Pixar has been dazzling the audience ever since Toy Story proved a fully 3D animated movie could work back in 1995. Over the following three decades, it’s put out hit after hit, matching their envelope-pushing technical skills with a tight focus on emotionally satisfying and complex storytelling.
Perhaps the proof of that is that despite releasing 27 movies, almost one per year since 1998, none are terrible. Sure some are clearly better than others and there’s the occasional wobble or unnecessary sequel, but they may have the most consistent track record of any studio in Hollywood.
It’s also worth remembering that Pixar has been around in some form since 1974, and will next year be celebrating their half-century. What better time to look over their list of cinematic achievements?
The full list of Pixar movies
So, here’s a full list of their movies in release order, including their two upcoming projects Inside Out 2 and Elio. Watching these in release order will take up some time, but if you want a snapshot of breakthroughs in CGI rendering and/or a heartwarming movie marathon, look no further:
- Toy Story (1995)
- A Bug’s Life (1998)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Monsters, Inc. (2001)
- Finding Nemo (2003)
- The Incredibles (2004)
- Cars (2006)
- Ratatouille (2007)
- WALL∙E (2008)
- Up (2009)
- Toy Story 3 (2010)
- Cars 2 (2011)
- Brave (2012)
- Monsters University (2013)
- Inside Out (2015)
- The Good Dinosaur (2015)
- Finding Dory (2016)
- Cars 3 (2017)
- Coco (2017)
- Incredibles 2 (2018)
- Toy Story 4 (2019)
- Onward (2020)
- Soul (2020)
- Luca (2021)
- Turning Red (2022)
- Lightyear (2022)
- Elemental (2023)
- Inside Out 2 (2014)
- Elio (2025)
Pixar shorts
As any true Pixar fan will know, the studio also puts out many shorts along with its feature films. These are often used to audition new talent who’ll go on to make the jump to a feature-length project or debut new rendering or animation technology. This list pre-dates even Toy Story, with Pixar’s earliest shorts the first exposure many would have had to digitally rendered 3D animation.
Several of these are part of the “SparkShorts” programme, with Pixar’s employees given six months and a limited budget to show off their skills.
- The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)
- Luxo Jr. (1986)
- Red’s Dream (1987)
- Tin Toy (1988)
- Knick Knack (1989)
- Geri’s Game (1997)
- For the Birds (2000)
- Mike’s New Car (2002)
- Boundin’ (2003)
- One Man Band (2005)
- Jack-Jack Attack (2005)
- Mr. Incredible and Pals (2005)
- Lifted (2006)
- Mater and the Ghostlight (2006)
- Your Friend the Rat (2007)
- Presto (2008)
- BURN∙E (2008)
- Partly Cloudy (2009)
- Dug’s Special Mission (2009)
- George and A.J. (2009)
- Day & Night (2010)
- La Luna (2011)
- The Legend of Mor’du (2012)
- The Blue Umbrella (2013)
- Party Central (2013)
- Lava (2014)
- Sanjay’s Super Team (2015)
- Riley’s First Date? (2015)
- Piper (2016)
- Marine Life Interviews (2016)
- Dante’s Lunch (2017)
- Lou (2017)
- Miss Fritter’s Racing Skoool (2017)
- Bao (2018)
- Purl (2018) (SparkShort)
- Auntie Edna (2018)
- Smash and Grab (2019) (SparkShort)
- Kitbull (2019) (SparkShort)
- Float (2019) (SparkShort)
- Wind (2019) (SparkShort)
- Loop (2020) (SparkShort)
- Lamp Life (2020)
- Out (2020) (SparkShort)
- Dory’s Reef Cam (2020)
- Burrow (2020) (SparkShort)
- 22 vs. Earth (2021)
- Twenty Something (2021) (SparkShort)
- Nona (2021) (SparkShort)
- Ciao Alberto (2021)
- Carl’s Date (2023)
So there you have it, the full lineup. We’ve enjoyed practically everything on this list (with the possible exception of Cars 3), leaving Pixar as one of the few studios that we will watch everything they put out. What a filmography!