2026 in science

The following scientific events occurred, or are scheduled to occur in 2026.

Events

January

• 1 January
  • Researchers operating China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) report the first experimental verification of a theorised density-free plasma operating regime, achieving stable electron densities approximately 1.3–1.65 times the Greenwald limit.
  • Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology report a photo-Hall (Hall effect)–based method for detecting semiconductor electronic trap states with approximately 1,000-fold greater sensitivity than existing techniques.
• 2 January – Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology demonstrate self-sustained superradiant microwave emission, produced by interacting spins in diamond, offering potential applications in quantum communication and sensing.
• 4–8 January – 247th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society
• 5 January – NASA announces that it has awarded contracts to seven companies to study technologies for the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a next-generation telescope that could launch in the 2040s.
• 7 January – Astronomers using data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory report that 2025 MN₄₅ has the fastest spin of any known asteroid larger than 0.5 km (0.31 mi) in diameter, completing one rotation every 1.88 minutes.
• 13 January
  • The European Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that 2025 was the world's third hottest year on record (2024 was the hottest and 2023 the second hottest). In Antarctica, the average annual temperature was the warmest since measurements began and in the Arctic, it was the second highest.
  • Paleoanthropologists publish a complete analysis of KNM-ER 64061, the most complete known skeleton of Homo habilis, discovered in 2012 in Kenya.
• 14 January
  • Researchers report the discovery of a new quantum state, bridging the gap between quantum criticality and quantum topology via semimetal CeRu₄Sn₆.
  • Researchers led by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences report the first direct experimental observation of the Migdal effect, a quantum process in which a recoiling atomic nucleus ejects an electron, confirming a prediction made in 1939 and enabling new approaches to searches for light dark matter.
  • Researchers from the University of Copenhagen publish a Nature paper explaining little red dots as young and relatively small supermassive black holes enshrouded in a dense cocoon of ionized gas.
  • The Ice Memory Foundation opens its ice core archive at Concordia Station in Antarctica, storing the first samples from glaciers on Grand Combin, Switzerland and Mont Blanc, France. The samples travelled from Trieste for more than 50 days aboard the Italian icebreaker Laura Bassi.
  • A high-coverage genome of a 14,400-year-old woolly rhinoceros recovered from a permafrost-preserved wolf's stomach shows no signs of population size decline, genomic erosion, nor recent inbreeding, suggesting a stable population size centuries before the species' extinction.
• 19 January
  • The first known example of multi-purpose tool use by a cow is reported, with a Brown Swiss named Veronika using both ends of a stick to scratch her own back.
  • Researchers at the University of California, Davis, develop a machine learning-augmented spectrometer-on-a-chip capable of real-time hyperspectral sensing across the visible and near-infrared range, enabling compact alternatives to conventional laboratory spectrometers.
• 21 January
  • Paleontologists dispute the fungal affinity of the Devonian fossil Prototaxites taiti based on an integrative analysis of its molecular composition, organization, and anatomy and propose that it might represent an unknown lineage of eukaryotes.
  • Features on heads of two fossil species of Myllokunmingiidae, some of the earliest known vertebrates (518 million years old), are interpreted as two pairs of functional camera-type eyes; the inner pair being homologous to the pineal gland.
• 23 January – The largest interstellar organosulfur molecule (2,5-cyclohexadiene-1-thione) so far is identified in a molecular cloud about 27,000 light-years from Earth near the Galactic Center.
• 24 January – AES Andes abandons the INNA project to produce hydrogen and ammonia in Chile criticised for its potentially negative impact on astronomical observations at Paranal Observatory and Extremely Large Telescope.
• 27 January – HD 137010 b, a cool Earth-sized transiting exoplanet candidate 146 light years away, orbiting near the outer edge of its star's habitable zone, is discovered in Kepler K2 data from 2017.
• 28 January – Researchers at Google DeepMind publish a study on AlphaGenome, a deep learning model that predicts the functional effects of genetic variants across multiple regulatory modalities from long DNA sequences, improving interpretation of non-coding regions of the genome.

February

• 6 February – A new species of Iguanodontia dinosaurs, Haolong dongi, is described based on a near-complete and articulated skeleton fossil preserving details of the animal's skin including cutaneous spikes preserved at the cellular level.

Scheduled events

• NASA's first crewed lunar‑orbit mission in decades is slated for early 2026.

See also

• 2026 in spaceflight
• 2026 in Antarctica
• 2026 in climate change

External links

• Media related to 2026 in science at Wikimedia Commons