Hollywood, Pro Sports Union Talks Primed to Rally Labor in 2026

Union deals in the entertainment and professional sports industries are set to expire in 2026, setting the stage for attention-grabbing contract disputes that could have ripple effects across organized labor.

Labor pacts that the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Writers Guild of America made with studios will expire in June and May, respectively. Major League Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement lapses in December, while the Women’s National Basketball Association’s contract ends Jan. 9.

The kind of high profile work stoppages that preceded the last contracts in Hollywood and the MLB could be in the offing this year. WNBA players recently authorized union leadership to call a strike if necessary.

“These types of labor issues matter very much to smaller unions because they put the idea of collective bargaining into the public consciousness, which can be very motivating,” said Paul Ortiz, a labor historian at Cornell University and former president of the United Faculty of Florida union.

Prominent labor disputes can provide a boost to worker solidarity and organizing, but they can have a negative impact if closely watched unions retreat or agree to poor contracts, he said.

The next round of labor talks for actors and writers will resonate with many workers because one of their central concerns will be artificial intelligence, an issue that has employment-related implications across the economy, Ortiz said.

AI in Tinsel Town

The entertainment industry labor deals cover large worker populations. The SAG-AFTRA contract for film and television spans about 160,000 actors, broadcasters, and performers. The WGA applies to roughly 11,500 writers, writer-producers, and editors.

“AI is going to be the key issue for SAG-AFTRA and WGA,” said Todd Holmes, professor of entertainment media management at California State University Northridge.

The collective bargaining agreements reached after the 2023 strikes included “essentially the first generation of guardrails for AI,” as the use of that technology in film and television was more experimental at that point, said Kartik Hosanagar, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

The evolution of AI video, voice cloning, and synthetic actors like Tilly Norwood portend negotiations for more detailed provisions on particular uses for new technologies, said Hosanagar, who co-directs Wharton Human-AI Research.

In 2025, SAG-AFTRA reached a deal for performers in commercials that includes provisions relating to synthetic performers that remove some of the financial advantages for studios to use them, said Lisa Oratz, co-chair of Perkins Coie LLP’s film and television practice.

SAG-AFTRA will likely try to replicate its gains from the commercials contract in the next deal for film and television, she said. The WGA may also be emboldened to try to seek provisions that financially discourage the use of AI in a way that displaces writers.

But while the last WGA deal spared senior writers from being replaced by AI, it didn’t prevent a significant labor contraction in writing rooms—to the point that, in some cases, show-runners had their staffs cut in favor of AI assistants, said Erin Hill, a professor of media and popular culture at UC San Diego. That could impact whether writers are willing to go to the mat on AI protections.

“If more people were working, more people would have an appetite for striking,” she said.

Other Big Deals Ending

The SAG-AFTRA and WGA contracts are among the more than 700 collective bargaining agreements slated to run out in 2026, according to a Bloomberg Law database.

Many of the largest worker groups covered by expiring deals are in the public sector. California’s agreement with nearly 100,000 workers ends in June, and New York has two contracts covering more than 100,000 employees combined that are set to expire in April.

New York City’s pact with 90,000 workers times out in November, while the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s contract for 42,000 bus and subway employees in NYC ends in May.

Some of the lapsing agreements in the private sector include American Airlines Inc.’s contract covering 35,000 support workers and Delta Air Lines Inc.'s pact with 15,000 pilots, both of which end at the close of 2026.

The Boeing Co.’s deal covering 13,000 engineers in four western states ends in October. More than 3,000 Boeing workers at a St. Louis-area facility walked off the job for 102 days—the second-longest strike in the company’s history—before reaching an agreement in November 2025.

The US Steel Corp. and the United Steelworkers labor pact covering 11,000 workers with six local unions ends in September. Contract negotiations could test whether the Trump administration is willing to use its “golden share”—which the federal government extracted as part of approving Nippon Steel Corp.’s acquisition of the American steel firm—to influence labor-management relations.