January 1, 2026 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1930 are open to all, as are sound recordings from 1925!
On January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1925. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon.[3] The literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage and the first four Nancy Drew novels. From cartoons and comic strips, the characters Betty Boop, Pluto (originally named Rover), and Blondie and Dagwood made their first appearances. Films from the year featured Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, the Marx Brothers, and John Wayne in his first leading role. Among the public domain compositions are I Got Rhythm, Georgia on My Mind, and Dream a Little Dream of Me. We are also celebrating paintings from Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. Below you can find lists of some of the most notable books, characters, comics, and cartoons, films, songs, sound recordings, and art entering the public domain.[4] After each of them, we have provided an analysis of their significance. At the end of the article, we explain:Why all of this matters
How do copyright and trademark law apply to characters?
What is the impact of the long copyright term?
What are the basic rules for determining whether something is public domain?
Conclusion
BOOKS
- William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
- Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon (the full book version)
- Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (the first novel featuring Miss Marple)
- Carolyn Keene (pseudonym for Mildred Benson), the first four Nancy Drew books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock
- Watty Piper (pen name of Arnold Munk), The Little Engine That Could (the popular illustrated version, with drawings by Lois Lenski)
- William H. Elson, Elson Basic Readers (the first appearances of Dick and Jane)
- Noël Coward, Private Lives
- T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
- Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies
- John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel
- Edna Ferber, Cimarron
- Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison
- J. B. Priestley, Angel Pavement
- Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
- Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (in the original German, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)
- Elizabeth Coatsworth (author) and Lynd Ward (illustrator), The Cat Who Went to Heaven
- Arthur Ransome, Swallows and Amazons
- W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness
This is just a small selection from the thousands of books and plays entering the public domain in 2026. The famous works include modernist masterpieces, detective stories, a science-fiction classic, an early self-help book, and a seminal work on psychoanalysis. All of them and thousands more will be copyright-free in the US. The newly public domain corpus also includes a wealth of children’s and young adult fiction—the first four Nancy Drew books, the introduction of the characters Dick and Jane, a Newbery Award winner about the life of The Buddha, and the popular illustrated version of The Little Engine That Could.
Works from 1930 are not only enriching the public domain; they also illustrate its value.
“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.” –W. Somerset Maugham
That is a quote from W. Somerset Maugham, whose novel Cakes and Ale is entering the public domain in 2026. But artists don’t merely create “beauty…out of the chaos,” though our current moment has lots of the latter. They create beauty by drawing on our shared culture. Look at Maugham’s title: “Cakes and Ale.” Maugham himself was referring to a classic public domain work, in this case Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” says Sir Toby Belch reprovingly to his pompous Puritan steward Malvolio, who is always eager to judge the behavior of others. Maugham reuses the line precisely to make the same point about puritanical moralizing and, in the case of his novel, artistic hypocrisy. The narrator is disgusted by the snobbery and judgmental attitudes of his contemporaries towards Rosie Driffield, a former barmaid who became the wife of a famous fictional novelist. Rosie came from a working-class background and was forthright, without pretension, and sexually free. She is now decried for those qualities, but the narrator finds her far more impressive than the bourgeois scolds who disdain her. The title reaches back 330 years to show that one of our greatest playwrights was mocking faux puritanism in exactly the same way. Maugham's point is that the human race relives those moments and emotions in every era; the desire to moralize is always with us. Now his work is in the public domain and we, too, can reuse his insights and artistry to create new art.
The same point holds true for many of the other works entering the public domain this year. The title of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying came from Homer’s Odyssey. The public domain contains far more than works with expired copyrights—names, titles, and very short phrases are not copyrightable standing alone and are therefore public domain in the US; one does not have to wait for the expiration of the copyright term. But when works enter the public domain, the artistic freedom granted over them is far greater. Plot, characters, images, vignettes; all can now be mined for future inspiration. And that, too, was true in the past just as it is now. The tale of the tenacious little engine that pulls the train over the mountain had been circulating in various forms before the Watty Piper version, or the predecessor it credits.[5] To tell new stories, we draw from older ones. One work of art inspires another – that is how the public domain feeds creativity. Why care about the public domain? That is one reason why.
