TIME's Women of the Year are changing the world

Women of the Year

For the fifth year in a row, TIME recognizes women working to create a more equitable world—­leaders who are addressing the most pressing issues confronting women and girls in 2026. Here are just a few of the women in the arts who made the list:

• Teyana Taylor. Taylor identifies as a “creative”—not just an actor, director, musician, dancer, or choreographer, but all of the above. She’s refused to pick a lane even as people in her industry told her to focus on one thing at a time.

• Chloé Zhao. In November, the Chinese writer, director, and producer made a highly anticipated return, after four years away from the spotlight, with Hamnet, her fifth feature film. She says her time away allowed her to build "an inner temple and inner safety net" that led to greater vulnerability.

• Brandi Carlile. “I’m definitely at a time in my life where I feel the most vibrant, the most aware, the most centered, the most grateful,” says the singer-songwriter. But Carlile is also grappling with her role as an artist in an increasingly divided and often violent world.

• Amy Sherald. Sherald is perhaps best known for her 2018 portrait of Michelle Obama, but the Georgia-born artist most often paints everyday people: a woman with a camera, a man in a cowboy hat, a child on a slide: “I’m drawn to expressions of humanity.”

See the full list here.

Reading

• You With the Sad Eyes. Actor Christina Applegate’s candor and intelligence thread throughout her memoir, from a hippie-style childhood and a starry-eyed adolescence among Hollywood legends to roles in Married . . . with Children and Anchorman and her diagnosis and experience living with multiple sclerosis. Read more.

• Everybody's Fly. A pioneer of the hip-hop revolution, Fred Braithwaite, a.k.a. Fab 5 Freddy, recounts his odyssey from churchgoing Brooklyn kid to teenaged music aficionado to the forefront of New York’s ’80s avant-garde scene. Read more.

• No Friend to This House. The author of A Thousand Ships and Stone Blind reimagines the Greek myth of Medea as a passion play, rife with domestic fury and murder most foul. Natalie Haynes fleshes out the backstories of her cast and imbues them all with contemporary vibes. Read more.

Talking About

• Netflix’s Vladimir and HBO’s Rooster are true comedies that find humor in how sex scandals destabilize earnest, intellectual, insular academic communities. And each dares to honor the humanity in characters often reduced to predators and prey by one faction, shrill social justice warriors and brave free thinkers by another. The nuance is refreshing but oddly timed.

• Pokémon is at odds with the White House for the second time in months. On Thursday, the White House posted an image with the words “make america great again” designed to imitate Pokémon’s game Pokémon Pokopia. The post prompted a response from Pokémon Company International. Read more.

• Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Harry Potter career has been defined by risky, quirky, and largely comedic roles. As in his new NBC sitcom and Broadway one-man show, he’s solely picking projects for fun: “There is a freedom and looseness in everything I’m choosing right now.”