video

Certain types of Step Brothers-loving white-baseball-cap-wearing dudes: This show is for YOU. Will Ferrell plays an aging golf pro who refuses to retire in pursuit of the career Grand Slam, even as his golfer son (Jimmy Tatro) rises up the ranks. 

Premieres Thursday, July 16 on Netflix

Big Bang Theory spin-offs are a varied bunch. They've been set in the late 1980s as a single-camera coming-of-age sitcom, the mid-1990s as a multi-camera family sitcom, and now, all over the space-time continuum with Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman), owner of the Comic Center, leads the cast of characters in this sci-fi comedy in which Stuart, Bert (Brian Posehn), Denise (Lauren Lapkus), and Barry (John Ross Bowie) get into multiverse shenanigans.   

Premieres Thursday, July 23 at 9/8c on HBO Max

The coming-of-age drama Sterling Point comes from creator Megan Park (My Old Ass) and follows a 17-year-old city girl (Ella Rubin) who learns that her grandfather left her, and her twin brother (Keen Ruffalo), a mysterious island in Canada in his will. There, she finds friends, romance, and family secrets.

Premieres Wednesday, Aug. 5 on Prime Video

Ricky Gervais! And with those two words, you've either already moved on to the next slide or can't wait to see what comes next. The polarizing comedian and celebrity roaster is behind this adult animated series about feral cats in England who make observations about life, probably, knowing Gervais, while licking their own butts.

Premieres Friday, Aug. 7 on Netflix

Park rangers solving crimes is officially a new TV trend, according to the law of three. Following Spectrum/Paramount+'s Joe Pickett and Netflix's Untamed is USA Network's Anna Pigeon, which stars Chicago P.D.'s Tracy Spiridakos as... a park ranger solving crimes. This is USA Network's second show following its return to original scripted programming; The Rainmaker was released last summer.  

Premieres Friday, Aug. 7 at 10/9c on USA

One of the most anticipated shows of the summer is HBO's Lanterns, which brings DC Comics' Green Lantern characters Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) to the small screen. Created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, Lanterns combines Green Lantern lore with a True Detective-style crime feeling as veteran Lantern Hal and new recruit John investigate a murder in flyover country that may have extraterrestrial links. 

Premieres Sunday, Aug. 16 on HBO

• The most anticipated shows of the summer
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