Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will be phased-out with a fifth season.
Paramount+ announced the series has been renewed for a fifth season which will consist of six episodes. The season will also be the show’s last.
“From the very beginning, Strange New Worlds set out to honor what Star Trek has always stood for — boundless curiosity, hope and the belief that a better future is possible,” said executive producers Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers and Alex Kurtzman in a joint statement. “We’re deeply grateful to Paramount+ for the chance to complete our five-season mission, just as we envisioned it, alongside our extraordinary cast and crew. And to the passionate fans who’ve boldly joined us on this journey — THANK YOU. With three more spectacular seasons ahead for you to see and enjoy, this adventure is far from over.”
Indeed, the announcement comes ahead of the show’s third season premiere on Thursday, July 17. So not only do fans have a new season this summer, but there is also a fourth season to come before the shortened fifth season final run (previous seasons — including the upcoming third and forth — have consisted of 10 episodes each). Season four is already in production, and season five will begin production later this year. There are no premiere dates for the remaining seasons as of yet, but one can expect Strange New Worlds will likely not conclude until 2027 or 2028.
Since the show is a prequel to The Original Series, fans have long expected Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and his crew to eventually catch up to the classic show’s timeline. This will presumably now occur in season five given the creative team has been given enough notice as to when the project will conclude. “Left to our own devices — which really means if Paramount will [let us] — we’ll keep going into the TOS era,” Goldsman told Collider. “And we know how. That’s the hope.”
The news comes amid Paramount Global engaging in cost cutting and announcing last August that it will reduce its U.S.-based workforce by 15 percent given the industry’s economic headwinds.
After launching a new era of heavily serialized Star Trek shows with 2017’s Star Trek: Discovery and 2020’s Star Trek: Picard, the producing team led by Kurtzman decided to return to the more traditional and exploration-based episodic storytelling of the 1966 original series with Strange New Worlds. The result has been the most-watched Paramount+ Trek TV series, and it was even nominated for Best Drama by the Critics Choice Awards in 2023.
But in February, the Paramount+ Trek team suffered a flop with the release of its effort to spin off Michelle Yeoh’s Discovery character Emperor Philippa Georgiou into a streaming film titled Star Trek: Section 31. The project received the worst critical and fan reviews of any Trek title (even a tad lower than 1989’s notorious Star Trek V: The Final Frontier).
Paramount+ has another series in the works: Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, from showrunner Noga Landau, which follows a new young class of Starfleet cadets as they train to be officers. The show stars Holly Hunter as a Starfleet captain who leads the Academy. Starfleet Academy wrapped filming in February and is expected to debut either later this year or early 2026. “It’s an incredibly optimistic show, an incredibly fun show; it’s a very funny show, and it’s a very emotional show,” Kurtzman told the L.A. Times. “I think these kids, in different ways, are going to represent what a lot of kids are feeling now.”
As for Strange New Worlds season three, Mount is joined on the bridge by Rebecca Romijn, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Celia Rose Gooding, Melissa Navia, Babs Olusanmokun and Martin Quinn. Guest stars this season include Rhys Darby, Patton Oswalt, Cillian O’Sullivan, Melanie Scrofano and Carol Kane, who returns as the quirky Lanthanite, Pelia. Paul Wesley also returns as Captain James T. Kirk.
The third season will pick up from the cliffhanger of season two as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise faces the violent alien race known as the Gorn. Paramount+ is teasing a new villain and promises “thrilling adventures of faith, duty, romance, comedy and mystery, with varying genres never before seen on any other Star Trek.”