CHARACTERS, COMICS AND CARTOONS
- Betty Boop from Fleischer Studios' Dizzy Dishes and other cartoons
- Rover (later renamed Pluto) from Disney's The Chain Gang (as an unnamed bloodhound) and The Picnic (as Rover)
- Blondie and Dagwood from the Blondie comic strips by Chic Young
- Flip the Frog from Fiddlesticks and other cartoons, by Ub Iwerks after he left Disney
- Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons, the initial week of Mickey Mouse comic strips, and ten new Silly Symphonies cartoons from Disney
The contrast between the Fleischer and Disney aesthetics is fascinating. Max Fleischer once said, “If it can be done in real life, it isn’t animation.” Dizzy Dishes certainly does not disappoint. As described by the late Charles Silver, who ran MoMA’s Film Study Center, “Disney was based in Los Angeles and reflected the ‘wholesome’ mid-American values of Uncle Walt’s Kansas City roots. Fleischer’s New York product was more sophisticated and cosmopolitan…Broadly speaking, there was an innocence in Disney’s view of the world, while Fleischer projected an underlying kinkiness.” Our colleague Casey Herbert, who teaches cartoon history at Duke, put it this way: “Max and Dave Fleischer’s characters were drawn from the urban environment they knew so well. Vaudeville, dance-halls, diners, drinking and drugs were routinely part of the hallucinogenic mayhem…On the other hand, Walt, his brother Roy, and best friend Ub Iwerks, the core of the early Disney enterprises, all had roots in rural middle America. With upbeat music and clever solutions, mechanical and animal troubles of all sorts were resolved with a simple, can-do attitude that Mickey and his pals exude.”
As more of Disney’s and Fleischer’s classic works enter the public domain, it is worth reflecting on how deeply their styles are embedded in the DNA of today’s animation. Now, entering 2026, we look back and think it inevitable that one genre of cartoons will be cutesy and folksy, with slapstick humor and an upbeat vibe, while another will use the unparalleled artistic freedom afforded by the cartoon medium to explore a distinctly more surreal worldview, sensual and trippy, with wild nightlife and mind-bending transformations. Looking back to 1930, we can find the progenitors of both, and see how the traditions began to diverge. Indeed, it is striking how “edgily modern” some of the Fleischer cartoons feel. To look into each year’s newly public domain crop is to open a time-capsule that offers fresh insights about our culture.
As with Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and Winnie-the-Pooh, it is the original 1930 iterations of Betty Boop and Rover/Pluto that are entering the public domain. Newer, different versions of the characters are still copyrighted, and trademark rights still cover the character names and designs when they are used on merchandise as brand signifiers. The rules are complex and explored in more detail here, with their application to Betty Boop discussed here.
Among the other highlights from 1930 are additional Mickey Mouse comic strips and cartoons, in which the famous mouse continues to develop, and the comic strip Blondie, featuring early versions of Blondie and Dagwood. In 1930 they are not yet married, and Dagwood has not yet discovered his signature sandwich.[6] Blondie’s maiden name is Boopadoop—similar to Betty Boop’s scat-singing catchphrase, which in turn echoed the phrase associated with the singer and actress Helen Kane and has been traced back to the African-American jazz performer “Baby” Esther Lee Jones. (Kane actually sued the Fleischers for appropriating the phrase, along with her persona and singing style. In response, the Fleischers claimed that Kane had copied those attributes from Esther Jones. The judge ruled against Kane. Based on the reports we can find, the accuracy of the specific claims and counterclaims is unclear, but accounts of Boop's creation indicate that the character was based at least partly on Kane.)[7]
FILMS
- All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture)
- King of Jazz, directed by John Murray Anderson (musical revue featuring Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby’s first feature-film appearance)
- Cimarron, directed by Wesley Ruggles (winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, registered for copyright in 1930)
- Animal Crackers, directed by Victor Heerman (starring the Marx Brothers)
- Soup to Nuts, directed by Benjamin Stoloff (written by Rube Goldberg, featuring later members of The Three Stooges)
- Morocco, directed by Josef von Sternberg (starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou)
- The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel), directed by Josef von Sternberg (starring Marlene Dietrich)
- Anna Christie, directed by Clarence Brown (Greta Garbo’s first talkie)
- Hell's Angels, directed by Howard Hughes (Jean Harlow’s film debut)
- The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh (John Wayne’s first leading role)
- The Big House, directed by George Hill
- Murder!, directed by Alfred Hitchcock
- L'Âge d'Or, directed by Luis Buñuel, written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí
- Free and Easy, directed by Edward Sedgwick (Buster Keaton’s first speaking role)
- The Divorcee, directed by Robert Z. Leonard
- Whoopee!, directed by Thornton Freeland
War films, musicals, thrillers, Westerns, comedies, surrealist satires—this year’s newly public domain films run the gamut. They feature familiar actors: Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, John Wayne, the Marx Brothers, and the film debut of Moe Howard and Larry Fine, who would later be long-running members of The Three Stooges. There are also familiar names among the directors and writers: Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hughes, and even Rube Goldberg and Salvador Dalí.
