Happy New Year 2026! With the new year comes the opportunity to mark another Public Domain Day, when we open up our arms to the thousands, even millions, of creations coming out of the common cultural heritage of our dear little planet Earth and its numerous nations to enter the realm of the public domain. On this day in almost every country worldwide, copyrights expire and terminate fifty, seventy, or whatever number of years after the passing away of the author of a creative work.
Today, we say goodbye to the copyright period known as “life plus 50 years,” as it expired today midnight for works of authors or last surviving co-authors, born in 1975. These works, finally liberated from the shackles of copyright laws, have become part of the common cultural heritage.
This heritage comprises everything, from grandiose music pieces to captivating literature, scientific articles and personal memories, architectural designs, and breathtaking photography. To sum it up, this refers to everything that represents human achievement on the very highest level possible.
The life-plus-50 class of the newly expanded Public Domain includes works by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich; British comic novelist and playwright P.G. Wodehouse; Yugoslav novelist and Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić; Italian poet and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini; American playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder; German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt; British historian Arnold Toynbee; British evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley; American-French entertainer and civil rights activist Josephine Baker; American photographer Walker Evans; American film composer Bernard Herrmann; visionary American television writer and creator Rod Serling; Chinese political and military leader Chiang Kai-shek; Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie; American actress Susan Hayward; Spanish dictator Francisco Franco; American stage and screen actor Fredric March; Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; American religious leader Elijah Muhammad; British comedic actor Arthur Treacher; Russian-born American billiard cue maker George Balabushka; American boxing champion Ezzard Charles; American science fiction author James Blish; Egyptian legendary singer Um Kulthum; Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo; and many, many more.
The second-largest bloc on the global copyright map—encompassing roughly half of the participating nations, including the United Kingdom, much of the European Union, Australia, and parts of South America—adheres to a “life plus 70 years” framework. In these jurisdictions, works by creators who died in 1955 enter the public domain today.
The distinguished list of creators whose works are now public domain in the life-plus-70 universe includes: German novelist Thomas Mann; German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein; Scottish physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming; American cultural icon and actor James Dean; American self-improvement writer Dale Carnegie; American modernist poet Wallace Stevens; American jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker; Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset; Romanian composer George Enescu; French philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; Swiss composer Arthur Honegger; French painter Fernand Léger; American educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune; British romance novelist Ruby M. Ayres; Australian journalist and author Charles Shaw; African-American Arctic explorer Matthew Henson; Canadian financier and philanthropist Izaak Walton Killam; Brazilian entertainer and actress Carmen Miranda; British interior decorator Syrie Maugham; British novelist Beatrice Kean Seymour; American science fiction writer Nat Schachner; American suspense novelist Elisabeth Sanxay Holding; and many, many more.
In the United States, the situation operates under its own unique legislative rhythm. For published works, copyright expires 95 years after publication, meaning that as of today, a massive treasure trove of American works published in 1930 has entered the public domain. The literary highlights are staggering: William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage (introducing Miss Marple), and the very first Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret of the Old Clock, by Carolyn Keene (Mildred Benson).
The U.S. public domain also welcomes iconic films from 1930, such as All Quiet on the Western Front, the Marx Brothers’ Animal Crackers, the Three Stooges in Soup to Nuts, and the first appearance of Betty Boop in Dizzy Dishes. Musically, George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” are now free to be performed and adapted without restriction, alongside seminal artworks like Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow and Paul Klee’s Animal Friendship. Furthermore, unpublished works by the life-plus-70 class of authors (those who died in 1955) are also in the U.S. public domain as of today, matching the European standard for those materials.
In Canada and the United Kingdom, however, the landscape for scholars, historians, and archivists remains frustratingly bleak and culturally counterproductive. While the United States predictably opens its vaults year after year, Canada recently slammed the door shut. In late 2022, to comply with the USMCA trade agreement, the Canadian government extended its general copyright term from life-plus-50 to life-plus-70 years. Because this was implemented with a draconian 20-year freeze, no new works by authors will enter the Canadian public domain under standard terms until the year 2043! This means that while authors who died in 1975 are celebrated today in life-plus-50 nations, their works—and those of anyone who died between 1972 and 1992—are locked behind an unprecedented legislative wall in Canada, creating a massive “scholarship gap” that deprives an entire generation of access to their own cultural history.
The United Kingdom has its own enduring anomalies, particularly concerning unpublished works. Due to historical legislative quirks, unpublished works (such as private diaries, letters, and raw historical papers) by all authors—no matter how many centuries ago they died—remain under copyright in the U.K. until January 1, 2039. This sweeping restriction places a ridiculous burden on historians seeking to publish comprehensive collections of primary source materials.
Compounding these dilemmas is the enduring headache of Crown copyright. In Canada and the U.K., Crown copyright for government works published in 1975 finally expires today (under their respective 50-year post-publication rules for Crown works). However, unpublished government documents can remain restricted indefinitely or until formally published. Perversely, His Majesty the King in right of the United Kingdom may no longer exercise copyright over an unpublished 19th-century colonial dispatch that sheds light on early Canadian or Australian history, but in Ottawa or Canberra, that exact same document might still be aggressively “protected” by Crown copyright laws held by His Majesty the King in right of Canada or Australia!
But will legislators be moved at some point to put an end to this tangled mess of legislative folly? One can only hope that heritages and cultural departments around the world are taking note.
Another class of works that enter the public domain worldwide today is anonymous or pseudonymous works that were first published in 1975 (or in 1955 or 1930, depending on the applicable copyright term for such works in your jurisdiction).
As much as you might despair over legislative stalemates and fights for copyright extensions, one must still take a moment to recognize the real successes made by the public domain today around the world. They are your history, your heritage, and your public domain. Read them, remix them, promote them, and celebrate them, because without a rich public domain, there can never be future creation.
Happy Public Domain Day 2026!