Nostradamus' Predictions For 2026 Are Pretty Spooky

As 2026 looms, some of you might be craving a few months of peace and quiet, but according to the purported prophet Nostradamus, we're not going to get it. In case you're a Nostradamus newbie or just want to hear how we're going to justify this, here's a brief intro. His prophecies are pretty vague and not connected to specific years. Instead, they're grouped into collections of 100 four-line stanzas or quatrains called centuries. So, to check out what's ahead in 2026, we looked at the 26 stanzas in each collection, and had a little fun with numerology as a bonus. Century One's 26th stanza tells us, "...the great man will be struck down in the day by a thunderbolt." At first glance, it sounds like Nostradamus is predicting an assassination. "...sic semper tyrannus!" Of course, great man could refer to any prominent male public figure or, even in a pinch, an entire country. Why not? But if we take the mad mystic literally and go with a guy will be struck by lightning, well, the truth is that most lightning strike victims survive. Over 90 percent, actually. But not everybody. Between 2006 and 2021, 444 people died from lightning strikes in the U.S. And for the men out there, great or not, men are several times more likely to be struck than women. Careful in bad weather, fellas. Then again, if we expand the struck down idea to the realm of metaphor, we could be looking at directed energy weapons. Never heard of them? You will. We're talking about weapons that use energy instead of physical projectiles like bullets to do their killing. The U.S. and China, and lots of others, are exploring the use of offensive lasers, particle beams, and microwave blasts, any of which, to a 16th-century mind, is probably as close to lightning as anything else imaginable. Did you catch all that? What we're saying is Nostradamus is vague. Century One, verse 26, ends with an almost offhand reference to pestilence in Tuscany. The Tuscans might be especially alarmed to hear this. Italy was the first country outside Asia to have a confirmed case of COVID, after which the virus ran rampant throughout the, well, Earth. But Nostradamus might actually be talking about an outbreak of the Toscana virus, a seasonal virus endemic to several Mediterranean countries and spread by biting insects called sandflies. It's pretty common and usually not dangerous, but it occasionally causes lethal meningitis. And unfortunately, it's already on the rise. The virus seems to be moving into new areas, maybe because the insects that carry it are in response to climate change. I don't think we can do that. Oh, nonsense. This is nothing. Compared to the twig of 93. The upshot is, occasional meningitis might suddenly not be all that rare. And if that's not enough to worry about, epidemiologists have noted a phenomenon called airport malaria, in which infected mosquitoes hitch a ride on an airplane and debark to infect people living near the destination airport. So while Toscana virus doesn't seem to spread from person to person, a couple of sandflies infected with Wanderlust and Toscana could mean the spread of the disease to foreign places. Not now, murder hornet. Century 4 stanza 26 cautions, "...the great swarm of bees will arise, such that one will not know whence they have come." More bees is good news, right? Sure, definitely, if the notoriously cagey Nostradamus is referring to actual bees and not simply bee-like insects. Remember the Japanese murder hornet scare of 2020? They were big and aggressive and had a hunger for bee flesh, savaging colonies of their smaller cousins, the good bees, at every opportunity. Not to mention that the things are super venomous. Multiple murder hornet stings can kill a person, and they can. In 2020, the winged menaces were found in the western U.S. and Canada, but experts managed to eradicate them from North America. The initial invasion was stopped, but so was Jason Voorhees — several times. Stay tuned. The Judeo-Christian Islamic god doesn't like idols. The Second Christian Commandment is actually, "...thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." And honestly, if you were the author of all creation, wouldn't you be annoyed to see your createes worshiping something they made themselves? In Century 3 verse 26, Nostradamus warns, "...they will prepare idols of kings and princes." No, he doesn't tell us who he's talking about. But in the case of this particular prophecy, it's not hard to imagine who they could be. To date, there have been at least two golden statues of Donald Trump. In 2021, at the annual CPAC conference, there was a gold statue of the then-former president. It wasn't real gold, of course. It was made of fiberglass and, as a result, lacked the gravitas of its Biblical predecessor, the golden calf of the Israelites. But that didn't stop commentators from pointing out that the Biblical Hebrews came to regret their idolatry big time. In 2025, another shiny yellow Trump popped up, this time holding a physical token of the famously not-physical Bitcoin. The 12-foot-tall statue sat on the National Mall, funded by a gang of crypto investors who appreciated Trump's fondness for the stuff. Though the gold Trump was only out there for a few hours, people were quick to compare it to the ill-fated Biblical king Nebuchadnezzar and his own colossal golden vanity project. Although his golden likeness was 90 feet tall. Don't tell Trump. Meanwhile, there's a new $1 coin in the works, an actual physical coin meant to commemorate America's 250th birthday in 2026. Trump's image will be on both sides. No surprise there. We're not getting political at all, but, I mean, joke's there, right? All this despite the fact that there's a federal law dating back to 1866 against putting the image of a living president on U.S. currency because it smacks of monarchy. We'll have to wait to see if it's gold. Century 5, verse 26 predicts glory in war for...someone. It reads, The slavish people through luck and war will become elevated to a very high degree. Who is or is not slavish may be a matter of perspective, or prejudice, in a world that has at least nominally outlawed slavery in most countries. But let's look at the etymology of the word slave. In English, as in the Romance languages, the word for slave is linked to the word Slav, because before the opening of Africa to the vile practice, Slavic groups were the preferred prey of slave traders. The obvious conflict involving Slavs is the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Both Russia and Ukraine are ethnically Slavic, as are secondary participants like Ukrainian supporter Poland and Russian ally Belarus. 