1036

Year 1036 (MXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.

• Summer – In Naples, Duke Sergius IV abdicates and retires to a monastery; he is succeeded by his son John V.
• A Zirid expeditionary force invades Sicily and takes Palermo from the Normans, but fails to fully reconquer the island.

• February 5 – Edward the Confessor's younger brother Alfred Aetheling is blinded and murdered, in an apparent attempt to seize the throne of England from Harold I.

• June 13 – Caliph al-Zahir li-i'zaz Din Allah dies after a 16-year reign. He is succeeded by his 6-year-old son al-Mustansir as ruler of the Fatimid Caliphate. Vizier Ali ibn Ahmad al-Jarjara'i will guide the regency for the first few years.

• The Tangut script is devised by Yeli Renrong, for Emperor Jing Zong of Western Xia.

• May 15 – Emperor Go-Ichijō dies at the age of 27 after a 20-year reign. He is succeeded by his brother Go-Suzaku as the 69th emperor of Japan.

• Pope Benedict IX is briefly forced out of Rome, but returns with the help of the elder Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor.
• The Flower Sermon first appears in Buddhist literature.

• Anselm of Lucca (the Younger), Italian bishop (d. 1086)
• Fujiwara no Hiroko, Japanese empress (d. 1127)
• Igor Yaroslavich, prince of Smolensk (d. 1060)
• Wang Shen, Chinese painter and poet (d. 1093)

• February 5 – Alfred Aetheling, Anglo-Saxon prince
• March 17 – Gebhard II, bishop of Regensburg
• May 15 – Go-Ichijō, emperor of Japan (b. 1008)
• June 12 – Tedald (or Theobald), Italian bishop
• June 13 – al-Zahir li-i'zaz Din Allah, Fatimid caliph (b. 1005)
• August 25 – Pilgrim, archbishop of Cologne
• Abu Nasr Mansur, Persian mathematician (b. 960)
• Alric of Asti (or Adalric), Lombard bishop
• Berengar of Gascony, French nobleman
• Emilia of Gaeta, Italian duchess and regent
• Fujiwara no Ishi, Japanese empress (b. 999)
• Hárek of Tjøtta, Norwegian Viking chieftain
• Hisham III, Umayyad caliph of Córdoba (b. 973)