Indian Cinema Outlook: Why 2026 Could Set Record Benchmarks

The convergence is hard to miss. From exhibition boardrooms to European festival programmers to a newly formed government panel, the institutional machinery around Indian cinema is publicly committing to a single thesis: 2026 could be the biggest year the industry has ever logged. The most public voice on that call belongs to Kamal Gianchandani of the Multiplex Association, who laid out the case in an Expert Take conversation with ET Now.

Exhibition reads the room

Gianchandani's prediction carries its own kind of authority because it comes not from a production house with a slate to sell, but from the side of the business that counts the footfalls. When the head of the country's multiplex body argues that the year ahead could surpass every benchmark the exhibition industry has set, it amounts to a vote of confidence in cinema's enduring ritual — in the Indian audience's appetite for the big screen even after years of streaming-driven disruption. It is, in essence, a bet on the shared character arc of a darkened hall winning out over solitary viewing.

Festivals and policy pull in the same direction

That institutional confidence is finding echoes everywhere else. The 23rd Stuttgart Indian Film Festival, running July 23 to 26, has stacked its 70-plus film slate as a quiet referendum on regional storytelling, with Malayalam cinema taking the centrepiece slot. The opening film is Dinjith Ayyathan's Eko: From the Infinite Chronicles of Kuriachan, the closing chapter of Bahul Ramesh's Animal Trilogy that began with Kishkindha Kaandam and continued through Kerala Crime Files Season 2. The film embodies the atmospheric, low-budget visual grammar that European curators have been quietly rewarding while the mainstream Hindi blockbuster struggled to hold its own abroad. The wider programme — including Dominic Arun's genre-blending Lokah – Chapter 1: Chandra, Khalid Rahman's Alappuzha Gymkhana, and Onir's long-awaited LGBTQIA+ feature Tumhari Khushboo – Your Fragrance, with six titles competing for the German Star of India Award — is a reminder that thematic resonance and patient pacing can travel further than any star vehicle.

A study group, a roadmap, a signal

The state is reading the room too. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has constituted a Prasoon Joshi-led study group charged with charting a roadmap for the film industry's growth, a move flagged by The Hindu and Exchange4Media. For an industry that has spent recent years publicly interrogating its own relevance, the alignment of exhibition bullishness, international festival validation and now formal policy attention feels less like coincidence and more like infrastructure being laid. Whether the year delivers on Gianchandani's bold call will depend on the footfalls through the rest of 2026, the streaming acquisitions that follow Stuttgart, and the panel's eventual recommendations — but the direction of travel, for once, is unmistakable.