2026 wasn’t that strong for sports films. But we found hidden gems that are worth your attention. In this collection you will find the best sports movies of 2026 with Formula 1 comebacks, chess grudge matches, and a twelve-year-old who said she would beat every man alive. All ten use sport to talk about something else.
Content
- Beast
- Reckless
- F1: The Movie
- Marty Supreme
- GOAT
- The Golden Double
- Perfect
- 48 Hours in Vegas
- Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association
- Queen of Chess
Beast
IMDb: 5.8/10
2026, Action, Drama, Sport
Australia
Director: Tyler Atkins
Top Cast: Russell Crowe, Daniel MacPherson, Luke Hemsworth
For years, Patton James was the kind of fighter no one wanted to face. Then he stopped. He found a quiet stretch of coast and went fishing. His fans still know his name. He would rather they did not.
Then his younger brother gets into trouble. Patton sees quickly that there is no quiet way out. He has to go back in the cage. He tracks down his old trainer Sammy. He starts doing the one thing he swore never to do again: preparing for a fight.
His opponent is Xavier Grau, the reigning ONE Championship champion. The stories about Grau are not good. He does not just beat his opponents. He humiliates them.
Reckless
IMDb: 5.2/10
2026, Action, Comedy, Crime
UK
Director: Elliott Montello
Top Cast: Scott Adkins, Vinnie Jones, Nicole Deon
Five years ago a main character of Reckless cut all the liaisons with his past. Now the only thing he wants is to disappear. He shows up at his former partner’s office and walks straight into something he was never supposed to see.
From that moment, the plan is dead. The police are already on him. Old friends drop the act fast. And the money he came for is now the most dangerous thing in London. To get clear and stay out of prison, he will need every trick he knows.
F1: The Movie
IMDb: 7.6/10
2025, Action, Drama, Sport
USA, UK
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Top Cast: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem
In 1995, Sonny Hayes was on his way to an F1 championship. Then a crash ended his career. Thirty years later, he races wherever the money takes him: small series, forgotten circuits, nothing glamorous. Just enough to cover the bills.
Then his old teammate calls. He runs the struggling APX GP team now and wants Sonny back in Formula One. Not as a driver. As a mentor. The job: pull the team out of last place. The problem: his young driver, Joshua Pearce, answers to no one.
Marty Supreme
IMDb: 7.8/10
2025, Drama, Sport
USA
Director: Josh Safdie
Top Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion
New York, 1950s. Marty Mauser is the best table tennis player in his part of Manhattan, and he knows it. Ping-pong is not yet a serious sport. Marty is building a career in it anyway. He hustles: bars, clubs, anyone who thinks they can beat him. He wins. He builds a reputation. He makes money.
Now Marty wants to be world champion. No one around him takes this seriously. In the tennis world, table tennis is a joke. Marty does not quit.
GOAT
IMDb: 6.9/10
2026, Animation, Action, Adventure
USA
Director: Tyree Dillihay, Adam Rosette
Top Cast: Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Aaron Pierre
Villand is a city of anthropomorphic animals. The locals play roarball: a full-contact sport where the biggest and fastest animals win. The stars of the league are panthers, tigers, and enormous horses. Will Harris is a small goat who loves the game. Nobody takes him seriously.
Will worships Jett Fillmore, the Thorns' biggest star: a black panther and the best player in the league. During one match, Will challenges a massive stallion named Main Attraction. The video goes everywhere. Team owner Flo signs him for the audience, not the game.
The Golden Double
2026, Drama, Sport
Russia
Director: Mgher Mkrtchyan
Top Cast: Egor Beroev, Sergei Shakurov, Sergei Gazarov
The year is 1973, the USSR. Nikita Simonyan is a Soviet football legend. Then he gets the call: go to Yerevan. Take charge of Ararat. The team is struggling. The players do not know what to make of the new coach. The clubs they will face do not take him seriously.
Simonyan sets one goal: win the golden double. The league title and the cup in the same season. No club from the Soviet republics had ever done it. To get there, he has to change the team. Fix the conflicts in the dressing room. Keep the officials out of his way.
Perfect
IMDb: 5.6/10
2026, Drama, Romance
USA
Director: Millicent Hailes
Top Cast: Julia Fox, Ashley Moore, Lío Mehiel
Perfect may be a film about what is coming. The world in it has run out of clean water. Not metaphorically. The shortage changes how people survive, where they go, and what they are willing to do.
Most people have no work and no home. Kai has neither. After a bad break-up, she is living in her car. Then she finds something: a hidden lake, clean water, a small community built around it.
She also finds Mallory. Wealthy, pregnant, and clearly running from something. On the surface, Mallory’s life is perfect. That is where the title comes from. The two women get close. It starts out awkward. It does not stay that way.
48 Hours in Vegas
2026, Comedy
USA
Director: Rick Famuyiwa
Top Cast: LaKeith Stanfield
This one looks back to June 1998. The Chicago Bulls are about to win their second three-peat: a sixth championship in eight years. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and the coaching staff are waiting for the Finals. Dennis Rodman goes to Las Vegas.
He disappears for several days. Casinos, parties, people he has never met. Events that people are still arguing about. His coach Phil Jackson heard about it and approved. Or he did not. The details changed with every telling.
Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association
IMDb: 7.7/10
2026, Documentary, Sport
USA
Director: Kenan Kamwana Holley
Top Cast: Julius Erving, George Karl, Spencer Haywood
In 1967, a group of businessmen decided to take on the NBA. The plan was simple: to build a rival league. Next, that league was the ABA, the American Basketball Association. They showed up with a red, white, and blue ball and a new set of rules. The style of play was unlike anything the NBA had seen.
The ABA lasted nine seasons. In 1976, it folded into the NBA. Besides the NBA won the war, the ABA invented everything that mattered.
After the three-point shot, and the slam dunk contest at the All-Star Game. The right to draft players straight from college. Dr. J (Julius Erving), Moses Malone, and George Gervin all came up through the ABA. So did dozens of others. Players who changed what the NBA was.
Queen of Chess
IMDb: 7.6/10
2026, Documentary, Biography
USA
Director: Rory Kennedy
Top Cast: Judit Polgár, Garry Kasparov, Polgár family
The film tells us about a twelve years old Hungarian girl. In the late 1980s she told the world she would become the best chess player alive. Not the best woman, but the best at all. That means she plans to beat all the men in the sport.
The world’s top grandmasters are on record saying the female brain cannot handle chess. She spends the next thirteen years persevering with it. At fifteen and a half, she became the youngest grandmaster in history. She beat Bobby Fischer’s record. She couldn’t give up because her next target is Garry Kasparov, the world number one. He has also spent years publicly saying she does not belong.
