Just Dance 2026

Another year, another Just Dance game. Let the celebration begin. In my family, the arrival of Just Dance is the beginning of Fall, the harbinger of the holiday season, a noteworthy hallmark of the passing of time that is anticipated just as much as trick-or-treat.

So yes, there is excitement, but also a bit of consternation; the Just Dance games are getting harder and harder to review. This isn’t because I’m becoming burnt out on Just Dance – far from it. It’s more because the annual drop of forty new songs changes the game so little that I have a hard time finding points of differentiation to talk about. Just Dance 2026 is very much the same as Just Dance 2025, which was the same as Just Dance 2024, and 2023 before that.

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a Madden situation where I’m an annual fan hollering about how “it’s the SAME GAME” year after year. There is very little outside of the UI that can change in Just Dance without it ceasing to be Just Dance; no one would actually want the core gameplay to be altered. Every year I come into the new Just Dance game expecting 40 new songs, including recent hits, some classics, and a few weirdo tracks.

I fully know at this point that love and care has been taken in the design and animation of the backgrounds (I never notice them while I’m dancing, but I deeply appreciate them during the endless hours that my children take over the game). I expect a fair number of easy dances for me, and an equal number of difficult dances that shake me to my core, forcing me to lie down with a few ice packs. And year after year, Just Dance never disappoints.

For those that might be new to the franchise, Just Dance presents players with a series of popular songs with intricately arranged choreography that plays out on the screen. Players sync their phones to the game and then do their best to mimic the incredible on-screen dancers, holding their phones in one hand and getting scored on accuracy. The franchise definitely leans towards “approachable and fun” and less towards “precise and meticulous”. For those that want a closer judgement of their talents, you can use your phone’s camera to gauge your full body movement; this feature is considered by my family to be overly hardcore. We prefer to flail while holding our phones.

This year’s song list is just as incredible as usual. As an older guy, Just Dance is frequently my first exposure to many of the included songs; if something doesn’t hit “Hot to Go” levels of cultural breakthrough, I’ve likely completely missed it. So playing Just Dance 2026 is the first time I’ve heard “APT.” by ROSE & Bruno Mars, or “Feather” by Sabrina Carpenter. But whoever picks these tracks must have a magical tuner in their head, because I never fail to fall in love with whatever songs are included. As usual, I’ve created a playlist of Just Dance songs to listen to in my car.

And of course, there are some classic songs included for oldsters that show up for the party. Every human on earth knows All Star by Smash Mouth, right? And there are two versions of “Born to be Alive”, with two very different dance animations. My kids get a kick out of making me dance to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, and Ubisoft even provided “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree” for when Grandma wants to play on Christmas Eve.

There is very little point in reviewing the dances themselves. As always, they are uniformly excellent. Every member of my family immediately zeroes in on certain favorites, and then we work our way out from there. The nine-year-old loves the Ubisoft Original “Show Me What You Got” by Boomborg (he likes the weird horse-like prancing motion the dance calls for). The twelve-year-old is more into “Abracadabra” by Lady Gaga and “Houdini” by Dua Lipa. I kinda dig “I Had Some Help” by Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen. Don’t judge me. And everyone in the family took the obligatory shot at the Bluey Medley, nodded with appreciation, and moved on.

The interface through which you play these dance tracks has changed very little. It seems there are some new rewards, but they weren’t yet active during the review period. To be honest, we’ve long since lost track of all of the little cosmetic doohickeys we’ve earned over the years since Just Dance morphed from individual yearly games to its current platform incarnation.

One new feature that has been added this year is the new Party Mode. While I’m not certain how successful it is, Party Mode definitely offers a new way to interact with the dance videos. Up to six players can sync their phones with the game, which then plays truncated versions of the dance levels with players working to achieve a level of accuracy.

For example, my kids and I logged in to do a ten-minute party on medium difficulty. The game then played two minutes each of five medium-difficulty videos. On occasion, the mode flips the script on players. It throws stuff up on the screen that obscures the dancers, asking players to do their best under the circumstances. Or it demands that players ignore the dance prompts and clap their hands rhythmically instead.

At the end of each mini-level, Party Mode displays how everyone did, accuracy-wise. It’s a thin addition to the overall package, but my kids seem to enjoy it. I shudder to think of what it will be like when I’ve got six pre-teen girls in my living room stomping along with Lady Gaga, but I’m sure it will happen.

Beyond Party Mode, Just Dance 2026 is pretty much business as usual. That means that instead of downloading the videos to play them locally, the game is still streaming the dance content – poorly – from whatever server it is drawing from. I can’t say that I’m terribly happy with this state of affairs, which was implemented with the 2023 edition of the game. If it worked well, that would be one thing. But the streaming is nightmarishly jittery, stopping frequently in the middle of levels and completely throwing everyone off their game. For the record, my internet is rock solid – I can run Firesticks all over this house and still take Zoom meetings all day. It’s not me, it’s them.

Last year this streaming issue was mitigated somewhat by Ubisoft adding the ability to download up to 40 videos to play locally. That was fine last year, but as the library of content continues to pile up, 40 local videos aren’t going to cut it. My family has more than 40 past favorites, and now we have 40 new levels to play. I definitely don’t mind committing the hard drive space to downloading the videos; Just Dance never gets deleted, and I’m fine working around the game swelling like a tick as content gets added year after year. I can’t understand the weird gatekeeping. Just give me a button to download all the new videos and be done with it.

So, for those keeping score, we’ve got 40 great new songs (some with a couple of versions), the same UI, a moderately successful new party mode, and continuing technical frustrations. So, another year, another Just Dance game. Is it fun? Of course it is ridiculously fun. That said, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing some further consideration given to the game’s overall performance, and the ability to manage my own experience. But Just Dance season is here, and the celebration will continue regardless of my ongoing quibbles. See you on the leaderboards, where you will likely be far, far ahead of me.