RSC announces 2026 season featuring Kenneth Branagh, Helen Hunt and Mark Gatiss

Photo credit: Seamus Ryan (top left), Gillian Hyland (bottom left)

The RSC has announced full details of its Spring 2026 season, which sees multi award-winning actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh make a return to Stratford-upon-Avon for the first time in over 30 years, alongside Academy Award-winning actress Helen Hunt and double Olivier Award-winning actor Mark Gatiss in their RSC debuts.

The season features five productions, including a landmark staging of Shakespeare’s late masterpiece, two European classics urgently retold for today, an innovative new co-production with the UK’s leading theatre for young audiences, and an award-nominated debut play. The programme brings together globally renowned and emerging talents to tell stories that speak directly to our world now, united in their exploration of what bonds individuals to home, family and country.

Marking his historic return to the company in two productions running across Summer 2026, Kenneth Branagh plays Prospero in an epic new staging of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, directed by Sir Richard Eyre, and Lopakhin alongside Academy award-winning actress Helen Hunt as Madame Ranyevskaya in a new version of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard by Laura Wade, directed by Tamara Harvey.

The Tempest plays from 13 May-20 June in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The production sees Kenneth Branagh take up the role of Prospero for the first time, having worked on thirty-five productions of Shakespeare across his career.

Written on the brink of the Russian Revolution, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard opens in The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon from 10 July-29 August. This new version of Chekhov’s final play by Olivier Award-winning playwright Laura Wade sees Wade re-united with RSC Co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey following their critically acclaimed production of The Constant Wife, which premiered in the Swan Theatre in June this year. The production marks Helen Hunt’s debut with the company and follows a distinguished career spanning film, television, and theatre, as both actress, writer, director and producer.

Also making his debut with the Company in 2026, double Olivier Award-winning actor and writer Mark Gatiss takes on the title role of gangster Arturo Ui in Bertolt Brecht’s biting political satire on Hitler’s ascent to power. This new production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, in a version by Stephen Sharkey, is directed by Seán Linnen, in his debut for the company. The production will play in the Swan Theatre from 11 April-30 May, marking another historic first for the Company, as the only staging of the play in the RSC’s history.

In The Other Place, Martina Laird makes her playwrighting debut with Driftwood, shortlisted for the 2024 Verity Bargate Award. This deeply evocative story of self-determination, family and belonging is set against the backdrop of colonial Trinidad on the edge of political independence. Directed by Chichester Festival Theatre’s Artistic Director Justin Audibert, the production has its world premiere in The Other Place from 17 April-30 May, after which it will transfer directly to Kiln Theatre from Wednesday 3 June to Saturday 4 July.

Co-Artistic Directors Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans said: “When we set out as the Co-Artistic Directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company, we were united by a belief in the RSC as a home for radical and resonant theatre – inspired by Shakespeare and made by the most exciting artists from across the globe. Two years after our arrival, that commitment remains at the heart of everything we do.

“From Shakespeare’s late meditation on freedom and forgiveness to Anton Chekhov’s prescient final play, by way of Bertolt Brecht’s searing satire on the rise of fascism, our relationship to family, community and state is bought sharply into focus on stage in 2026. We know that the stories we choose to tell as artists play a vital role in bringing people together, building connections and deepening our understanding of one another. In an increasingly volatile world, this matters to us more than ever.

“We look forward to welcoming a new generation of artists and audiences to the RSC in 2026 and beyond.”

Tickets for the 2026 season go on sale from 8 October at 10am here.