National Popcorn Day Information and Deals
National Popcorn Day 2026
There are a lot of weird and unusual holidays throughout the year from National Wine Day to Talk Like a Pirate Day. While they aren’t as widely celebrated as St. Patrick’s Day or Halloween, it still offers a cool way to have a mini-celebration almost every day of the year. National Popcorn Day, Taking place every year on January 19, is a day best celebrated by heading to the movies and munching on some cheap or free popcorn from many theaters across the nation. There are lots of great movies out now, so why not take a boring Monday and turn it into an impromptu date night or a get together with friends.
Popcorn History
We live in an age of absolute convenience. There is very little we cannot have, with the simple press of a button. We have robot cars, get news the instant it happens and probably aren’t that far off from hopping on a rocket and heading into space. We can order snacks, including a choice of five brands of microwave popcorn and scroll through a choice of seemingly unlimited movies through our multiple streaming service subscriptions without putting on pants or leaving our couch. Even better, if you live in San Francisco, I just found out that you can actually get movie popcorn delivered to your door. We cam e across Kabuki Theater on Uber Eats and it is amazing. Besides popcorn and candy, you can also get pretzel bites, hot dogs, pizza and some of the best chicken tenders I ever had. If you just picked up a sweet 85 inch tv for Black Friday or as a gift for Christmas, now you can enjoy an amazing 4k Streaming movie at home with your own bag of AMC theaters freshly-popped, buttery popcorn. The convenience is incredible, don’t get me wrong. 13 year old me would be very jealous of 40 something me. There is no doubt about it.
While the whole “popcorn at home” thing is pretty sweet, there is something so uniquely intoxicating about the smell of freshly popping movie theater popcorn wafting through the theater, as you wait on line to purchase your ticket. There is something addictive about the taste of the popcorn that theaters serve. Even when we opt to Netflix and chill, on a movie night, we want to re-create the movie theater popcorn experience. 100 years ago, both film and pop-corn were relative new comers on the scene in the United States. Popcorn became a popular street food in the United States, following the creation of the Mobile-Steam Popcorn Popper created in 1893. It was a snack that became easily accessible at sporting events, circuses and street fairs and was considered a snack of the commoner, a street food.
During the silent film era, an excursion to the movie theater was an activity reserved for the educated, wealthy class. You had to be able to read to take in a silent film and the price was quite high. In 1927, the tail end of the silent film era, the entrance price was around 50 cents, more than $8 in today’s money. With the release of the first talkies came regal movie palaces, such as the late, great Fox Theater of San Francisco. They were large buildings with luxury furnishings, marble floors, plush carpets and elaborate chandeliers. They were places for the who’s who of society to see and be seen. The Fox was no exception. It was one of the grandest movie palaces constructed at that time, earning it the nick name, “The Last Word”. Eating inside the theater was prohibited, as it made a mess of the place and the noise of wrappers and crunching was thought to interfere with enjoyment of the films. Times have changed quite a bit.
During the early days of talkies, there were concession carts outside of the theaters, including the new comer on the scene, popcorn carts. The concessions operators made a nice profit, but the snacks purchased outside were still banned inside the theater. The fancy movie palaces of the day had coat check areas and patrons of the movie palaces were required to check their popcorn along with their coats.
Everything changed as the Great Depression took its toll on the theaters. Soon they were having trouble filling the seats. A theater manager in the mid-west decided to think outside of the box and his innovation, along with popcorn, saved the movie theaters. Some of the concessions stand owners were invited into the theater to sell pop-corn, drinks & candy. The ban on eating in the theater was lifted. And the price of a movie went from 50 cents to 15 cents. Talkies had fully replaced silent films, so you no longer had to be educated to understand what was happening on the big screen. It was a huge success. The movies became a destination for people during the great depression. Soon theater managers realized that concessions brought in more profits than the films themselves, as they could keep 100 percent of the profits from concessions and only 40% of the profits from the films. Third party vendors became a thing of the past and theater owners got into the concessions business. Today popcorn continues to bring in more profits than the films themselves and 40% of all movie goers get popcorn when at a movie theater. 80% of the patrons of movie theater concessions stands opt for popcorn.
Sugar rationing, during the great world wars meant that candy & soda were not easily available for sale, which made popcorn the main movie theater snack. Today it is almost impossible to think of movie snacks without thinking of popcorn.
Today is national popcorn day. Kick it old school and head to one of San Francisco’s Cinema’s for a show and a bag of authentic movie theater popcorn. Or pop in your favorite brand of microwave popcorn or get some real stuff from Uber Eats and binge your favorite films on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Apple TV. One thing is for sure, the intoxicating smell of freshly made popcorn is impossible to resist.
Popcorn Deals
Great Deals to Take Advantage of on National Popcorn Day January 19, 2026
Fandango
-Fandango and 30,000 cinemas across the nation have partnered up to offer discounts on popcorn and other special deals for National Popcorn Day. Check out the details here: Fandango National Popcorn Day
Alamo Draft House
Alamo will be offering a free bowl of popcorn for anyone that has a ticket and spends at least $5 on food & beverage.
Cinepolis
Cinepolis is offering popcorn deals for everyone. Loyalty Members receive a free medium popcorn with a $9 purchase. General guests can receive 50% off any size popcorn.
Cinemark
Cinemark is getting wild for popcorn day with a bring your own bucket deal. Bring any bucket (basically anything that can hold popcorn) and they will fill it up with popcorn (regular or kettle corn) for only $5. Bring a Lowe’s 5-gallon bucket and also get a free medium popcorn with the purchase of a medium fountain drink.
They are also offering some other fun stuff like a chance to win 10,000 Cinemark Movie rewards bonus points, a “catch the popcorn game” which can get you free popcorn for a whole year and 10% off online gift cards.
Regal
Want free popcorn at Regal? Simply dress up in costume (preferably movie-themed) and you will get a free large popcorn!
Interesting Facts
Popcorn was a breakfast food in the mid-1800’s? That’s right. It was served in a bowl with milk, the way we eat cold breakfast cereals today.
Americans consume more popcorn annually than any other nation, around 17 billion quarts a year.
Cracker Jack, a delightful salty sweet combination of caramel popcorn ad peanuts , are the 6th highest grossing ballpark snack. Cracker Jack outsell hamburgers, soft serve ice cream, Nachos and even, ball park franks annually.
Microwave popcorn was discovered before the official invention of the microwave oven. Dr. Percy Spencer a scientist working at Raytheon Corporation in 1946, working with a magnetron, conducted food experiments that concluded that food heating could be possible in a new way. Popcorn was one of the substances that was successfully cooked in this manner. So, in a way, the discovery of microwave popcorn led to the creation of microwave ovens.
The first commercial microwave popcorn available to the public was sold in 1982 by Pillsbury. Buttered microwave popcorn was initially made with real, dairy based butter and had to be refrigerated or frozen before using it.
There was once an “Act 1” microwave popcorn that pre-dated “Act II”, it has since become obsolete, as it was of the frozen variety.
Entrepreneur, Charles Cretors, invented the first popcorn popping machine, making it feasible for street vendors to offer America’a favorite snack at every circus, ball park and fair in America.
There was a time that popcorn was banned from movie theaters, along with other food and beverage. During the silent film era, 1895 to 1927, popcorn was strictly prohibited, even though street vendors were doing a tremendous business selling popcorn s a street food outside of Movie Palaces. Theater goers were forced to “check” their popcorn at the coat check before entering the theater.