2026 will be four years since the Russian invasion, and there's no solution in sight. Maybe a battlefield breakthrough or diplomatic coup is in the cards. Another Slavic flashpoint to watch? Serbia and its neighbors. The ashes of the former Yugoslavia still smolder, with tensions high between Serbia and Kosovo, and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina threatening to secede. There's more war talk in Century 7 Stanza 26, which reads, "'Fois' and galleys around seven ships. A mortal war will be let loose." A foist for landlubbers is an archaic type of sailing ship, a light, fast vessel suitable for shallow waters like those near coasts. A galley is a larger vessel driven by oarsmen. This line sounds like it's referring to a naval flashpoint, and the seas with the highest likelihood of seeing conflict are probably those around China. China wants the world to take the term South China Sea very literally, laying claim to a large swath of waters off its southern coast. But parts of those waters and the islets within them are claimed by Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei. The situation gets even murkier when you consider China's claim to all of Taiwan. And to make things worse, nearby Indonesia has separate naval disputes with Asia's biggest bully, China. To make its presence felt, China has built naval installations on reclaimed land within the South China Sea, which, by the way, is called the East Sea in Vietnam and the West Philippine Sea in the Philippines. They've already tried to stir up a territorial hornet's nest by sending massive fishing fleets into disputed territory, then overfishing the areas, dumping oil in their wake, and, well... "...some of them are turning off their transbounders and going dark for short periods, but what they're doing in those periods is unknown." Add to this explosive stew America's interest in Taiwan remaining independent, and the region looks like a time bomb. Century 8, verse 26, contains what may or may not be a classical reference. It reads, The bones of Cato, found in Barcelona, placed, discovered, the site found again, and ruined. Aside from the Cato and the Green Hornet, the third and fourth most famous Catos are two Roman statesmen, one the great-grandson of the other. Cato the Elder is best remembered for constantly nagging the Roman Senate to destroy Carthage, which it eventually did. And Cato the Younger was one of the Allied politicians who tried to preserve the Roman Republic against Julius Caesar's power grab. And, well, we all know how that turned out. "...do it." None of these Catos died in Spain, so there's no reason for their bones to be there, much less clearly labeled two millennia down the line. Still, strange things happen. But there is another possibility. Cato Networks is an Israeli network and internet security company with, like most tech companies in 2025, an emerging focus on AI technology. Go with me here. If we read bones as a poetic reference to tech infrastructure, we could look at this prophecy entirely differently. Given widespread backlash against Israel in the wake of the Gaza War, could someone — say, a Barcelona-based hacker with an agenda — crack open Cato's shields and ruin a whole bunch of websites? Or worse? The other option is this guy. Mr. Kalin, is Cato your middle name? A nickname. He should probably stay out of Spain. Just in case. If we play with numerology a little bit — and we're already playing with the prophecies of a long-dead mystic with an iffy track record, so let's go for it — we can add the digits of 2026 to get 10. Adding digits is a fairly common practice in numerology and opens up fun verses like this one from Century 1, verse 10. A coffin is put into the Vault of Iron, where seven children of the King are held. The ancestors and forbearers will come forth from the depths of Hell, lamenting to see thus dead the fruit of their line. Zombie kings? Ghost queens? Poltergeist princesses? Yes, please. After so many grim predictions of plague and war, an angry skeleton trying to keep a crown on its fleshless head might simply be entertaining. A likely crypt for a post-mortem royal uprising is the Capuchin Crypt in Vienna, which is full of dead Habsburgs. If you don't know the Habsburgs, it's because they're Europe's forgotten empire. They were at various points kings of Spain, Portugal, Hungary, and Bohemia, Holy Roman and Austrian emperors, and those are just the highlights. But eventually the Habsburgs took it on the chin and are nothing today. Also, as of 2023, the crypt is full, so perhaps it's time a claustrophobic undead emperor returned to walk the Earth again. Looking at Century 10, verse 10, we get a chilling description. Stained with murder and enormous adulteries, great enemy the entire human race. One who will be worse than his grandfather's uncles or fathers, in steel, fire, waters, bloody, and inhuman. In a textbook case of, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, there's never been a shortage of leaders stained with murder and adultery. But given the reference to grandfathers, uncles, or fathers, it's worth noting that some modern dictators are nepo-babies, and some have their heirs all picked out. The most famous hereditary dictatorship is probably the Kims of North Korea, where Kim Jong-un, grandson of the state's founder, does charming things like shoot his citizens with anti-aircraft guns. He has one child, a daughter, who may be groomed to succeed him, the way he was by his own father. If a government is willing to kill as many people as necessary to stay in power, it usually stays in power for a very long time. Then there's Equatorial Guinea, most recently in the news due to a plan for the U.S. to ship detained migrants to the small Spanish-speaking African state. In case you're wondering, yes, they're the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa. Anyway, they've been in the grip of Teodoro Obiang Ngema Mbasago ever since he overthrew his equally tyrannical uncle in 1979. Obiang appears to have tapped one of his sons to succeed him, though at 83 he's still clinging to power. And hey, let's not discount the Assads of Syria. Bashar, ophthalmologist and murderer, succeeded his father as strongman in 2000 and ruled until his 2024 overthrow and escape to Moscow. But he's got sons and brothers who may have eyes on a return to Damascus. Will one of these dastardly dynasties rock the world order in 2026? We'll soon find out. Or we won't. It'll turn out they were all meant for 2027 because of math. We'll investigate then, too.