the 2026 romance films · ranked on one dial
the rom-com came back this year, and it came back arguing
Four romance films came out this year and they cannot agree on what love is.
One says love is desire, films it that way, and made 242 million dollars. One says love is what survives a revelation. One says love is a man being wrong about a stranger for four months. And one says love is ten summers of somebody being there.
That is not four takes on a genre. That is four incompatible answers to one question, and the question is whether the feeling tells you anything true.
So I've ranked them. Not by whether they're good, because you can get that anywhere. By how much of the love in them is actually attraction, which is a dial I use for everything and which I have never once seen a film critic use.
the dial
When people say two characters are in love, they're pointing at a mix of several different things we've been trained to see as one. Wanting to look at someone. Wanting to be near them. Wanting to be known by them. Wanting to build something with them. Wanting them, physically. Those come apart, constantly, which is the whole reason the seven kinds exist.
They come apart in films too. A film has limited time, so it picks. What it decides to show you as proof tells you what its writer thinks love is made of. So: of the love this film is showing me, how much is attraction and how much is everything else. Nought is a film where the two barely notice each other's bodies and the love is made of time and knowing. Ten is a film where the whole argument is desire.
this year, from ten downwards
10 / 10
Wuthering Heights Emerald Fennell, 2026
the purest possible ten, and it won the year.
The poster looks like a romance novel cover and the film bills itself as the greatest love story of all time. Every piece of evidence it offers you that these two belong together is physical, or it is about intensity. I have a whole separate argument about why the book is not a love story, and the film went the other way with it.
the lenssexual attraction, and almost nothing else
Released 13 February 2026 by Warner Bros with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. 242 million dollars worldwide and the seventh highest grossing film of the year. The reviews were mixed and the recurring complaint was that it replaced the novel’s emotional depth with sensuality, which is a striking thing for critics to say about a book whose 1847 reviewers called it brutalising. The full argument is at /guide/wuthering-heights-limerence.
6 / 10
The Drama Kristoffer Borgli, 2026
the only one asking the question that decides real relationships.
A couple, happily engaged, a week from the wedding, and then something comes out that makes them question all of it. It is not asking whether they want each other. That is assumed and it is fine. It is asking whether wanting somebody survives finding out who they are, which is the only interesting question in the back half of anything.
the lenswhether wanting somebody survives knowing them
A24, premiered in Los Angeles on 17 March 2026 and released on 3 April, with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, produced by Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen through Square Peg. 126.1 million dollars on a 28 million dollar budget, which is the best return of the four by a distance. Streaming on HBO Max in the US since 31 July. The nature of the revelation is deliberately not described here.
2 / 10
Finding Emily Alicia MacDonald, 2026
the widest gap on this list between what a film thinks it is about and what it is about.
There is a huge amount of romantic feeling in it and almost none of it is aimed at a person. He has one evening of information and everything else he built himself. When he finally meets her the feeling does not survive the meeting, and information kills it in about ninety seconds. Meanwhile the relationship that works is four months of getting a bus with somebody and failing at a project together.
the lensenormous romantic feeling, pointed at nobody
British, written by Rachel Hirons and produced by Working Title. UK release 22 May 2026, US 28 August. It opened at 95% on the Tomatometer, sits around 89% from 45 critics, 70 on Metacritic, and took about 2 million dollars. Best reviewed of the four by a long way and least seen by a long way.
1 / 10
People We Meet on Vacation from the Emily Henry novel, 2026
the evidence it offers is a decade, and i mean that as the compliment it is.
Poppy and Alex are best friends who are wrong for each other in every visible way, and every summer for ten years they take one week away together. The film has to make you believe in ten years of history in under two hours, and the tool it uses is not desire. It is accumulation. Inside jokes. Knowing what the other one will order. Saying a thing badly and being understood anyway.
the lensbeing known, over being wanted
Netflix, 9 January 2026, with Tom Blyth and Emily Bader alongside Jameela Jamil and Lucien Laviscount. The first film adaptation of an Emily Henry novel, which is a bigger deal than the release slot made it look, and it was generally well received. Henry writes a lot of yearning and is not shy, and this still lands at the bottom of the dial, because the yearning in it is about being known rather than being wanted.
the gap, which is the actual finding
Put the numbers next to the ranking. The film at ten out of ten made 242 million dollars. The film at two out of ten is the best reviewed romantic comedy in years and made about two million. That is roughly a hundred to one, in favour of the version with the least to say.
It would be easy to end there and be gloomy. I don't think that's the right read. Finding Emily didn't lose, it barely got to compete: the critics loved it, it opened tiny, and it never got the machine. And the two in the middle of the dial both did well. The Drama made four and a half times its budget. People We Meet on Vacation was the first Emily Henry adaptation and Netflix put it out in January, which is where you put things you expect people to watch.
So the honest version is that the desire film won the year and the films about knowing somebody did fine. They aren't dying. They're being made and watched, and they weren't being made much at all five years ago. The genre came back with an argument going on inside it, and my read is that the argument is being won slowly by the side that thinks love is made of time.
what to do with the dial
The reason I rank films like this is that it's the same move I'd want you to make about your own life, and films are a safe place to practise.
Next time you watch a romance, at the point where you're meant to believe these two belong together, pause it and ask what the film just showed you as evidence. Was it a look. Was it a body. Was it a decade. Was it one of them being right about the other in a small way.
Then the harder version. When you last told yourself you were in love with somebody, what was your evidence? Not how much you felt it. How much you felt it is the alarm. What did you actually have?
Most people, answering honestly, find they had two of the seven and were told it was all of them. That isn't a failure. It's the dial, and nobody ever hands it to you.
keep going: the seven kinds of attraction, which is the dial · why wuthering heights is not a love story · what finding emily is actually doing · romance films with no sex scenes · the five types of intimacy
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