These films predated the enactment of the 1934-1968 “Hays Code” that censored profanity, criminal activity, “indecent” dance costumes, and sexual content such as “excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures.” In Morocco, Marlene Dietrich, handsomely dressed in a top hat and tails, famously kisses another woman. King of Jazz features the sequence “I Like to Do Things For You,” described on Wikipedia as “humorously sadomasochistic.” Pre-Code Betty Boop was overtly seductive. As critic Gabrielle Bellot wrote: “On the one hand, Betty Boop was a creation of the heterosexual male gaze, with an endless parade of lecherous male characters trying to see under her skirt, yet on the other hand she wore power like a light shawl, her image an in-your-face depiction of unashamed sexuality.”[8] Post-Code Betty Boop covered her shoulders and garter. As with Maugham’s Rosie from Cakes and Ale, frank female sexuality was not to be tolerated. Malvolio would have liked the Hays Code.
Some of the scenes from these films are eerily resonant today. In King of Jazz, a man gets drunk and stammers: “You know what’s the matter with this country? It’s a tariff! That’s who!”, referring to the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that deepened the Great Depression. Today, there is a lot of debate about whether the public knows enough about the importance of the rule of law and the protections of due process. At the end of Animal Crackers, Groucho and Chico Marx (as Captain Spaulding and Ravelli) have this exchange.
As Faulkner, the author whose novel begins this year’s list of books, wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Cimarron is featured even though it was released in 1931 because it was copyrighted in 1930 and the earlier date controls (date discrepancies are resolved “in favor of the public”). Please note that only the original films from 1930 are public domain; later versions might have newly added material that is still copyrighted. If a film has been restored or reconstructed, only original and creative additions are eligible for copyright; if a restoration faithfully mimics the preexisting film, it does not contain newly copyrightable material. Putting skill, labor, and money into a project is not enough to qualify it for copyright, and the Supreme Court has made clear that “the sine qua non of copyright is originality.”
What about the music in the films? We are in the era when “talkies” – movies with sound – were new. As with other works, the statutory copyright terms for this music began either upon “publication” or copyright registration. If musical works were previously unpublished or unregistered and first appeared in a film from 1930, the general rule is that the music was published along with the film and is also public domain in 2026. (The same is true of the "sounds accompanying a motion picture," discussed below.) In other circumstances, however, a film and its underlying music may have different copyright terms. If a song was copyrighted separately before the film, for example, the song would have entered the public domain earlier than the film, after its own 95-year term. Conversely, if the copyright in the song was renewed while the copyright in the film was not, the song remained copyrighted after the film went into the public domain. This happened with It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)—the movie’s copyright was not renewed but the soundtrack’s copyright was, so the movie was public domain while the soundtrack and underlying short story were not. But if musical works made their first appearance in a film and the film rights were renewed, then the prevailing view is that the movie and music enter the public domain at the same time.[9]
MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS
- Four Songs - I Got Rhythm, I've Got a Crush on You, But Not for Me, and Embraceable You - with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, music by George Gershwin
- Georgia on My Mind, lyrics by Stuart Gorrell, music by Hoagy Carmichael
- Dream a Little Dream of Me, lyrics by Gus Kahn, music by Fabian Andre and Wilbur Schwandt
- Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight, lyrics by Al Lewis, music by Al Sherman
- On the Sunny Side of the Street, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, music by Jimmy McHugh
- It Happened in Monterey, lyrics by Billy Rose, music by Mabel Wayne
- Body and Soul, lyrics by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton, music by Johnny Green
- Just a Gigolo (the first English translation), original German lyrics by Julius Brammer, English translation by Irving Caesar, music by Leonello Casucci
- You're Driving Me Crazy, lyrics and music by Walter Donaldson
- Beyond the Blue Horizon, lyrics by Leo Robin, music by Richard A. Whiting and W. Franke Harling (possible inspiration for the Star Trek theme song)
- The Royal Welch Fusiliers, by John Philip Sousa
Only the musical compositions—the music and lyrics that you might see on a piece of sheet music—are entering the public domain, not the recordings of those songs, which are covered by a separate copyright with a different term of protection. The lyrics and music to Georgia on My Mind and Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight were published in 1930 and will be free for anyone to copy, perform, record, adapt, or interpolate into their own song.[10] But the later recordings by Ray Charles and by Tiny Tim are still copyrighted. (Readers may remember the Tiny Tim recording from the first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants—that episode had to be omitted from the first season DVD because the rights were not cleared with Tiny Tim’s estate.) Sound recording rights are more limited than composition rights, however. You can legally imitate a sound recording – should you be able to channel Tiny Tim’s signature falsetto – even if your imitation sounds exactly the same, you just cannot copy from the actual recording.
Calculating the copyright term for these early songs can be tricky. Under the law at the time, the copyright clock only started ticking when songs were published in sheet music form, not merely released as recordings. Even though Mood Indigo came out in 1930, the sheet music was not published until 1931, so it will not be in the public domain until 2027. If works were registered for copyright and published in different years, the earlier date controls. So copyright lapses over Dream a Little Dream of Me in 2026 because its copyright was registered in 1930, even though it was not published until 1931.
