Welcome to the Public Domain in 2025

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Image credit: Montage of materials moving into the public domain in 2025. Duke Law Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Celebrate the public domain with the Internet Archive in the following ways:
Register for our Public Domain Day celebrations on January 22 – both virtual and in-person.
Submit a short film to our Public Domain Film Remix contest.
Explore the works that have entered the public domain in 2025, below.
On January 1, 2025, we celebrate published works from 1929 and published sound recordings from 1924 entering the public domain! The passage of these works into the public domain celebrates our shared e-commerce photo editing heritage. The ability to breathe new life into long forgotten works, remix the most popular and enduring works of the time, and to better circulate the oddities we find in thrift stores, attics, and on random pockets of the internet are now freely available for us all.

While not at the same blockbuster level as 2024 with Steamboat Willie’s passage into the public domain, works from 1929 still inhabit strong cultural significance today. The works of 1929 continue to capture the Lost Generation’s voice, the rise of sound film, and the emerging modern moment of the 1920s.

Musical Compositions

Show tunes and Jazz dominated the year with many standards that we remember today first being published. While best known for the 1952 film of the same name, Singin’ in the Rain was first published in 1929 and serves as the inspiration for our remix contest this year. George Gershwin also officially published (and copyrighted) his suite An American in Paris following a premiere in late 1928.