26th century

Millennium:	3rd millennium
Centuries:	25th century 26th century 27th century
Decades:	2500s 2510s 2520s 2530s 2540s 2550s 2560s 2570s 2580s 2590s

The 26th century of the anno Domini (common) era will span from January 1, 2501, to December 31, 2600, of the Gregorian calendar.

Astronomical events

List of the long total solar eclipses

• June 14, 2504: Solar eclipse, (7 min 10 s), of saros 145.
• June 25, 2522: at 9:04 TD, total solar eclipse of 7min 12s, "crowning" at the top the series of saros 145.
• July 5, 2540: Solar eclipse, (7 min 04 s), of saros 145.
• July 17, 2558: Solar eclipse, (6 min 43 s), of saros 145.
• August 6, 2567: Solar eclipse, (6 min 26 s), of saros 164.
• August 16, 2585: Solar eclipse, (6 min 16 s), of saros 164.

Particular eclipse prediction

• May 5, 2600: First total solar eclipse visible from London since 2151.
  The width of its path is predicted to be exceptionally wide at its maximum point.

Other phenomena

• April 7, 2515: At 10:37 UTC, Mars will occult Neptune.
• January 25, 2518: At 22:41 UTC, Venus will occult Saturn.
• 2562: The dwarf planet Eris will have completed one orbit of the Sun, since its discovery in 2005.
• 2599: Triple conjunction Mars–Jupiter.

Science fiction set in the 26th century

Literature

• Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World is set in the year 2540.
• The "Fiat Homo" section of A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller takes place in the 26th century.
• Anthony Meredith writes the foreword to the Everhard Manuscript in Jack London's The Iron Heel around this time.
• In the early 26th century, humans make first contact with Pierson's Puppeteers in Larry Niven's Known Space universe.
• In the year of 2537 in the novel More than Weird by English-Canadian author Martyn Godfrey, a Gynoid named Susie travels from the year 2537 to the year 1987 to Dawson Creek to find a human teenager to take to the future to put him in a human zoo.
• Most of the events of the novel Revelation Space take place in the year 2566 with flashbacks to 2524 and earlier centuries.
• Bernice Summerfield, a character created in Doctor Who novels and later spun off into her own range of novels and audio dramas, was born in 2540, and published an archaeological book, Down Among the Dead Men, in 2566.
• Nevil Kingston Brown, an Australian physicist in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time", will die in 2518.

Film

• The third and final portion of Darren Aronofsky's film The Fountain takes place in the 26th century with future astronaut Tom Verde, played by Hugh Jackman.
• The movie Idiocracy, in which an average man (played by Luke Wilson) from the year 2005 is suspended in hibernation and wakes up 500 years later, is set in the year 2505.
• The film Pitch Black takes place in 2578, and its sequel The Chronicles of Riddick takes place in 2583.
• The Film Serenity is set in the year 2517, and follow Space Captain and Unification War veteran, Malcolm Reynolds, and his crew, across various planets.
• In the movie Aditya 369 , the protagonists reach a post-apocalyptic world in the year 2504 on 5 April. It is revealed that most of the world was destroyed in the third world war and the surface of the earth is not suitable for humans.

Television

• The TV show Cleopatra 2525 is set in the year 2525. (The theme song for the show is a parody of the song "In the Year 2525", mingled with the sound effects of futuristic weaponry.)
• The TV show Firefly is set in the year 2517, and follow Space Captain and Unification War veteran, Malcolm Reynolds, and his crew, across various planets.
• The eighth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is set in the year 2525. According to the show, 2525 is also the year of the end of planet Earth.
• The Doctor Who serial Earthshock, featuring the hijacking of a space freighter by Cybermen, is set largely in the year 2526.
• The Doctor Who serials Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks take place in the year 2540.
• In the South Park episodes "Go God Go" and "Go God Go XII", Eric Cartman freezes himself in the year 2006 because he is too impatient to wait three weeks for the release of the Wii video game console. He is accidentally left frozen until the year 2546.
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Azati Prime", Captain Jonathan Archer is briefly transported to a possible future 26th century (in the Star Trek universe) in which Klingon and Xindi crewmen serve the United Federation of Planets. Archer visits a possible version of USS ''Enterprise'' (NCC-1701-J) in this episode.
• The Planet of the Apes episode "Escape From Tomorrow" features a history book with a photograph of New York in the year 2503.
• The Medabots series are set in the 26th century.

Video games

• In R-Type Final the bonus ending where player sent from 2164 to 2501, they have only a chance to finish their journey home.
• The video game Bulletstorm is set in this century.
• The Dead Space game series takes place in the early 26th century, with "Dead Space" taking place in 2508, "Dead Space 2" in 2511 and "Dead Space 3" in 2514.
• The Xbox video game Dino Crisis 3 is set in a spaceship in 2548.
• The Nintendo 64 game F-Zero X and the Nintendo GameCube game F-Zero GX take place in an unspecified year in the 26th century. However, in the Game Boy Advance game F-Zero GP Legend, it is stated that the game takes place in the 23rd century in the year 2201.
• The Halo series is set in the 26th century. Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST & Halo: Reach take place between 2552 and 2553; the prequel Halo Wars takes place in 2531. Halo 4, the first part of the "Reclaimer" saga, takes place in 2557. Halo 5: Guardians takes place in 2558.
• The MS-DOS/QuickBASIC PC video game Red Baron 2573 takes place in the year 2573. In this game, the player is a mysterious spacefaring vigilante who must save Earth from the threat of an all-out, genocidal invasion by a marauding, xenophobic alien race called the Vordoxians, who use a computer virus to cripple the planet's electronic defense systems, as part of an aggressive and diabolical plot to obliterate mankind.
• The StarCraft series is set within the early 26th century.
• The NES game Super Spy Hunter takes place in 2525.
• The computer game Tachyon: The Fringe takes place in the 26th century, as stated by Commander Alberion Obulo in the intro.
• In the Xenosaga universe, the year 2510 is the year that the worldwide organization in charge of the space emigration plan changes the dating system from "A.D." to "T.C."

Comics

• Battle Angel Alita (Gunm) is set during this century.

Music

• "In the Year 2525", a 1969 song by Zager and Evans, describes what life is like in 2525 (and later the years 3535, 4545 and many others). Disturbing predictions are given for each selected year.

Other

• One possible alternative future for the tabletop role-playing game Mutants & Masterminds is set in Freedom City in 2525.

Population of Earth

Physicist Stephen Hawking, at a White House lecture in 1999, remarked that if there is no space colonization, population expansion continued unabated and the people of the Earth continued to use power at the rate they did then, then by the year 2600 people would be standing shoulder to shoulder and the Earth would glow red hot.