SOUND RECORDINGS
- Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, recorded by Marian Anderson
- Yes Sir, That's My Baby, recorded by Gene Austin
- Sweet Georgia Brown, recorded by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra
- You've Been A Good Old Wagon, recorded by Bessie Smith
- The St. Louis Blues, recorded by Bessie Smith, featuring Louis Armstrong
- Fascinating Rhythm, recorded by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra
- I'll See You in My Dreams, recorded by Isham Jones, with Ray Miller’s Orchestra
- Everybody Loves My Baby (but My Baby Don't Love Nobody but Me), recorded by Clarence Williams’ Blue Five
- If I Lose, Let me Lose (Mama Don't Mind), recorded by Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, and Maggie Jones
- A Cup of Coffee, A Sandwich and You, recorded by the Carleton Terrace Orchestra
- Manhattan, recorded by The Knickerbockers (Ben Selvin and his Orchestra)
Under the 2018 Music Modernization Act, recordings from 1925 will be open for legal reuse after the conclusion of a 100-year term. There are some incredible performances: the civil rights icon Marian Anderson singing Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen in her haunting contralto, and The St. Louis Blues recorded by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. Only the 1925 recordings made by these artists are entering the public domain, not their later recordings. To listen to old recordings, you can go to the Library of Congress National Jukebox.[11]
Sound recordings within a movie are treated differently from separate sound recordings because copyright law’s definition of “sound recording” specifically excludes “sounds accompanying a motion picture.” So the 1930 recordings as they appeared in the film King of Jazz have the same copyright term as the movie and are public domain in 2026, while regular sound recordings from 1930 that were independent of motion pictures have the 100-year term and their copyrights won’t expire until 2031.
ART
- Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow
- Abel Lafleur, the Jules Rimet Cup (the original trophy of the FIFA World Cup, also known as the Victory Trophy or Coupe du Monde)
- Edward Steichen, Fashion for Vogue, October 27, 1930
- Paul Klee, Tierfreundschaft (Animal Friendship)
- José Clemente Orozco, Prometheus
- Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Composition of Circles and Overlapping Angles
- Theo Van Doesburg, Simultaneous Counter-Composition
Copyright will also expire in 2026 over works of art that were published or registered in 1930, reflecting artistic movements ranging from Art Deco to Constructivism and Neoplasticism. In the traumatic years of World War I, Paul Klee wrote that “the more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.” Artists such as Klee, Mondrian, Taeuber-Arp, and van Doesburg abstracted the world around them: stylizing, simplifying, flattening, and deconstructing. But the artists on our list also include José Clemente Orozco, whose intensely realistic Prometheus was described by Jackson Pollock as “the greatest painting in North America,” and Edward Steichen, who went on to revolutionize minimalism in commercial fashion photography.
Determining the copyright status of older artworks is challenging. They are only public domain in 2026 if they were “published” as defined by copyright law in 1930, and it is often unclear when exactly publication occurred.[12] The rules are murky and “published” is a legal term of art that was not well-defined. Generally the law looks at whether the art was genuinely released to the public by being exhibited without restrictions on copying, circulated in a magazine or catalogue with authorization, or offered for sale to the public. If it was created but remained only in the artist’s studio or shown only to a limited group, this did not count. But artistic records from almost 100 years ago are difficult to find. Our tireless research assistant Jason Rosenberg spent months contacting experts and combing through exhibition catalogues, museum archives, journals, catalogue raisonnés, provenance indexes, auction records, and biographies to confirm whether the highlighted works were published in 1930.
There are other legal wrinkles too. Works by US artists had to comply with copyright “formalities,” including initial publication with a copyright notice and renewal after 28 years, to enjoy the full 95-year term. This is why American Gothic – which is from 1930 – is not on our list; it was by an American artist, Grant Wood, and entered the public domain in 1958 when its copyright was not renewed. Foreign authors such as Mondrian and Klee are treated differently—because of a 1996 provision that restored copyright over certain foreign works, they are eligible for the full term without notice or renewal. For such authors, the question is whether their works were actually “published” in 1930.[13]
You may see reports that the Chrysler building is entering the public domain in 2026 because it was constructed in 1930. The building was reportedly scrubbed from the 2023 Spider-Man 2 video game because of a copyright claim. However, there is no legal basis for such a claim. US copyright law only covers buildings created on or after December 1, 1990, when protection was first extended to architectural works. And even with newer copyrighted buildings, the law allows “pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.” So if the Spider-Man story is true, it would be an example of copyright overreach or overly cautious avoidance.
Here is a short video celebrating the works entering the public domain in 2026.
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