1826 (MDCCCXXVI) was a common yearstarting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendarand a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar, the 1826th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 826th year of the 2ndmillennium, the 26th year of the 19thcentury, and the 7th year of the 1820s decade. As of the start of 1826, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.

• The first photograph was taken.

• John Adams second president, and third president Thomas Jefferson both died same day Independence Day.

• January 12 – William Chapman Rawlston, banker and financier
• January 26 – Louis Favre, Swiss engineer (d. 1879)
• February 16 – Joseph Victor von Scheffel, German poet (d. 1886)
• February 16 – Julia Grant, First Lady of the United States (d. 1902)
• March 4 – Theodore Judah, railroad engineer (d. 1863)
• March 24 – Matilda Joslyn Gage, pioneering feminist (d. 1898)
• March 29 – Wilhelm Liebknecht, German journalist and politician (d. 1900)
• April 6 – Gustave Moreau, French painter (d. 1898)
• May 3 – King Charles XV of Sweden and Norway (d. 1872)
• May 4 – Frederic Edwin Church, American painter (b. 1900)
• June 24 – George Goyder, Surveyor-General of South Australia (d. 1898)
• July 4 – Stephen Foster, American songwriter and poet (d. 1864)
• September 17 – Bernhard Riemann, German mathematician (d. 1866)
• November 13 – Charles Frederick Worth, English couturier (d. 1895)
• November 24 – Carlo Collodi, Italian writer (d. 1890)

• July 4 – John Adams, 90, second President of the United States, heart failure (b. 1735)
• July 4 – Thomas Jefferson, 83, third President of the United States, uremia (b. 1743)

• Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color – Abigail Mott
• The Broken Heart – Catherine Gore
• Cinq-Mars – Alfred de Vigny
• Deeds of the Olden Time – Anne Hatton
• Gaston de Blondeville – Ann Radcliffe
• Granby – T.H. Lister
• Die Harzreise (The Heart's Journey) – Heinrich Heine
• Henry the Fourth of France – Alicia Lefanu
• Honor O'Hara – Anna Maria Porter
• The Last Man – Mary Shelley
• The Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
• Tales Round a Winter Hearth – Jane Porter & Anna Maria Porter
• Vivian Grey – Benjamin Disraeli
• Woodstock – Sir Walter Scott