New Roller Coasters in 2026: Every Confirmed Opening

2026 is a strange year for coaster fans. On paper it should have been enormous: Cedar Point, Kings Island, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Efteling all had major projects in motion. In practice almost all of them slipped. What actually opened in 2026 is a smaller, quieter class of ride — family coasters, a landmark indoor dark-ride coaster, and two thorough reworks of existing machines.

This page only lists rides that are real: opened, or with an officially confirmed date from the park itself. Announced-but-undated projects and rumours are excluded, and everything scheduled for 2027 or later is separated out at the bottom so it can't be mistaken for a 2026 opening.

Confirmed 2026 openings

NightFlight Expedition — Dollywood

The most significant new coaster of the year at any park in our index. Dollywood spent more than $60 million — its largest single-attraction investment ever — on a 44,000 sq ft indoor building housing the first US installation of Mack Rides' rocking-boat adventure coaster system: a hybrid that swings its vehicles through a dark-ride narrative rather than simply running a layout in the dark.

It matters for the ranking, too. Dollywood is one of the five parks we onboarded this year and already scores strongly on family appeal; an all-weather, low-height-restriction headliner is exactly the kind of addition that shores up a park's wet-day capacity. Public opening is 19 August 2026, following a media dedication the previous week.

The DareDeviler — Canada's Wonderland

Not a new machine, but not a repaint either. The Vekoma inverted coaster formerly known as Flight Deck was rebuilt with new trains and track refinements and relaunched on 23 July 2026 as The DareDeviler: 33.3 m (109 ft), 80 km/h (50 mph), 689 m of track and five inversions. Canada's Wonderland is tied for the largest coaster collection in our index at 18, and this is how a park that size stays current — retracking rather than replacing.

Bluey the Ride — Alton Towers

The world's first Bluey-themed coaster, a Zierer Force model standing about 8.2 m, opened 28 March 2026 in Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is aimed squarely at pre-schoolers, and it is the clearest signal yet of Alton Towers rebalancing away from the thrill-first identity it built through the 2010s. If you are planning around small children, our toddler and young-children guide covers which parks already have that provision at scale.

MonteZOOMa: The Forbidden Fortress — Knott's Berry Farm

The 1978 Schwarzkopf shuttle loop at Knott's Berry Farm reopened on 15 August 2026 with a full theming overlay and modernised systems. The layout is untouched — this is preservation with a story wrapped around it, and one of the few original Schwarzkopf shuttle loops still operating anywhere.

A note on Falcon's Flight

Falcon's Flight at Six Flags Qiddiya City is the ride most people mean when they ask about new coasters "in 2026" — roughly 160 m tall, around 250 km/h, some 4 km long, and the current holder of the tallest, fastest and longest claims. Strictly, it opened on 31 December 2025, one day before the calendar year, and its park is not part of our top-50 index. It leads our fastest roller coasters and tallest roller coasters lists on ride specifications rather than park score.

Confirmed, but not until 2027 or later

These are announced by the parks themselves — they are simply not 2026 rides, whatever the headlines suggested.

Bakunawa is the one to watch: a Mack spinning launch coaster at 116 m and 161 km/h with three launches and a world-first inverted launch. Kumba closed at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay on 2 August 2026 after 33 years, and the park has confirmed a successor by name only — no manufacturer, layout or date yet, so we are not listing specifications for it.

What this means for the rankings

Nothing that opened in 2026 changes the top of our rankings. Coaster count is a capacity measure rather than a quality one, and the year's additions were mostly one-for-one replacements. You can see the current standings on our park records leaderboards, where the Most Roller Coasters list has Cedar Point and Canada's Wonderland level at 18 apiece — a tie that Bakunawa and the Magic Mountain glider will start to disturb in 2027, not now.

Specifications above are drawn from RCDB and official park announcements as of August 2026, and this page will be updated as the remaining 2026 season plays out.