26th century

The 26th century of the anno Domini (common) era will span the years 2501–2600 of the Gregorian calendar.

Astronomical events

• April 7, 2515: At 10:37 UTC Mars will occult Neptune.
• January 25, 2518: At 22:41 UTC Venus will occult Saturn.
• June 25, 2522: at 9:04 TD, total solar eclipse of 7min 12s, "crowning" at the top the series of saros 145, from the last total eclipse of the last millennium taken on August 11, 1999.
• 2562: The Dwarf Planet Eris will have completed one orbit of the Sun, since its discovery in 2005.
• 2599: Triple conjunction Mars-Jupiter.
• May 5, 2600: First total solar eclipse visible from London since 2151.

Science fiction set in the 26th century

• Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel Brave New World is set in the year 2540.
• The film Pitch Black takes place in 2578, and its sequel The Chronicles of Riddick takes place in 2583.
• The third and final portion of Darren Aronofsky's film The Fountain takes place in the 26th century with future astronaut Tom Verde, played by Hugh Jackman.
• The "Fiat Homo" section of A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller takes place in the 26th century.
• The TV show Firefly and film Serenity are set in the year 2517, and follow Space Captain and Unification War veteran, Malcolm Reynolds, and his crew, across various planets.
• The eighth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is set in the year 2525. According to the show, 2525 is also the year of the end of planet Earth.
• In the early 2500s, humans make first contact with Pierson's Puppeteers in Larry Niven's Known Space universe.
• The StarCraft series is set within the early 2500s.
• The NES game Super Spy Hunter takes place in 2525.
• The Nintendo 64 game F-Zero X and the Nintendo GameCube game F-Zero GX take place in an unspecified year in the 26th century. However, in the Game Boy Advance game F-Zero GP Legend, it is stated that the game takes place in the 23rd Century in the year 2201.
• One possible alternative future for the role playing game Mutants and Masterminds is set in Freedom City in 2525.
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Azati Prime", Captain Jonathan Archer is briefly transported to a possible future 26th century (in the Star Trek universe) in which Klingon and Xindi crewmen serve the United Federation of Planets. Archer visits a possible version of USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-J) in this episode.
• The TV show "Cleopatra 2525" is set in the year 2525. (The theme song for the show is a parody of the song "In the year 2525", mingled with the sound effects of futuristic weaponry.)
• Battle Angel Alita (Gunm) is set during this century.
• The Doctor Who episode Earthshock, featuring the hijacking of a space freighter by Cybermen, is set largely in the year 2526.
• The Doctor Who episodes Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks take place in the year 2540.
• The Xbox video game Dino Crisis 3 is set in a spaceship in 2548.
• Bernice Summerfield, a character created in Doctor Who novels and later spun off into her own range of novels and audio dramas, was born in 2540, and published an archaeological book, Down Among the Dead Men, in 2566.
• The 4700 Files is set in the years 2503–2506.
• Most of the events of the novel Revelation Space take place in the year 2566 with flashbacks to 2524 and earlier centuries.
• In the Xenosaga universe, the year 2510 is the year that the worldwide organization in charge of the space emigration plan changes the dating system from "A.D." to "T.C."
• In Pierre Boulle's novel, Planet of the Apes, the hero Ulysse Merou mentions that he began his trip through space in 2500.
• In the South Park episodes "Go God Go" and "Go God Go XII", Eric Cartman freezes himself in the year 2006 because he is too impatient to wait three weeks for the release of the Wii video game console. He is accidentally left frozen until the year 2546.
• The movie Idiocracy, in which an average man (played by Luke Wilson) from the year 2005 is suspended in hibernation and wakes up 500 years later, is set in the year 2505.
• The computer game Tachyon: The Fringe takes place in the 26th century, as stated by Commander Alberion Obulo in the intro.
• The 1969 song by Zager and Evans, In the year 2525, describes what life is like in 2525 (and later the years 3535, 4545 and many others). Disturbing predictions are given for each selected year.
• The video game Dead Space takes place in the 26th century.
• All of the Halo video games and novels take place in the 26th century, with the core trilogy of games spanning 2552–2553.
• Anthony Meredith writes the foreword to the Everhard Manuscript in Jack London's The Iron Heel around this time.
• According to the theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater, a colony will be established in Baja California for the intensive selective breeding of the sixth human root race
• The backstory and events of the MS-DOS/QBasic computer video game Red Baron 2573, take place in the year 2573, in which an alien race, called the Vordoxians, use a powerful computer virus to disable Earth's defensive systems, in advance of an all-out planetary alien invasion.

Population of Earth

Physicist Stephen Hawking, at a White House lecture in 1999, remarked that if there is no space colonization, population expansion continued unabated and the people of the Earth continued to use power at the rate they did then, then by the year 2600 people would be standing shoulder to shoulder and the Earth would glow red hot.