Disney is no stranger to re-releasing beloved movies in theaters. In 2021 and 2022, the studio brought the original Avatar movie back to theaters, a push that helped the movie retake its place as the highest-grossing film of all time. Now, it’s bringing back an animated Pixar classic.
According to Variety, Cars will be back in theaters on Friday, Sept. 4, 2026. The original movie came out in 2006 and tells the story of a hotshot rookie race car named Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) who gets stranded in a rundown town called Radiator Springs, where he learns that winning isn’t everything in life. The re-release is meant to coincide with Lightning McQueen Day, which is Sept. 5; Lightning’s racing number is 95.
Check your local listings to see where Cars will be playing in your area. The theatrical re-release is part of a series of events planned over the next year to celebrate Cars. There will be special screenings at the Tee-Pee Drive-In and the Tulsa Circle Cinema, theaters built along Route 66 that evoke Radiator Springs. A life-size Lightning McQueen will appear at the Formula 1 Gran Premio d’Italia in Monza, Italy, and there will be an activation with NASCAR at the Daytona 500 in February. There will also be life-size Cars exhibits at the Beaulieu National Motor Museum in England and the Petersen Automotive Museum and National Automobile Museum in the United States.
Cars has always been a bit of an oddball among Pixar’s animated franchises, with lots of questions about the particulars of car anatomy and how world history would be different if the planet were populated with anthropomorphic cars instead of people. Does Lightning McQueen get car insurance or life insurance? The questions go on and on.
Still, the series has proven very durable. Disney and Pixar released three Cars movies between 2006 and 2017; Pixar has produced more entries in the Cars franchise than in any other of its series save Toy Story. The Cars movies have been financial successes at the box office, although none of them have broken into the list of top 10 highest-grossing Pixar films. But the franchise makes up for that by selling an inordinate amount of merchandise.
In addition to the movies, Disney and Pixar have produced a Disney+ Cars series called Cars on the Road, and are working on a new show called Cars: Lightning Racers that will be aimed at very young children. If the studio wants to announce the long-rumored Cars 4, it would make sense to do so while celebrating the original movie over the next several months.
