Marvel Studios is Skipping Their Big San Diego Comic-Con Panel This Year

With “Doomsday” further off, the MCU will have a quieter SDCC this time, but could Things still get Fantastic?

San Diego Comic-Con will go forward this year minus the event that often tends to feel like its headline act of sorts, as Marvel Studios will not be holding a panel at the big July convention.

What’s Happening:

As reported by several of the Hollywood trades, including Variety, Marvel Studios will not be holding their semi-traditional San Diego Comic-Con panel this year.
The Marvel Studios panel usually ends the day on Saturday of Comic-Con in the massive Hall H and tends to be packed with news and the debut of new footage, usually bringing Comic-Con to a crescendo of sorts before the quieter, shorter day on Sunday as things wrap up. In the past, the Marvel Studios panel has often included big reveals of upcoming films and series and even complete new slates for several projects at once, as an entire next Phase is laid out.
In 2024, as we began to hear Marvel Studios was purposely scaling back how much they do each year, there wasn’t that sort of deluge, but following sneak peeks at Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, there was one piece of huge news saved for the end with the announcement that Robert Downey Jr. would be returning to the MCU, now playing Doctor Doom in both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
The decision to skip doing a panel this year is likely one simply based on timing and a quieter upcoming schedule in the immediate future. After July’s release of Fantastic Four, the next MCU film was going to be Doomsday in May 2026, but that movie was recently pushed to December of 2026, meaning it could still be promoted at next year’s Comic-Con. Variety says the belief was it was unnecessary to impact production by flying members of the film’s huge cast to San Diego in the midst of filming given how far off the release still is.
Marvel will still have panels focused on comic books and games and Marvel Studios will be represented at their booth with a large focus on The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which opens right in the middle of SDCC on July 25.
Because of that timing, many are speculating it’s likely that there will be a screening of The Fantastic Four: First Step during Comic-Con, especially because that’s what occurred for Deadpool & Wolverine last year when it also opened in the midst of Comic-Con weekend. In that case, a Thursday night panel just for that film was added to the schedule fairly last minute for what turned out to be both a Hall H screening of the full movie and an appearance from the cast and filmmakers.
While some might sound the alarm on Marvel Studios skipping their usual panel this year, wondering if it means they won’t be back and might stick to D23 only going forward, this is not an unprecedented move. Besides 2023 (when the actors strike led to a ton of big studio panels not occurring because cast members couldn’t appear on them), Marvel Studios also skipped 2011, 2015 and 2018, only to return again the next year. Just last year, Kevin Feige stressed the overall importance of the event in an interview with Deadline, telling them “What we’re able to do this time is to get back to literally designing our film schedules around what we would have ready to show at Comic-Con — to announce and set the expectations and the tonality of what’s to come over the next couple of years. And that starts in Hall H."
Some may wonder about the Marvel Studios-produced Spider-Man: Brand New Day, since that film is still scheduled to open in July 2026. While it’s still possible that film could have some sort of presence if Sony, who release the Spidey films, does their own presentation, Brand New Day is supposed to go into production later this summer, so it might also be deemed there isn’t enough to show yet at Comic-Con.

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