Miami Dade College's Miami Film Festival announced its 2026 lineup in mid-March, setting the 43rd edition for April 9 through 19 with more than 160 narrative features, documentaries and shorts from 45 countries, per the festival's announcement. Forty of the titles are world premieres and 63 are Florida premieres. Screenings run at theaters across Miami-Dade County, including the Coral Gables Art Cinema on Aragon Avenue in downtown Coral Gables and partner venues from Miami Beach to the Design District.
Director Daniel Roher's thriller Tuner, with Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman, opens the festival, and John Carney's Power Ballad, starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas, closes it. The centerpiece selections carry Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers, making its Florida premiere, and Poetic License, the directing debut of Maude Apatow. The festival's leadership team of executive director James Woolley and director of programming Lauren Cohen shaped the slate, per the announcement.
For Little Havana, downtown Coral Gables and the neighborhoods between them, the announcement matters because the festival is a two-week box office for independent theaters that otherwise fight streaming for arthouse audiences. The Tower Theater on SW 8th Street, a festival stage for the two decades Miami Dade College ran it, remains closed pending a new management agreement, so this year's traffic concentrates in the surviving venues, led by the Coral Gables Art Cinema, a nonprofit house that has anchored the festival's suburban leg for years.
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The program keeps the festival's traditional strengths. The Ibero-American and Latin American cinema sections remain the spine of the lineup, and the competition carries $10,000 MARIMBAS Awards for international narrative features, a $10,000 Jordan Ressler First Feature Award for debut directors, and a $15,000 Made in MIA Award across 12 films with South Florida ties, per the announcement, which described this year's Made in MIA program as the largest in its nine editions. Special events stretch beyond the screens: a 25th-anniversary screening of The Princess Diaries at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Coconut Grove, a presentation of Milly, Queen of Merengue at the Miami Beach Bandshell with the titular merengue singer attending, and Whiplash in Concert with composer Justin Hurwitz conducting an 18-piece band.
Honors this year go to Bob Odenkirk, receiving the festival's Precious Gem Award, and to Adam Scott and Matt Bomer with Vanguard Awards, with actress Sonia Manzano picking up the Impact Award, per the announcement. Tickets went on sale to members shortly after the lineup release, with general sales following; showtimes, venues and prices are subject to change, and the festival's calendar carries the current schedule as of the March 2026 announcement.