How many seasons of Law & Order are there?

Law & Order has aired 25 seasons so far.

How many episodes of Law & Order are there?

There are 544 episodes of Law & Order across 25 seasons.

Who created Law & Order?

Law & Order was created by Dick Wolf.

Where can I watch Law & Order?

Law & Order is available to stream on Hulu, Peacock Premium, YouTube TV, NBC, Philo, Peacock Premium Plus, Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Google Play Movies and Fandango At Home.

What is Law & Order's IMDb rating?

Law & Order holds an IMDb rating of 7.8/10 from 49,546 votes.

Crime

When Does Law & Order Season 26 Come Out? Is It Renewed?

“Truth matters.”

Law & Order Season 26 doesn't have an official release date yet. Based on the roughly 12-month gap between previous seasons, expect it around September 2026.

IMDb

7.8/10

Seasons

Episodes

544

Diagnostics

Network: NBC
Genres: Crime, Drama
First aired: 1990-09-13
Last aired: 2026-05-07
Runtime: —

Awards Won 6 Primetime Emmys. 50 wins & 207 nominations total

Predictive Logic Analysis

The core renewal signal here is NBC's reported intention to renew its flagship drama lineup, including the Law & Order franchise, ahead of the 2026-27 season. The Futon Critic data showing year-over-year viewership growth at the Season 25 premiere is exactly the kind of metric NBC uses to justify these pickups. Season 25 also closed with rising episode ratings (averaging 8.5 vs. 8.2 the prior season), which is an unusual positive trajectory for a show in its 25th year. That trajectory, combined with 23,771 active Trakt watchers and steady Wikipedia interest, points to a show holding its audience rather than eroding it.

NBC has a well-established pattern of renewing its procedural franchise shows in large blocks, often alongside Chicago Fire, PD, and SVU. There is no cancellation chatter in the trade press, no production shutdown news, and the show just aired its season finale on May 7, 2026, which means it is right in the normal renewal window. The negative signals in the renewal feed are actually about Law & Order: SVU's guest-star scandal, not about the flagship show itself, and both were resolved without broader fallout. The one mild concern is that no official pickup announcement has been confirmed in trade reporting yet, which is why this stays at likely rather than confirmed.

What is Law & Order about?

Law & Order is the original procedural, the template from which roughly half of American network television has been traced. It premiered in 1990, ran for twenty years, got cancelled, and then came back in 2022 as if it had never left. That return, now several seasons deep, features Hugh Dancy as prosecutor Nolan Price and Maura Tierney as a detective, with Tony Goldwyn more recently added as the DA. The revival is not quite the same animal as the original, but it is recognizably the same show, which is either reassuring or a little eerie depending on your tolerance for institutional continuity.

The format is famously rigid: first half is the police investigation, second half is the courtroom. No serialized storylines eating into your evening, no character backstory dumps, no cliffhangers requiring you to have watched last week. Each episode is a discrete unit, built around a crime that usually borrows something from a real news story. The tone is serious without being grim, procedurally minded without being dry, and the show has always been more interested in the machinery of the justice system than in the psychology of any individual character. That can feel thin if you want emotional investment, but it also means you can tune in cold and follow everything.

The revival has received a reasonably warm reception, particularly given how much the landscape had changed since the original run. Critics noted it as solid and functional rather than revelatory. Audiences have stayed with it, and the ratings have been healthy enough by modern broadcast standards. It does not have the cultural urgency of prestige cable crime drama, and it does not try to.

What distinguishes the current version from the dozens of procedurals it inspired is simply that it predates all of them and knows it. There is something almost deliberately unfashionable about Law & Order in 2024, a show that will give you a ripped-from-the-headlines plot, two commercial breaks, and a verdict, and then send you on your way. Maura Tierney is particularly good at making that economy feel like a feature rather than a limitation.

Created by Dick Wolf

Is Law & Order renewed or cancelled?

Working toward renewal

high

NBC publicly signaled renewal intent for its flagship drama block including Law & Order

Source

high

Season 25 premiere drew 6 million viewers across all platforms, up year-over-year

Source

medium

Season 25 episode ratings rising across the season (8.5 avg vs 8.2 prior season)

medium

NBC's consistent pattern of renewing procedural franchise shows in bulk

low

23,771 active Trakt watchers with steady momentum

low

IMDb rating of 7.8 with nearly 50,000 votes; 6 Primetime Emmy wins

low

Wikipedia pageview trend steady, no notable audience erosion signal

Working against it

medium

No official renewal announcement confirmed in trade press yet

Law & Order Season 26 Release Date

If NBC renews Law & Order for a Season 26 as part of its standard fall drama block, the most likely premiere window is September or October 2026, consistent with Season 25 premiering in late September 2025. NBC typically announces its fall schedule in May, so a formal renewal announcement could come within weeks of the Season 25 finale.

Production would likely begin in summer 2026 in New York. There is nothing in the current signals suggesting a delayed or shortened order, so a standard 22-episode run starting in the fall of 2026 is the reasonable baseline expectation.