1586
| Years: 1583 1584 1585 - 1586 - 1587 1588 1589 | |
| Decades: 1550s 1560s 1570s - 1580s - 1590s 1600s 1610s | |
| Centuries: 15th century - 16th century - 17th century | |
- 19th of November Henry Barrow, English Puritan and Separatist is imprisoned
- End of the reign of Emperor Ogimachi of Japan
- Emperor Go-Yozei ascends to the throne of Japan
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi becomes grand minister of Japan
- William Harrison becomes canon of Windsor
- Luis Barahona de Soto publishes Primera parte de la Angélica
- William Camden publishes Britannia
- Simon Stevin, a Dutch mathematician demonstrates that two objects of different weight fall with the same speed.
- Roanoke, the first English colony in the New World, is founded
- St. Augustine, Florida, and Santo Domingo in the modern day Dominican Republic are plundered and burned by English sea captain Sir Francis Drake
- Jacobus Gallus composes his motet O magnum mysterium
- Caesar Baronius publishes a new edition of Roman martyrology
- The first HMS Vanguard is launched in England
- Thomas Cavendish, English explorer, begins his circumnavigated of the globe.
- theologian Johann Valentin Andrea
- Axel Oxenstierna's half-brother, Gabriel Bengtsson
- Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey
- Cornelis van Poelenburgh, a Dutch painter of Italian landscapes
- Jacob Revius, poet who also worked also on the new bible translation known as the Statenbijbel
- January 25 - Lucas Cranach the Younger, a painter
- March 26 - Joan Naylor, mother of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork
- June 28 - Primoz Trubar, the author of the first printed book in Slovenian
- September 20 - Chidiock Tichborne, English conspirator and poet, executed
- October 17 - Sir Philip Sidney, English poet, courtier and soldier, known as a writer of sonnets, killed in the battle of Zutphen
- Sir Anthony Babington, executed for leading the Babington plot.
- Stephen Báthory King of Poland.
- Andrea Gabrieli, Italian composer
- Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma
- Joachim Ernest who united the whole of Anhalt under his rule
- Peter Symonds whose will creates a fund to create Peter Symonds College
- Theoleptus II, Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople