2006

Centuries:	20th century · 21st century · 22nd century
Decades:	1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s
Years:	2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. It has been designated:

• The International Year of Deserts and Desertification
• The Rembrandt Year, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the birth of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Holland's greatest 17th-century painter.
• The Mozart Year, celebrating the 250th birthday of the Austrian composer Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Predicted and scheduled events

January-February

• January 1 - Deadline by which the small remainder of non-metric road distance signs in the Republic of Ireland must be changed to metric units.
• January 1 - Revaluation of the Azerbaijani manat.
• January 1 - Shock jock Howard Stern contract with Sirius satellite radio begins.
• January 1 - 30 cities across the Canadian Province of Quebec will be reconstituted, as the result of a referendum held June 20, 2004.
• January 1 - NJ Transit takes over Clocker service from Amtrak.
• January 11 - Planned launch date of New Horizons.
• January 15 - First round of the Finnish presidential election.
• January 25 - Palestinians vote in the Parliamentary Elections.
• January 27 - 250th Birthday of Wolfgang Mozart. Celebrations worldwide.
• January 29 -
  • Chinese New Year - The year of the Dog begins.
  • Second round (if needed) of the Finnish presidential election.
• January 31 - Anticipated retirement date of Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States.
• February 5 - Super Bowl XL to be held at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan.
• February 9 - Independence referendum in Serbia and Montenegro.
• February 10 to February 26 - XX Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
• February 15- The new upscale Aqua Condominiums in Long Beach, California are expected to begin moving in the new homeowners.
• February 28 - Mardi Gras, marking the end of Carnival, is celebrated.

March-June

• Early March - English-language Wikipedia to reach its 1,000,000th article (based on statistics)
• March 1 - Ash Wednesday.
• March 5 - 78th Academy Awards handed out in Hollywood, California.
• March 7 - Census night in Zealand.
• March 15 to March 26 - 2006 Commonwealth Games scheduled in Melbourne, Australia.
• March 18 - South Australia to vote in a Parliamentary State Election.
• March 29 - Total solar eclipse (Brazil, Mid Atlantic ocean, Sahara, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia)
  • Attack Submarines USS-Lapon to start to be deactivated. Los Angeles class submarines USS Indianapolis, USS-Birmingham, USS-New York City and USS-Atlanta also begin to be deactivated.
• March 31 - The BBC World Service is to end broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovenian and Thai by this date.
• April 1 to April 3 - NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four to be held at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• April 2 - WrestleMania 22 to be held at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois.
  • Former Connecticut governor John Rowland is scheduled to be released from the federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania.
• April 7 - EU citizens are now able to register .eu domain names, which replaced the old eu.int TLD on December 7 2005.
• April 14 to April 17 - Breakpoint 2006 will take place in Bingen.
• April 16 - Easter (Western).
• April 23 - Easter (Eastern) .
• April 29-30 - 2006 NFL Draft; Tenatively held at Madison Square Garden, in New York City
• May 4 - Local elections to be held across England.
• May 5 to May 21 - IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship at Riga, Latvia
• May 7 - Kentucky Derby 132
• May 16 - Statistics Canada to hold Census. [1]
• May 19 - The Da Vinci Code movie is released to movie theatres in the United States.
• May 20 - The final of the 51st Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Athens, Greece.
• May 26 - X-Men 3 is released to movie theatres in the United States.
• June 9 to July 9 - 18th Football World Cup scheduled in Germany.
• June 30 - Superman Returns is released to movie theatres in the United States.

July-December

• July 1 - Smaller 10-, 20-, and 50-cent coins will start circulating in New Zealand.
• July 2 - Presidential election of Mexico.
• July 29 to August 5 - World Congress of Esperanto in Florence, Italy.
• August 1 - Australian Bureau of Statistics to hold a census.
• August 9 - United States population is expected to top 300,000,000.
• August 13 to August 18 - The XVI International AIDS Conference will be held in Toronto, Canada.
• August 14 to August 25 - The 26th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague, Czech Republic.
• september 16 - October 2 - Oktoberfest, the world's largest festival is held in Munich, Germany
• September 17 - Sweden holds elections for the Riksdag.
• September 22 - Annular solar eclipse (South America, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean).
• September 30 - AFL Grand Final to take place.
• October 1 - 5-cent pieces will cease to be legal tender in New Zealand, and the larger 10-, 20-, and 50-cent piece will be recast into smaller coins.
• October 2 - general elections in Brazil. Federal sphere:Presidential elections, full renewal of the House of Representatives and renewal of one third of the Brazilian Senate (one of each state's three seats); State sphere: Gubernatorial elections, renewal of the State Legislative body (State Assembly) in all states.
• October 24 - NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft to Mercury makes the first of two Venus flybys.
• November 7 - US Mid-term Election which includes:
  • all 435 seats of the US House of Representatives (outlook)
  • 33 of the 100 seats in the US Senate (outlook)
  • Gubernatorial elections in 36 of the 50 states (outlook)
  • Many other state-wide offices in those states such as attorneys general and state auditors
• November 8 - Transit of Mercury.
• December 31 - Italy will officially cease analog television transmissions and will definitely switch to DTTV.

