New Documentaries to Watch in 2026

Start with an investigation that hits close to home

Online fraud often starts in a private message, but the machinery behind it can span countries. In Scammed, PBS FRONTLINE and the Associated Press connect the losses of individual victims with the criminal networks, coerced labor and technology that allow scams to operate at scale. It’s the pick for a viewer who wants to understand how a familiar risk became a global business. PBS makes the full documentary available for free.

Three ways into the natural world

Ghost Elephants has a clear question at its center. Can a team of researchers and experienced trackers find evidence of an elusive herd in the Angolan highlands? Werner Herzog follows National Geographic Explorer Steve Boyes on that search. Pick it if you’re drawn to the work of finding and reading traces of an animal. It first screened at Venice in 2025 and reached U.S. theaters and streaming in 2026.

A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough takes a different scale. David Attenborough’s early encounter with a young mountain gorilla named Pablo becomes the starting point for following Pablo’s descendants in Rwanda. Old and new footage let the filmmakers return to the same family across generations. It’s the more intimate of these two wildlife picks.

For a bigger sweep, The Dinosaurs uses four episodes to follow dinosaurs from their origins to extinction. Morgan Freeman narrates as the series connects changes in climate and habitat with the rise and fall of different groups. Choose it when you want a series you can watch over several evenings.

What it takes to work at the top of your field

Two sporting stories look at ambition from different angles. Queen of Chess follows Judit Polgár’s rise through competitive chess and gives her pursuit of a win over Garry Kasparov a clear place in that story. The Dynasty: UConn Huskies shifts the focus from one competitor to a program. Players from several eras, including Rebecca Lobo, Diana Taurasi and Paige Bueckers, describe how UConn women’s basketball changed as the expectations on the team grew.

The two creative portraits work well for viewers interested in how someone develops a voice. In Marc by Sofia, Sofia Coppola turns her camera on fashion designer Marc Jacobs and his creative world. In Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story, Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley follow comedian Maria Bamford over nearly four years, using excerpts from her stand-up to connect the work to her life offstage. Choose Jacobs for design or Bamford for the relationship between personal experience and performance.

One more to keep on your radar

HBO and HBO Max have scheduled When a Witness Recants for November 17. Dawn Porter examines the aftermath of a Baltimore murder case in which three teenagers were wrongfully convicted. The film follows what happened to the men and the witnesses who recanted decades later.