When word first broke that Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD had been renewed for the 2025-26 season, the exciting news was met with some concerning reports. You see, when Deadline first reported the news of the One Chicago shows being renewed, it noted that the episode orders for the seasons were set to be shorter than the current season.
Considering Chicago Fire season 13, Chicago Med season 10, and Chicago PD season 12 each consisted of 22 episodes, this seemed to suggest the shows could be shifting to episode counts more in line with some of their competitors, which have been landing in the 18-20 episode range. Fortunately, that isn’t going to be the case for the One Chicago shows.
It turns out that the forthcoming seasons of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD will each consist of a total of 21 episodes. That will make the upcoming seasons some of the shortest seasons of the shows in a standard year – the shows have had shorter seasons during the pandemic years and also following the 2023 writers’ and actors’ union strikes.
While these seasons will be an episode shorter than the most recent seasons of the shows, 21-episode seasons are much better than seeing the episode counts drop to less than 20.
Yes, this will mean there will be one fewer episode next season, but we don’t anticipate the episode count will impact the show’s schedules too much. It simply means we’ll likely see Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD end their seasons earlier in May or simply take a longer break at some point in the season, such as during their winter break or sometime in the spring.
We’re also not concerned about the shorter episode count impacting the creative teams’ ability to tell compelling stories. 21 episodes will give the Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD writing teams plenty of time to map out the season’s key storylines, and we imagine it should also give them the chance to still work in some bottle episodes. These episodes may not always advance the season’s key storylines, but they can end up giving us some really fun episodes.
In a landscape where many shows are being reduced to 13 to 18 episode count seasons, we’ll happily accept a 21-episode season of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD. And who knows, that episode count is unconfirmed, so perhaps NBC might end up surprising us in the end with another 22-episode season.
Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD will return this fall on NBC!
