Dashed left edge = started before March 2026 ·
Dashed right edge = ongoing beyond March 2026
Events in March 2026 20
1929 – 2026Len Deighton (1929-2026)Died 15 March 2026, aged 97English novelist who reshaped the spy story with The Ipcress File and a long run of cool, sceptical thrillers.
1932 – 2026Paul R. Ehrlich (1932-2026)Died 13 March 2026, aged 93American biologist whose warnings about population growth shaped environmental debate for decades. He shared the Crafoord Prize in 1990.
1936 – 2026J. Michael Bishop (1936-2026)Died 20 March 2026, aged 90American virologist who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for clarifying the cellular origins of cancer.
1937 – 2026Lionel Jospin (1937-2026)Died 22 March 2026, aged 88French Socialist politician who served as prime minister from 1997 to 2002 in cohabitation with President Jacques Chirac.
1938 – 2026Anthony J. Leggett (1938-2026)Died 8 March 2026, aged 87British physicist who shared the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for his foundational work on superfluidity.
1939 – 2026Alfredo Bryce Echenique (1939-2026)Died 10 March 2026, aged 87Peruvian novelist and essayist whose fiction blends wry humour with intimacy and pathos.
1940 – 2026Mary Rand (1940-2026)Died 26 March 2026, aged 86British long jumper who won gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the first British woman to win an Olympic athletics title.
1941 – 2026Liamine Zeroual (1941-2026)Died 28 March 2026, aged 84Algerian army officer and politician who served as president of Algeria from 1994 to 1999.
1941 – 2026Umberto Bossi (1941-2026)Died 19 March 2026, aged 84Italian politician who led the Northern League from 1991 to 2012, campaigning for autonomy for the north of the country.
1942 – 2026Christopher A. Sims (1942-2026)Died 14 March 2026, aged 83American economist who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Economics for his research on how macroeconomic indicators interact with economic shocks.
1944 – 2026Robert Mueller (1944-2026)Died 20 March 2026, aged 81American law enforcement official who directed the FBI from 2001 to 2013 and served as special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
1946 – 2026Birute Galdikas (1946-2026)Died 24 March 2026, aged 79Primatologist and conservationist whose study of Bornean orangutans is the longest continuous investigation of any wild mammal by a single researcher.
1958 – 2026Ali Larijani (1958-2026)Died 17 March 2026, aged 67Senior Iranian official for several decades who became de facto leader of the country after Ali Khamenei's death, until he too was killed in US-Israeli strikes weeks later.
2025 – 2026Final ExhibitionsMajor exhibitions of her work opened at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland, and Museum Ludwig in Cologne. A posthumous exhibition was already scheduled to open at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in September 2026.
2026Total Lunar Eclipse — March 3, 2026A total lunar eclipse visible across the Americas, Europe and Africa on 3 March 2026. The Moon passes fully through Earth's umbral shadow, turning deep red — the so-called "blood moon" effect caused by sunlight refracted through Earth's atmosphere. Totality lasts approximately 58 minutes. One of the more favourably positioned total lunar eclipses of the decade for European and American observers.
2026Alan Greenspan at 100 — the longest shadowAlan Greenspan turns 100 in March 2026 — having lived long enough to see the full arc of his legacy's reassessment. The Federal Reserve he shaped for 18 years is now navigating the AI-driven productivity boom, the geopolitical fragmentation of global trade and a new era of inflation management under very different conditions from his tenure. The debates he sparked — about asset bubbles and central bank responsibility, about derivatives regulation, about the limits of market self-regulation — remain unresolved. His career is the fullest expression of both the possibilities and the limits of technocratic economic governance.
2026India wins the Men's T20 World CupA third title, over New ZealandIndia defeated New Zealand on 8 March 2026 to win its third Men's T20 World Cup.
2026One Battle After Another wins six OscarsSinners takes four from a record sixteen nominationsAt the Academy Awards on 15 March 2026, Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another won six Oscars including best picture. Sinners, nominated a record sixteen times, won four; Ryan Coogler took best original screenplay and Michael B. Jordan was named best actor.
2026Iditarod 2026Winner: Jessie Holmes — 9 days 7h (back-to-back)Jessie Holmes successfully defended his 2025 championship on March 17, 2026 — joining the elite group of mushers to win back-to-back Iditarods. He was the first musher to reach every checkpoint first.
2026Sarah Mullally becomes the first woman Archbishop of CanterburyA first in the see's 1,400-year historySarah Mullally was formally installed as Archbishop of Canterbury on 25 March 2026, the first woman to hold the post since the see was founded in 597.