With the beginning of 2025, paintings by the likes of Henri Matisse, Frida Kahlo, and André Derain are shedding their copyright protections and entering the public domain in the United States, alongside beloved cartoon characters Popeye and Tintin.

All works by Matisse, Derain, and Kahlo—who died in 1954—are now in the public domain in the United States and countries where the works of individual authorship generally shed their protections after “life plus 70 years,” which includes the U.K., most of the European Union and South America. (Works by creators who died in 1974 are now copyright-free in most of Africa and Asia, where protections stand for a term of “life plus 50 years.”)

Henri Matisse and his ‘cut-outs’ at his studio in Nice. Photo by Raph Gatti/AFP via Getty Images.

But, in the U.S., commissioned works including books and other media published between 1924 and 1978 enter the public domain 95 years after they were released, meaning that works published in 1929 also lose their copyright protections this year.

That means Tintin and other characters from the series “The Adventures of Tintin,” created by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi under the pen name Hergé in 1929, is entering the public domain.

That might be of particular noteworthiness to artist Xavier Marabout. Last year, he was subject to legal action for his parodies of the cartoon character. With Tintin characters entering the public domain, it is unlikely Marabout would now face such challenges if he made and sold his works in the U.S.

Hergé reading a Tintin comic in Brussels, Belgium, 1982. Photo: Bernard Charlon / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

Popeye, the spinach-loving sailor man, debuted in E.C. Segar’s comic strip Thimble Theatre in 1929. He joins famous characters such as Winnie-the-Pooh and Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse in the public domain. Pooh Bear saw his copyright expire at the start of 2022, and last year marked the much-heralded public domain entrance of Walt Disney Studios’s animated short films Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy, where Mickey and Minnie made their first appearances. More works depicting Mickey Mouse, including The Karnival Kid, also entered the public domain with the start of 2025.

This means a person could use these character as they were originally depicted to recreate or adapt the copyright-free stories in which they appeared, or to create new stories, parodies, artworks, and more. But because the trademarks do not expire and are still active, trademarked names like “Mickey Mouse” or “Popeye” cannot be used in ways that cause confusion to the company’s brands or marketing products. (Trademarks relating to Popeye’s name and likeness are held by King Features Syndicate, which publishes some 150 comic strips to newspapers worldwide.)

Later this month, Popeye will receive its first horror-film public domain treatment with the release of Popeye the Slayer Man, starring Jason Robert Stephens as the titular character. In it, a group of friends sneaks into an abandoned spinach canning factory where the Sailor Man haunts them.

Movies from 1929 now in the public domain include Alfred Hitchcock’s first talking film, Blackmail, and the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts, which the first starring movie roles for Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, as well as their younger brother Zeppo.

This year also marks a significant year for literature entering the public domain, from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, John Steinbeck’s A Cup of Gold, and Virginia Woolf’s feminist essay “A Room of One’s Own.” The English-language translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front also entered the public domain.

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929). Photo courtesy of Scribner.

This cultural phenomenon is celebrated as Public Domain Day at the start of each new year and is revered by creatives because it largely gives free reign for the use of works that would have previously been considered a copyright violation.

It is a day that has particular importance for Hollywood, authors, and artists seeking to adapt beloved characters into new works.