1926

• January 1 – Ireland's first regular radio service, 2RN (later Radio Éireann), begins broadcasting.
• January 8 – Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud becomes the King of Hejaz
• January 12 – Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll premiere their radio program Sam 'n' Henry, in which the two white performers portrayed two black characters from Harlem looking for extra money during the Depression. It was a precursor to Gosden and Correll's more popular later program, Amos 'n' Andy.
• January 16 – BBC radio play about worker's revolution causes a panic in London
• January 26 – John Logie Baird demonstrates a mechanical television system.
• January 31 – British and Belgian troops leave Cologne
• February 9 – Flooding on London suburbs
• March 6 – The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon is destroyed by fire
• March 16 – Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts
• April 7 – Failed assassination attempt against Mussolini
• April 12 – By a vote of 45 to 41, the United States Senate unseats Iowa Senator Smith W. Brookhart and seats Daniel F. Steck, after Brookhart had already served for over one year.
• April 16 – Train crash in San Jose, Costa Rica – 178 dead
• April 21 – Princess Elizabeth born in London
• April 25 – Reza Khan is crowned Shah of Iran under the name "Pahlevi."

• Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger, Danish doctor, won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, (b. 1867) (d. 1928)

January

• January 1 - Claudio Villa, Italian singer (d. 1987)
• January 3 – George Martin, "5th Beatle": producer of The Beatles' records, later inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (d. 2016)
• January 11 – Ahmad Fuad Mohieddin, Prime Minister of Egypt (d. 1984)
• January 20 – Patricia Neal, American stage and film actress (d. 2010)
• January 21 – Steve Reeves, American actor and bodybuilder (d. 2000)
• January 27 - Ingrid Thulin, Swedish actress (d. 2004)
• January 29 – Franco Cerri, Italian jazz guitarist
• January 29 – Abdus Salam, Pakistani Nobel Prize in Physics winner (d. 1996)

February

• February 2 – Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, 20th President of France (d. 2020)
• February 7 - Konstantin Feoktistov, Russian cosmonaut (d. 2009)
• February 9 - Garret FitzGerald, Irish Taoiseach (d. 2011)
• February 11 – Paul Bocuse, French chef (d. 2018)
• February 11 – Leslie Nielsen, Canadian actor and comedian (d. 2010)
• February 16 - Margot Frank, sister of Anne Frank (d. 1945)
• February 16 – John Schlesinger, British movie director (d. 2003)
• February 20 - Richard Matheson, American author (d. 2013)

March

• March 2 – Murray Rothbard, American economist (d. 1995)
• March 6 – Andrzej Wajda, Polish film director (d. 2016)
• March 10 - Oscar Quitak, British actor
• March 16 – Jerry Lewis, American actor and comedian (d. 2017)
• March 17 – Siegfried Lenz, German author (d. 2014)
• March 24 – Dario Fo, Italian writer (d. 2016)
• March 27 – Clarence Henry, American boxer
• March 30 – Ingvar Kamprad, Swedish businessman (d. 2018)

April

• April 3 – Timothy Bateson, English actor (d. 2009)
• April 7 – James Garner, American actor (d. 2014)
• April 9 – Hugh Hefner, American publisher, founder of Playboy magazine (d. 2017)
• April 21 – Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms.
• April 28 – Harper Lee, American writer (d. 2016)
• April 30 – Cloris Leachman, American actress (d. 2021)

May

• May 8 – David Attenborough, British documentary movie maker, broadcaster and naturalist
• May 8 – Don Rickles, American stand-up comedian (d. 2017)
• May 25 – Claude Akins, American actor (d. 1994)
• May 26 – Miles Davis, American jazz trumpeter (d. 1991)
• May 29 – Abdoulaye Wade, 3rd President of Senegal

June

• June 1 – Marilyn Monroe, American actress, singer and model (d. 1962)
• June 3 – Allen Ginsberg, American poet and writer (d. 1997)
• June 16 – Efraín Ríos Montt, President of Guatemala (d. 2018)
• June 28 – Mel Brooks, American actor, screenwriter, movie director and movie producer

July

• July 4 – Alfredo Di Stéfano, Argentine-Spanish association football player (d. 2014)
• July 7 – Nuon Chea, Cambodian politician, Acting Prime Minister of Cambodia (d. 2019)
• July 10 – Fred Gwynne, American actor (d. 1993)
• July 12 – Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali, spouse of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
• July 15 – Leopoldo Galtieri, 44th President of Argentina (d. 2003)

August

• August 6 - Janet Asimov, American science fiction writer and psychoanalyst (d. 2019)
• August 13 – Fidel Castro, President of Cuba (d. 2016)
• August 15 – Konstantinos Stephanopoulos, President of Greece (d. 2016)
• August 17 – Jiang Zemin, 5th President of the People's Republic of China

September

• September 6 – Prince Claus of the Netherlands, husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (d. 2002)
• September 19 – Masatoshi Koshiba, Japanese physicist and Nobel Prize winner (d. 2020)
• September 26 – Julie London, American actress and singer (d. 2000)

October

• October 11 – Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk (d. 2022)
• October 15 - Michel Foucault, French philosopher (d. 1984)
• October 17 – Julie Adams, American actress (d. 2019)
• October 18 – Chuck Berry, American singer and songwriter (d. 2017)
• October 29 – Necmettin Erbakan, 23rd Prime Minister of Turkey (d. 2011)
• October 25 - Galina Vishnevskaya, Russian opera singer (d. 2012)
• October 26 – Robert Baker, American boxer (d. 2002)

November

• November 29 – Beji Caid Essebsi, 5th President and 18th Prime Minister of Tunisia (d. 2019)
• November 30 - Andrew W. Schally, Polish Nobel Prize in Medicine winner
• November 30 - Richard Crenna, American actor (d. 2003)

December

• December 9 - Raif Dizdarević, President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia

• January 3 – Emmet D. Boyle, American Governor of Nevada (b. 1879)
• January 4 – Margherita of Savoy, Queen of the Kingdom of Italy (b. 1851)
• February 15 – Piero Gobetti, Italian journalist (b. 1901)
• June 9 – Sanford Dole, American politician and businessman (b. 1844)
• August 23 – Rudolph Valentino, Italian actor (b. 1895)
• November 3 – Annie Oakley, American sharpshooter (b. 1860)
• December 6 – Claude Monet, French painter (b. 1840)
• December 29 - Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian writer (b. 1875)
• Iraj Mirza, Iranian poet (b. 1874)

• The Scarlet Letter