Just Dance 2026

Just (an update) 2026.

Ever since Just Dance 2023, the dancing video game sensation has become rather difficult to review. The series, which has now released its 17th entry, has become nothing more than a content drop into a structured digital package we’ve seen over the past three years, introducing new songs and calling it a day. Essentially, each subsequent review then becomes a review of the 40 new songs and any new features packed into its live-service kit. It makes much of the following subjective, rather than a true look at the game itself. Despite the addition of an all-new party mode, Just Dance 2026 is disappointingly business as usual. 

Just Dance 2025 was my first entry in several years that I actually gave some time to. Despite the vast changes made to it as it made its switch to a live-service model, where you could just purchase the new song packs, as well as the introduction of its subscription service packed with over 300 songs, it felt overdesigned in its menus and lacked a lot of core functions I had expected the series to adopt. The game lacked any real onboarding for newcomers, given the wide array of stick-figure poses during the performances that were often hard to decipher. The menu UI made it hard to really discover new songs, and the lack of any songs prior to Just Dance 2023 made its Just Dance+ service to not feel as content-rich as one would expect. Unsurprisingly, Just Dance 2026 fixes none of these issues. 

For a review on the core game of what Just Dance is, if you are completely new to the series and finally want to take a crack at it, I don’t feel anything I could say here would be different from last year's review, so if you are new to the series, check it out here. In fact, I could easily copy and paste that review here instead and swap out all the song names, and nothing would be incorrectly stated about this year’s edition, apart from discussion about the new Party Mode. While the gameplay during the dance moments isn’t really in need of a change or upgrade, as the gameplay is still exactly what you remember and expect, it is the elements around the gameplay that are desperately in need of updating. 

As for what Just Dance 2026 brings with it, it is a collection of 40 new tracks, as listed below:

• Abracadabra - Lady Gaga

• All Star - Smash Mouth

• Anxiety- Doechii 

• APT. - ROSÉ & Bruno Mars

• Azizam- Ed Sheeran 

• Big Bad Frog- Austin & Collins 

• Bluey Medley - Bluey

• Born To Be Alive - Patrick Hernandez (Reborn Version)

• Chichika (feat. METAMAMI) - MariaDennis

• Counting Stars- OneRepublic 

• Cry Baby - Melanie Martinez

• Don Raja - Su Real and DISTORT

• Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Lulu & Levon

• DRIP- BABYMONSTER 

• Feather- Sabrina Carpenter 

• Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper

• Good Girls - Humphrey Dennis feat. Zanillya

• Good Luck, Babe!- Chappell Roan 

• Houdini- Dua Lipa  

• Hung Up - Madonna

• I Had Some Help - Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen

• It's ok, I'm ok - Tate McRae

• Kitipo- Dixson Waz, La Tukiti, and Amenazandel  

• La Bamba - The Sunlight Shakers

• Louder- Don Elektron and Derek 

• Love Again - Dua Lipa

• Messy- Lola Young 

• Moonlight- Aileen-O 

• Pop Muzik - M, Robin Scott

• Prehistorock- Ricky Stone 

• Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree - Mrs. Claus and the Elves

• Stay Cheese - Paul Russell

• Show me what you got- Boomborg 

• Sokusu- Wanko Ni Mero Mero 

• Spin Your Love- Kevin J Simon 

• Strangers- Sigrid 

• Thrift Shop (feat. Wanz) - Macklemore & Ryan Lewis with Wanz

• Viva la Vida - Coldplay

• We Just Begun - Stush and WOST

• Zombieboy- Lady Gaga

Now, if you are like me and can only pick out a small handful of recognizable tracks, then you may not see much value here. Sure, a few of the songs I was unaware of, such as Drip or Sokusu, both ended up being extremely great songs. A large number of these songs, which consist of both new hits and classic favorites, just didn’t hit with me. I am a fan of Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, and Sabrina Carpenter, so their contributions here, which was also the same case last year, was very much welcomed, despite “Don’t Stop Now” from Dua Lipa still being locked behind Just Dance 2021. Bring it back, you cowards.

One song that frankly doesn’t make sense here is Thrift Shop. Yes, the song was a banger at the time, and still to this day, but it’s also a song that had a ton of language and terms that made it hard to play to a younger audience. Here, the song has so many censored words with muted audio that one entire line just has the word “and” in it. It’s such a bizarre addition, as is a Christmas song, which, despite it getting close to the season, could have been saved for a Christmas pack. 

Again, your mileage will vary on whether the new and classic tracks entice you, but it’s one of the weakest song lists I’ve seen in years for the series, given my deep dive into what’s been offered over the past few years. After the five or six songs here that really had my interest, I opted to dive back into some of the songs here that were part of previous year’s editions, like Espresso, Training Season, and the few tracks by KD/A and Blackpink. Why Golden from K-Pop Demon Hunters isn’t here is mind-boggling given how popular the song is currently. And while the Bluey song is charming, it’s a song you’ll likely just play once unless you have young kids.

New to Just Dance 2026 is the new Party Mode. This mode offers a new way to interact via the dancing segments. Up to six players can use a Joy-Con or phone, and then dance to shortened versions of each dance video, each working to attain some level of accuracy. You’ll select a timed segment of videos that are then stitched together as you dance as a group with various obstacles, such as the dancers being obstructed or having to clap instead of following the prompts. Once the mode is over, it displays each player’s accuracy. While the mode is a neat idea, I think more could have been done to party-ify it even more. 

One issue that is also present is the inability to truly play this game offline. Yes, you can download tracks locally, but the maps, as a default, are still streamed via your internet. I didn’t have many issues here, despite last year having some, but it is still odd that, despite the sizes of games being what they are nowadays, a complete offline play of this game is such a hard thing to do, given you can only have a set amount of songs saved locally, often having to delete some of your past favorites in the process.

Just Dance 2026 is, at its core, a party mode and a mediocre song pack. While your mileage will vary on the music added, and how much you really take advantage of its party mode, I do feel this is the weakest Just Dance entry in quite some time, as least based on many of the prior game’s tracks, offering a wide range of all-star bangers. I still appreciate that Just Dance is still around, but the year after year installments do little to excite when you really are just updating the game rather than buying something shiny and new. Just Dance is in dire need of a complete reinvention, from a ground-level UI upgrade to its deeper catalog finally being added. Just Dance 2026 is fine, but it’s barely Just Enough.

Developer - Ubisoft Shanghai, Romania, Paris.
Publisher - Ubisoft. Released - October 14th, 2025. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Nintendo Switch. Rated - (E) - User interact, In-game purchases. Platform Reviewed - Nintendo Switch.
Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.