Like the third movie before it, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is coming back to the big screen.
Per Empire, the film will celebrate its 40th birthday with a re-release in theaters—at time of writing, though, this is only for the U.K. We’ll wait to hear if it’ll come to other territories, but regardless, this marks its first time back in theaters since its original release on November 26, 1986. And to mark the occasion, it’s got a fancy new poster from Matt Ferguson, the artist who made posters for Star Wars’ recent re-releases.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is voyaging back to UK cinemas this September in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film & the 60th anniversary of Star Trek.
I’m so happy I got to make new art to celebrate the re-release. More details soon about special screenings & more! pic.twitter.com/gdQj2qj2yE
— Matt Ferguson (@Cakes_Comics) July 3, 2026
Directed by Leonard Nimoy—his second time helming one of these movies, preceded by Star Trek III: The Search for Spock—Voyage Home picks up after The Search for Spock, with the Enterprise officers living in exile after resurrecting their friend. During their trip back to Earth to face judgment from Starfleet Command, the crew has to save the planet from an alien probe by traveling back in time to find humpback whales that can communicate with it.
It’s talked about now as “the one with the whales,” but Star Trek IV did pretty well back when it came out. It had a positive reception from critics, fans, and non-fans, and made $133 million worldwide. It was also the first Trek movie that the Soviet Union could watch, and it got a screening in June 1987 by the World Wildlife Fund to celebrate a ban on whaling. Nimoy and co-writer Harve Bennett attended the screening, and Bennett said the film “played here the same way it did in the United States. It was a very pleasant surprise. The laughs were about the same in most places, except for one line, which got a bigger laugh here than in the States: ‘The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe.'”
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