A new The Muppet Show special will be released on February 4, 2026, on Disney+ 12AM PST, and ABC tv 9PM EST/PST. A teaser trailer for the special was released on Jan 2, 2026. An official trailer was released on Jan 23, 2026.

The original The Muppet Show series, created by Jim Henson, ran 1976-1981, and aired in over 100 countries. In 2026, The Muppet Show will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

“The hope is for the Muppet Show special to serve as a backdoor pilot for a new season of the iconic series".

Sabrina Carpenter has been announced as special guest star, and the special also guest stars Maya Rudolph and Seth Rogen.

This special is directed by Alex Timbers (also an executive producer).

Veteran Muppet performers Bill Barretta, Dave Goelz, Eric Jacobson, Peter Linz, David Rudman and Matt Vogel will perform the majority of the Muppet characters in this special, supported by additional performers. Dave Goelz has performed with The Muppets for over 50 years.

We are now in the fourth year of reviewing the dramatic shorts category based on the recommendations submitted to the Ursa Majors along with random ones I may have seen during the year, or items that maybe the algorithms caught that only get recommended at this time of year for some reason. The choices here are, once again, polished and only one or two in the whole list had missing elements. Without you all curating your choices these lists would not happen so thank you for your efforts this year.

New to the format this year is that I’ll lean toward sectionalizing so that the text before the video doesn’t go too much into spoiler territory and any text afterwards will go more into elements I liked that address the content itself as to not spoil any desire to view without being painted by those thoughts.

(Prior Years: 2024, 2023, 2022)

The Monkey King (trailer) is a 96-minute 3D animated film produced by Netflix along with several studios in East Asia. It was directed by Anthony Stacchi and written by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, and Rita Hsiao.

When the film came out in August 2023, supposedly it was the most streamed film on Netflix that month; but IMDB rates it a 5.8 out of 10, and Rotten Tomatoes gives it 56% / 63%. For animation and visuals I think it should score slightly higher; story-wise I think that's a good assessment.

When I used to live in Wichita, Kansas, I loved watching movies at the Warren Theatre West, and I have a specific memory of one movie I saw there, less because of movie itself, but because of an interaction with the ticket seller.

The movie was Wes Craven's My Soul to Take, and she helpfully informed me that if I walked out in the first thirty minutes, I would be refunded. Not exactly reassuring me about my ticket choice that evening, but I had to wonder what people, exactly, were expecting from a "Dead Teenager Movie" from Wes "Nightmare on Elm Street" Craven.

I did not refund my ticket, and though I can't actually recall much from the movie (other than a bizarre scene involving a pooping papier mache condor), I still remember it fondly. It was fun, but what else did I expect from a Wes "Scream" Craven slasher picture?

Anyway, he's dead now.

But we're not here to review Wes "Music of the Heart" Craven's My Soul to Take, but instead director Emma Tammi's Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which currently has a paltry 16% "Rotten" rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, which is somehow almost, but not quite, half the score of the first Five Night's at Freddy's, despite being a marked improvement. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

Nominations for the fandom's 2025 Ursa Major Awards are open through Thursday, February 5, 2026! Login on the website, and you can nominate up to five things in each category.

There's a new category this year: Furry Streamers!

And, for the 25th anniversary of the Awards, there's a one-time extra category this year: Anthropomorphic Video Games!

On January 10th SoFurry released a post indicating that they are back online for the first time since early July of 2025. During this downtime they had moved servers and finalized updating so that the new Beta version will now fully replace the original style of the site. The beta will remain in place until bugs are fleshed out with the public transition.

The line for badge pickup at last year’s ANE on Thursday night. (Flayrah/Eberra Wolf)

Anthro New England will be capping the fursuit photo and has been in need of staffers to control lines. Announced the other night on a new page on their website, the convention said the photo will be capped to 800 fursuiters and be moved to Friday instead of the traditional Saturday. Throughout the past few weeks, the convention has also repeatedly asked for staffers, especially ones to work in line control.

Furry literature features no shortage of smaller folk standing up for their own existence. Watership Down, Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, or some of you may even recall The Roquefort Gang from its animated appearance on CBS Storybreak. It’s a safe bet that these works, and so many like these, inspired David Petersen in the creation of Mouse Guard, which heads into its 20th Anniversary this year.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, EberraWolf, and Sonious.

