The Year Ahead: Culture

1. Justin Bieber Will Headline Coachella

The world’s biggest music festival will go by a new moniker this spring: #Bieberchella. Four years after he stepped away from music to focus on his health—and social media spats—the boy wonder from Stratford, Ontario, came back big in 2025. He released Swag and Swag II, topped the Billboard charts and signed a record-breaking, seven-figure deal to headline Coachella. For Bieber, it’s a flex that quashes nagging questions about how he would fare in his post–Scooter Braun era. (He split from his long-time manager and mentor in 2023.) For Beliebers, it’s a reason to flock to the desert: festival passes sold out in three days.

2. Ryan Gosling Will Save Humanity

If the trailer’s reception is any sign (400 million views in the first week, an all-time record), Project Hail Mary will be the summer blockbuster to beat. Adapted from a novel by Andy Weir (the author of The Martian), the film follows a middle-school science teacher who gets recruited on a Hail Mary space mission to save humanity. It’s the latest big swing from the $8.5-billion Amazon-MGM merger and was the centrepiece of the studio’s debut at CinemaCon last spring, proving that Gosling’s gravitational pull is as strong as ever. 

3. Kevin O’Leary Will Become A24’s Newest Star

Chalamet, Paltrow and—wait—the mean judge from Dragon’s Den? It was a big surprise when the Canadian tycoon and Trump-intimate got cast in Marty Supreme, one of the year’s buzziest film projects. Even more shocking? He’s great in it. O’Leary plays Milton Rockwell, a 1930s-era captain-of-industry type, with zero acting experience, unless you count seven decades of a-hole antics as method. Director Josh Safdie reportedly wanted someone who audiences would instantly dislike on a cellular level. To wit: Mr. Wonderful’s recent rant that AI actors should replace extras to cut costs—which is sure to make him popular on the red carpet during awards season. A24 has already launched a Best Supporting Actor Oscar campaign to get him there. 

4. Emily St. John Mandel Will Dream Up Another Near Future

The author most famous for predicting the pandemic with her National Book Award nominee (turned Emmy-nominated HBO series) Station Eleven is back with another not-so-distant dystopia, this time set during an American civil war. Exit Party opens in 2031, as two friends attend a celebration marking the end of curfew restrictions in the newly formed Republic of California. It’s a little too close to the current political climate, which is just how Hollywood likes it: the novel sparked a high-stakes bidding war and is fast-tracked for a TV adaptation. 

5. Beatlemania Will Hit the AGO

Sir Paul McCartney dove into his personal archives for Eyes of the Storm, the Art Gallery of Ontario’s new photography exhibit. Featuring 250 snaps, video clips and mementos from the band’s early years, the show offers a behind-the-scenes look at four lads from Liverpool on the brink of stardom. These are the suited moptops from A Hard Day’s Night—before the psychedelic vibes and facial hair took over. Plenty of shots capture the fandemonium, while more intimate moments include a selfie McCartney took in the bedroom where he wrote “Yesterday.”

6. Margaret Atwood Will Watch Gilead Rise Again

It took Margaret Atwood more than 30 years to revisit Gilead, the dystopian world she first imagined in 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale and returned to in 2019’s The Testaments. Hulu was a little less patient. The network behind the Emmy-winning Handmaid series snapped up rights to the sequel even before its release and started filming in Ontario last spring. Set 15 years later, the new show introduces a mostly new cast—including Chase Infiniti, the breakout star who played Leonardo DiCaprio’s daughter in One Battle After Another—alongside the unstoppable Ann Dowd, who’s back to win more Emmys as Aunt Lydia (praise be!).

7. Denis Villeneuve Will Complete His Desert Epic

With the first two Dune movies, Denis Villeneuve didn’t just adapt the world’s most unadaptable novel; he turned it into back-to-back box-office hits and Best Picture nominees. Now he’s adapting Frank Herbert’s follow-up, Dune Messiah, for the big screen. Twelve years have passed on the planet Arrakis since Zendaya’s dramatic departure via giant sandworm, and Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) is still locked in a holy war while fighting his own growing megalomania.

8. Rush Will Return to the Stage

Even the most diehard Rush fans had given up on a reunion. The Canadian rock trio had wailed their last barrier-of-sound-defying screech in 2015, and the death of drummer Neil Peart in 2020 seemed to seal their fate. Then Geddy Lee said, “We fucking miss it” and announced plans to hit the road again with Alex Lifeson. The Fifty Something tour celebrates a half-century since the band became icons with Caress of Steel (the weird concept album peppered with Tolkien references), followed by 2112 (their commercial breakthrough).German drummer Anika Nilles will pick up Peart’s kit, with the blessing of his family and roaring approval from fans, whose collective enthusiasm has prompted the band to add 17 more shows to the tour.   

9. Hollywood North Will Make a Comeback

Hollywood North has been limping toward uncertain doom in recent years, depleted first by the pandemic, then labour strikes and then, of course, Trump’s threat to impose 100 per cent tariffs. But lately, signs abound of a triumphant second act, thanks to expanded tax incentives for film and TV productions, plus a special blockbuster bonus for projects topping $200 million. In 2026, various regions of B.C. will stand in for feudal Japan (the second season of the Emmy darling Shōgun), the post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest (season three of The Last of Us) and the mythical Norse realm of Midgard (Prime Video’s new God of War series, based on the Playstation game). 

10. The Next Summer-TV Obsession Will Take Place in Cottage Country

The end of The Summer I Turned Pretty left a gaping, heart-shaped hole in summer viewing schedules. But a new, homegrown option is here to fill the void. Prime Video’s Every Year After, based on the bestselling debut novel from Carley Fortune, follows Percy, a city girl who befriends brothers Sam and Charlie Florek when her parents bring her to Canadian cottage country. It’s set in Barry’s Bay, a fictional Canadian township based on Fortune’s IRL Ontario hometown of the same name.