D23 2026’s Horizons: Disney Experiences Showcase is confirmed for Saturday, August 15 at 7 p.m. at the Honda Center, and for the first time in the showcase’s modern history, it will not be hosted by a Disney Experiences chairman. Neil Patrick Harris is stepping into that role instead, guiding what Disney is billing as a journey through the stories shaping the future of Disney Experiences around the world, built on the ambitious projects the company first announced in 2024.
Fantasy Land News will be covering this panel live and will update this article with everything announced. For the complete event guide, visit our D23 2026 hub, and for the full three-day schedule with exact times, see our D23 2026 program schedule.
Every two years, this is the panel that sets the direction of our parks coverage for the following two years. FLN follows Disney Experiences news as closely as any outlet in this space, and the Horizons showcase is consistently where the biggest, longest-lead-time announcements land, the ones that turn into years of construction updates, opening date coverage, and firsthand park visits once the projects actually break ground. When D’Amaro used this stage in 2024 to reveal Villains Land, a Monsters, Inc. area, a new Cars section, and a wave of other expansions, that single show effectively wrote our assignment list through 2026. Whatever gets confirmed on August 15 this year will likely do the same through 2028.
Josh D’Amaro, who hosted the Disney Experiences Showcase in 2024 and built the role into something close to a rock concert keynote, has since been promoted to CEO of The Walt Disney Company. Thomas Mazloum now holds the Chairman of Disney Experiences title D’Amaro left behind, but Mazloum will not be the one taking the stage in Anaheim. Disney has instead tapped Neil Patrick Harris, an actor with real Disney parks history of his own as a longtime narrator of EPCOT’s Candlelight Processional. It is a deliberate shift away from an executive-led keynote toward something styled more like a hosted theatrical special, and it is the first time this generation of fans has seen the format change hands like this.
Disney’s own description leans on the phrase building on the ambitious projects announced in 2024, and that framing matters. The 2024 Horizons showcase was enormous, covering four new cruise ships, six new themed lands and areas spanning Monsters, Inc., Cars, Indiana Jones, Encanto, Avatar, and Disney Villains, 14 new attractions, and new nighttime entertainment including the Disney Starlight parade planned for Magic Kingdom. Most of that was unveiled as early concept art and blue sky ambition. Two years later, actual construction is underway across Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort, which means this show is positioned to deliver the follow-through fans have been asking about, ride names, ride systems, animatronic reveals, and real opening timelines, rather than a fresh wave of brand-new concepts.
The choice to theme this year’s showcase after Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress is a nice touch, and the timing is not a coincidence. FLN covered Carousel of Progress closing at Magic Kingdom on July 6, 2026 for a long-overdue overhaul that adds a Walt Disney Audio-Animatronic figure to the attraction for the first time, along with new show scenes and a shifted timeline, ahead of a planned 2027 reopening. Building the Disney Experiences Showcase around that same attraction’s format, guests moving through progress and time, gives Neil Patrick Harris a natural structure to walk fans through where these 2024 projects stood then and where they stand now, and it is a fitting nod to an attraction that is itself mid-transformation right now.
Disney’s official language promises special performances, exciting announcements, and a few surprises along the way, so this will not be a pure status update. Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios are all currently in active construction tied to 2024’s announcements, which makes them the most likely source of concrete news. EPCOT is the park to watch for a genuine surprise, given the age of Spaceship Earth and Journey Into Imagination with Figment, and Disneyland Resort’s Disneyland Forward expansion is also in a phase where a major update would make sense on this stage.
This is the panel. Every other D23 2026 session is worth covering, but this is the one that actually shapes what FLN writes about for years afterward, and we will be watching it that closely. The host change is a bigger deal than it might look on paper. D’Amaro’s stage presence was part of what made the last two Horizons showcases feel like events rather than press conferences, and handing that off to a professional performer instead of the new chairman says something about how Disney wants this show to feel going forward. The Carousel of Progress theming is the detail we like most here. It works as a clever framing device, and it also happens to line up with a real, currently ongoing refurbishment at Magic Kingdom, which is the kind of connection that only makes sense if you are following this closely enough to catch it.
Disney Experiences Showcase 2026 Host Change: Neil Patrick Harris Replaces Chairman-Led Tradition