Oh man, 2025 surely has been a year. But, a lot of critters from the furry fandom has been doing their otterly best to make this world a better place. Some events with charities are known far and wide like our virtual friends from Furality raising over $100,000 dollars for the Center, or the various teams raising money for ALS in honour of Dogbomb. However there are so many more, from Chile to Taiwan, from South Africa to Belgium. Together with a small team of diggers and critters who submitted charities we ventured all over the world to check them out, resulting in this years’ Furry Charity Index.

Before we start venturing all over the world, let’s start with a few numbers I kept on being asked for. What kind of causes do we as a fandom support? We have a couple of main categories:

• 15.09% went to LGBTQ related charities
• 29.07% went to humanitarian efforts
• 55.84% went to animal welfare charities

And the final numbers with the difference from last year I will share with you after this wonderful list. Together with the people who made all of this possible. But for now, come travel with us!

[List of Charity events for 2025]

Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia (trailer, pronounced "Gibberish-ia") is an 80-minute 2D animated children's film from 2022, a sequel to a 2012 film previously reviewed on Flayrah. They're part of a larger franchise based on a book series, that later got a TV series and a couple of specials.

Originally produced in France, it's been dubbed into English by GKids, however this new film has a completely different set of directors and writers. The producers and studios remained largely the same. In French the title was Ernest et Célestine: Le voyage en Charabie, based on the French word "charabia" that means gibberish or gobbledygook.

You can watch this film without having seen the first one! Ernest is a grumpy, kind-hearted musician (a bear), who adoped Celestine (a young mouse), despite bears and mice not typically getting along. The story begins with Ernest waking from his long winter sleep, when Celestine accidentally breaks his prized violin. Trying to make things right, she embarks on a journey to Ernest's hometown to get it repaired. In panic, Ernest chases after her, and they arrive in Gibberitia together.

Members of the furry fandom on the social media site Twitter (or X if you're feeling mean) have chosen Pawbert Lynxley of Zootopia 2 as the recipient of the 2025 Furry of the Year Award. However, the choice has not been without some contreversy, as there is a strong contingent of fans of the bat character Sonar from the episodic video game Dispatch are also claiming the prize.

Meanwhile, other Twitter furries, noting a lack of a similar "award" for female characters, have offered up their take on the last nine years for the other gender. Though the 2025 pick, Kitty Kat of The Bad Guys 2, is much less contreversial than the male pick, there has been much less agreement on who the previous years' recipients should be.

Now, let's back up a minute, and point out that there is no such thing as the Furry of the Year Award. The male version started out as sort of joke response to the popularity of the character Nick Wilde from the original Zootopia, but didn't really take off until two years later, when the character of Haida from the anime Aggretsuko became popular enough that even the American dub's voice actor for the character, Ben Diskin, took notice. Since then, various people have offered up their choice for "furry of the year", and eventually a consensus has been more or less reached, despite no vote taking place or jury meeting to decide.

What an enormously strange but wonderful year it has been! Welcome to the last episode of 2025! This episode we have:

• A wonderful interview with furry musician Cosmik with a K
• Animation news, how Zootopia 2 shattered all expectations, and how you can get one of those shiny Lorcana Cards!
• And of course, a whole bunch of charities

So...lets start with those!

Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness (trailer) is a 90-minute 3D kids animated adventure-comedy film. Released in 2022, it's important to note that this is an nWave Studios producion, a Belgian company whose output since 2008 has consistently ranged from "awful" to "thoroughly meh".

It's rare for their average IMDB score to go higher than 6 out of 10. This one was directed by Benjamin Mousquet and Ben Stassen, written by Dave Collard, and was very loosely inspired from graphic novels by Chris Grine.

I think Chickenhare has been the studio's... "best" work so far, but that's not saying much. Their second-best would probably be either The House of Magic (2013) or Son of Bigfoot (2018).

What I find fascinating about Chickenhare is that it's just on the edge of being okay. Most of its elements use well-worn tropes that you typically get in kids films, but other things are... different. Cheerfully absurd. It's not taking itself entirely seriously. It's solidly aimed at a young audience - but there's this odd, subtle undercurrent that only adults might notice, when they're not being bored. It's really difficult to put into words.

Contributors this month include 2cross2affliction, dronon, earthfurst, EberraWolf, and Rakuen Growlithe.