'Toy Story 5' races past $1b to become 2026's highest-grossing film

Strong family attendance, sustained global demand propel animated sequel to feat after just over a month in cinemas

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Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5 has officially crossed the $1 billion mark at the global box office, becoming the first Hollywood film of 2026 to reach the milestone and the year's highest-grossing release worldwide.

The animated sequel achieved the feat after just over a month in cinemas, propelled by strong family attendance and sustained international demand. Its latest box office milestone cements the film as one of Pixar's biggest commercial successes and continues the studio's remarkable track record with the beloved Toy Story franchise.

Toy Story 5 has now overtaken every other 2026 release at the worldwide box office, surpassing major blockbusters released earlier this year. The film also follows its record-breaking opening weekend, which marked the biggest debut in the franchise's history.

Directed by Andrew Stanton, the fifth instalment reunites the iconic voice cast, including Tom Hanks as Woody and Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear, while introducing a new storyline centred on children's growing dependence on technology. The toys find themselves competing with a tablet called Lilypad as they attempt to prove that traditional play still has a place in modern childhood.

The latest milestone comes at a significant moment for Pixar, which recently underwent a round of layoffs despite the film's commercial success. Even so, Toy Story 5 has reinforced the enduring popularity of one of animation's most successful franchises, nearly three decades after the original film premiered in 1995.

With no signs of slowing down, industry analysts expect Toy Story 5 to continue adding to its worldwide total in the coming weeks, strengthening its position as one of the year's defining box office hits.

Directed by Andrew Stanton and written by Stanton and Kenna Harris, it is the fifth main installment in the Toy Story film series and the sequel to Toy Story 4 (2019). It features the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, and Joan Cusack among those reprising their roles, joined by Conan O'Brien, Scarlett Spears, Greta Lee, Shelby Rabara, Mykal-Michelle Harris, and Craig Robinson. Set two years after the fourth film, it follows Jessie as she, Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the other toys deal with the presence of Lilypad, a tablet and the new favorite plaything of Bonnie.

While Hanks referred to Toy Story 4 as the final film in the franchise in 2019, the possibility of a fifth film had not been ruled out. Development was confirmed in February 2023, with Hanks and Allen returning. Stanton was confirmed as the director in June 2024 in addition to returning as a writer. It is the first mainline Toy Story film with no involvement from the co-creator, John Lasseter, following his departure from Pixar in 2018. The franchise's composer, Randy Newman, returned to score the film, marking his tenth collaboration with Pixar, while Taylor Swift contributed the single "I Knew It, I Knew You" to the soundtrack. With a budget of $250 million, Toy Story 5 is one of the most expensive animated films ever made and one of the most expensive films of all time.

Toy Story 5 had its world premiere in Los Angeles on June 9, 2026, and was theatrically released in the United States on June 19. It has grossed $1.022 billion worldwide, breaking several box office records and becoming Pixar's biggest worldwide opening weekend on record. It is the highest-grossing film of 2026 and the third-highest of the franchise, behind Toy Story 4 and Toy Story 3, respectively. Like its predecessors, it received positive reviews from critics, who praised its visuals, performances, humor and themes, although some criticized its script.

Pixar used a new version of its rendering software, RenderMan XPU, for the first time on a feature film. XPU, a new renderer that can use both CPUs and GPUs concurrently, enabled artists to see "nine times faster speeds for interactive, full-frame rendering". The Luna extension for Presto, Pixar's core 3D animation system, was first used in Pixar's previous film, Hoppers, and expanded for Toy Story 5. Luna allowed lighting artists to work across multiple shots at once. For instance, if the position of the sun was moved in one shot, the effect was immediately replicated across a grid of shots.

Daffodil, a horse character, took more than a year to build, rig and simulate. Pixar brought a real horse to its campus for animators to study and developed a new animation technology they called "invertible rigging".