The year was ten days old when a small plane carrying the Colombian singer Yeison Jiménez went down, and by the end of January the list of names had grown to include a Hollywood comic, a rock guitarist, the man who drew Dilbert and the designer who gave the world “Valentino red”. Here are ten of the best-known people who died in January 2026, in the order they died.
1. Ahn Sung-ki (January 5, aged 74)
Ahn Sung-ki was a child actor in the 1950s and was still a leading man half a century later, which made him one of the few performers whose career covered almost the whole history of modern South Korean cinema. His films included Silmido, Two Cops and Radio Star. He had been treated for blood cancer. Korean newspapers called him “the nation’s actor”, a title nobody else was given in his lifetime.
2. Béla Tarr (January 6, aged 70)
The Hungarian director made nine feature films and then stopped, announcing his retirement after The Turin Horse won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in Berlin in 2011. His best-known work, Sátántangó, runs for 439 minutes and was written with the novelist László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature the year before Tarr died. The Hungarian Filmmakers’ Association said he died after a long illness. In retirement he taught film in Hungary, Germany and France.
3. Martin Chivers (January 7, aged 80)
Chivers scored goals for Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and England, and in 1972 he scored both goals in the first leg of the UEFA Cup final as Spurs beat Wolves to lift the trophy. A tall centre forward who was hard to knock off the ball, he became a Tottenham legend in an era when the club regularly won cup competitions. Spurs supporters of a certain age still name him first when asked about their best striker.
4. Glenn Hall (January 7, aged 94)
Glenn Hall played 502 consecutive games in goal in the NHL without a mask, a record for goaltenders that is not likely to be broken. The Hall of Famer played for the Detroit Red Wings, the Chicago Black Hawks, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 1961, and the St. Louis Blues. He was famous for being sick with nerves before games, and he still kept turning up.
5. Yeison Jiménez (January 10, aged 34)
Yeison Jiménez was one of the biggest names in música popular, the Colombian style of heartbreak songs played in roadside bars and stadiums. He died in a plane crash at 34, still at the height of his popularity, with an audience that had grown well beyond the bars where his kind of music was born. His death came on the same day as Bob Weir’s, below.
6. Bob Weir (January 10, aged 78)
Bob Weir joined the band that became the Grateful Dead in 1965, when he was 17, and spent the next three decades on the road next to Jerry Garcia. He sang lead on “Sugar Magnolia” and “One More Saturday Night”. His family said he died peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after beating cancer, and that underlying lung problems caused his death. He had been diagnosed the previous July and still played three nights at Golden Gate Park weeks later.
7. Scott Adams (January 13, aged 68)
Scott Adams turned his years as a cubicle worker into Dilbert, a comic strip that once ran in thousands of newspapers. In February 2023 most of those papers dropped it after racist remarks he made on a livestream, and his distributor followed. He kept publishing the strip online by subscription. Adams had announced in May 2025 that he had an aggressive prostate cancer. His former wife, Shelly Miles, read his farewell statement on his livestream.
8. Roger Allers (January 17, aged 76)
Roger Allers co-directed The Lion King with Rob Minkoff, and the 1994 film became one of the most successful animated films ever made. Before that he worked on story for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, and early in his career he helped develop Tron. A Disney spokesperson said he died at home in Santa Monica after a short illness.
9. Valentino Garavani (January 19, aged 93)
Valentino opened his fashion house in Rome in 1960 with his partner Giancarlo Giammetti and dressed Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor and Julia Roberts, whose 2001 Oscar gown came from his archive. His signature shade of red became a trademark. He retired from design in 2008. His foundation announced that he died at home in Rome. He lay in state at the foundation’s offices on Piazza Mignanelli before his funeral.
10. Catherine O’Hara (January 30, aged 71)
Catherine O’Hara started on the stage of The Second City in Toronto in 1974. Two generations later she was Kate McCallister screaming “Kevin!” in Home Alone, Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice and Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek, the part that won her an Emmy in 2020. Her manager confirmed her death on January 30. A representative said she died at home in Los Angeles after a brief illness.
Jiménez and Weir died on the same day, ten days into the year, at opposite ends of their careers: one in the busiest stretch of his life, the other having played his farewell shows months before.