2027 in public domain

When a work's copyright expires, it enters the public domain. The following is a list of creators whose works enter the public domain in 2027. Since laws vary globally, the copyright status of some works are not uniform.

With the exception of Belarus (Life + 50 years) and Spain (which has a copyright term of Life + 80 years for creators that died before 1987), a work enters the public domain in Europe 70 years after the creator's death, if it was published during the creator's lifetime. For previously unpublished material, those who publish it first will have the publication rights for 25 years. In addition several other countries in the world have a limit of 70 years. The list is sorted alphabetically and includes a notable work of the creator.

In Bangladesh, India, and Venezuela a work enters the public domain 60 years after the creator's death.

In most countries of Africa and Asia, as well as Belarus, Bolivia, New Zealand, Egypt and Uruguay, a work enters the public domain 50 years after the creator's death.

Spain has a copyright term of life + 80 years for creators that died before 1987. In Colombia and Equatorial Guinea, a work enters the public domain 80 years after the creator's death.

Under the Copyright Term Extension Act, books published in 1931, films released in 1931, and other works published in 1931, will enter the public domain in 2027.^[3][4][5] Sound recordings that were published in 1926 and unpublished works whose authors died in 1956 will also enter the public domain.^[3] The Disney animated short The Moose Hunt, featuring Pluto in his first appearance under his familiar name and as Mickey Mouse's dog; as well as Universal Pictures' Frankenstein and Dracula, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in their respective title roles; will be among the works to enter the public domain. On the other hand, the character Dick Tracy was already in the public domain due to lack of proper copyright renewal, as were the strips of E. C. Segar's Thimble Theatre that introduced J. Wellington Wimpy and Popeye's use of spinach to gain his superpowers.

Other significant films entering the public domain include Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, the gangster film The Public Enemy starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow, the Marx Brothers film Monkey Business, Laurel and Hardy's first feature film Pardon Us, Fritz Lang's serial killer drama M starring Peter Lorre, Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Fredric March (which won him the year's Academy Award for Best Actor, the first Oscar awarded to a horror film), Frank Borzage's Best Director Academy Award-winning film Bad Girl, Possessed starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, King Vidor's The Champ starring Wallace Beery, Josef von Sternberg's Dishonored starring Marlene Dietrich, Michael Powell's directorial debut Two Crowded Hours, Otto Preminger's directorial debut The Great Love, F. W. Murnau's final film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, the John Ford films Arrowsmith and The Brat, the Alfred Hitchcock films The Skin Game, Mary and Rich and Strange, Frank Capra's films Dirigible, The Miracle Woman and Platinum Blonde, Palmy Days with Eddie Cantor, A Connecticut Yankee with Will Rogers, Mädchen in Uniform (one of the earliest films depicting a lesbian relationship), G. W. Pabst's The Threepenny Opera, Mário Peixoto's Limite, Dave Fleischer's animated cartoon Bimbo's Initiation, the first Canadian sound film The Viking, the first Soviet sound film Road to Life and the first Bollywood-musical Alam Ara (now believed lost).

Important literary works entering the public domain include Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary, Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs, Dr. Seuss's debut book The Pocket Book of Boners, Noël Coward's play Cavalcade, Erich Maria Remarque's novel The Road Back, James Hanley's novel Boy, J. Slauerhoff's novel The Forbidden Kingdom, the final volume of Winston Churchill's The World Crisis, the detective stories The Sittaford Mystery by Agatha Christie and The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett, Walter B. Gibson's pulp novel The Living Shadow introducing The Shadow (whose prior non-visual appearance in the radio show Detective Story Hour was already in the public domain), the original editions of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's Hardy Boys novel What Happened at Midnight and Nancy Drew novels The Secret at Shadow Ranch and The Secret of Red Gate Farm, Georges Simenon's novel The Strange Case of Peter the Lett (containing the first introduction of Inspector Jules Maigret) in its original French, the full album version of Hergé's Tintin in the Congo (the character's second and arguably most controversial story) and first serialized pages of Tintin in America in their original French black-and-white versions, and Jean de Brunhoff's The Story of Babar in its original French. Disney's first hardcover book The Adventures of Mickey Mouse, which included a prototypical character who three years later became Donald Duck, will also become public domain in 2027. The first appearances of Suihō Tagawa's Norakuro, one of the earliest Shōnen manga series, will also become public domain in the United States in 2027 in its original Japanese.

Among the better-known songs entering the public domain are "As Time Goes By", "Minnie the Moocher", "Which Side Are You On?", "All of Me", and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?". A march entering the public domain is John Philip Sousa's Kansas Wildcats.

Artworks entering the public domain include Salvador Dalí's painting The Persistence of Memory, Paul Landowski's sculpture Christ the Redeemer, Pablo Picasso's sculpture Bust of a Woman (Marie-Thérèse), August Sander's photograph Secretary at West German Radio, Cologne and M. C. Escher's early print Atrani, Coast of Amalfi. Georgia O'Keeffe's painting Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue is already in the public domain as it was not renewed.

• List of American films of 1931
• 1931 in literature
• 1931 in music
• 1956 in literature and 1976 in literature for deaths of writers
• Public Domain Day
• Creative Commons
• 2028 in public domain

• Media related to Undelete in 2027 at Wikimedia Commons
• "Authors by Year of Death – 1956". AuthorAndBookInfo.com.
• Popular Books of 1931 at Goodreads