Unknown/undecided dates

• Sometime in January, the fifth season of 24 will begin airing on FOX.
• American punk band MxPx will start recording the next studio album, their follow-up to Panic.
• American alternative metal band TOOL will release their 4th album sometime this year.
• German power metal band Blind Guardian will be releasing their 10th album sometime during the spring.
• Australian band, Jet will release their 2nd album, follow up to their 2003 record, Get Born.
• Singer David Bowie will record and release a solo album featuring new material, follow-up to his 2003 record, Reality.
• Singer Whitney Houston will release her 11th album, follow up to her 2002 record, Just Whitney.
• Singer Janet Jackson will release her 10th album, follow up to her 2004 record Damita Jo.
• Singer Shania Twain will release her 5th studio album, follow up to her 2002 record Up!.
• Singer Celine Dion will release her 11th English language studio album, follow up to her 2004 record Miracle.
• The next title in the Final Fantasy series comes Final Fantasy XII. It's to be released on March 16, 2006 in Japan.
• The Starcraft-based FPS game, Starcraft: Ghost, will be released after a long delay.
• The next game in the Zelda series titled The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is going to be released after being delayed from December 2005 to an unknown date after March 2006. This will also mark the last major game for the Nintendo GameCube before the Nintendo Revolution is released.
• Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin has pledged in April 2005 to call the 39th Canadian federal election 30 days following the final report of the Commission of Inquiry on the Sponsorship Program expected by December 15, 2005.
• The other "Return to Flight" shuttle mission, STS-121 will be launched sometime in March.
• The third Chinese manned space mission Shenzhou 7 is scheduled with the first Chinese space walk ever to be performed.
• BSkyB launches the first High-definition television service in the United Kingdom.
• Finland plans to cease analog television broadcasts.
• Airbus plans to release into service Airbus A380, the biggest airliner in the world.
• Microsoft plans to release Windows Vista, previously called Longhorn, a computer operating system (as indicated by Bill Gates)
• The European Space Agency plans to launch the KEO space time capsule
• The Republic of Ireland is expected to hold a referendum on the European Constitution (although 2005 is possible, from statements made by minsters, 2006 is more likely).
• OpenOffice.org is expected to release the Aqua version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X.
• Manuel Noriega becomes eligible for parole.
• The Osaka Outer Loop Line and the eighth line of the Osaka City Subway are scheduled to open in Osaka, Japan.
• Wembley Stadium expected to open after renovations.
• Kobe Airport, a controversial offshore airport in Kobe, Japan, is scheduled to open for airline service in the Northern spring.
• World oil production peaks this year according to "The Peak Of World Oil Production And The Road To The Olduvai Gorge" by Richard C. Duncan.
• The new Nintendo Revolution will be released worldwide.
• Sin City 2 will be released this year.
• Nobel Son, starring Alan Rickman, Eliza Dushku, Bill Pullman, Danny DeVito and Peter Boyle will be released.
• The new Sony Playstation 3 will be released worldwide.
• Halo 3 is slated to be released by Microsoft to coincide with the Playstation 3 release.
• General election in Italy, probably for the first half of the year.
• Apple_Computer to release the first Macintosh with an Intel processor. The PowerPC switch should be completed sometime within this year.
• Al Jazeera will launch its new satellite service, Al Jazeera International, in Europe, Asia, and North America sometime in March.
• The new transit centre for Trolley Bus operations in Vancouver, Canada opens.
• The British rock and roll icon The Who will release their long-awaited new album in 24 years, entitled WHO2.
• My Chemical Romance's follow-up to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is expected to be released, it is rumored for a fall release.
• Estonia will adopt Euro as its currency rather than Estonian Kroon
• High Rise movie adaptation will be released this year.
• Movie Director Quentin Tarantino is expected to release either the war movie Inglorious Bastards or horror flick Grind House
• Naruto the Movie 3 is scheduled to be released in Japan some time durring late summer.
• Lemony Snicket will release the 13th book in his best-selling series A Series Of Unfortunate Events
• Mrs. Doubtfire 2 will be released in theaters. It will be the first sequel since 1993.
• Resident Evil: Afterlife will be released in theaters.
• Ubuntu Linux will be updated to Dapper Drake scheduled for April.
• The movie Eragon is scheduled to be released in theatres in December.
• A bridge linking Savannakhet, Laos, over the Mekong, to Mukdahan, Thailand is expected to be completed late in the year.
• Sometime in 2006, The newest expansion pack for The Sims 2 will come out. In this expansion pack, you can go to work with your sim.
• HAMMERLAND, a theme park in Gloucestershire, England will open, probably in late spring.

Fiction

• June 28 to June 29 - The events of the Doctor Who episodes Aliens of London and World War Three take place. In these episodes, an alien spacecraft crash-lands in the Thames River in London, sparking a national security crisis as a group of alien mercenaries take over the British government, killing the country's prime minister and attempting to spark a nuclear war. During these events the clock tower containing Big Ben and 10 Downing Street are destroyed.
• Around December of this year - The events of Doctor Who episode Boom Town take place in which work on a new nuclear power plant in Cardiff, Wales is launched; unbeknownst to the citizens, however, the plant has been designed to cause catastrophic environmental damage by a member of the same group of aliens that tried to start World War III earlier in the year.
• DC Comics will begin its 'One Year Later' event, rewriting most of their back stock of unused characters in the aftermath of the Infinite Crisis.
• The events of the third season of the Transformers cartoon take place.