How to find out when the next episode of a show comes out

Where episode air dates come from

Every air date starts as an announcement from a network or streaming service. Community databases then record it, and most tracking apps read from one of them. TMDB's TV editing guide, its contribution bible, says the site only supports the original air dates on the original network, and that a show's origin country is the production country where it first aired. A British drama watched in the United States is therefore listed under its British date.

Databases also refuse to guess. TMDB's guide tells editors that when an air date is unknown, it is best to leave the date blank. TVmaze lets an officially announced future episode carry the name TBA until its title is announced as well. An empty date usually means nothing has been announced yet, not that the show has ended.

What time new episodes go live

Streaming services release at a fixed hour more often than broadcast networks do. The Netflix Help Center says Netflix original shows and movies are typically released globally at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time, while titles that are not originals in your country appear at 12:00 a.m. local time. Netflix adds that it shows a launch time in the Coming Soon section or on the title's details page when a title launches at a specific time, and that weekly episodes or titles following their original broadcast can differ.

Midnight Pacific is 3 a.m. Eastern and usually 8 a.m. in London. For a few weeks each spring and autumn, when the United States and the United Kingdom change their clocks on different dates, the gap is an hour shorter and the release lands at 7 a.m. London time.

Other services follow their own clocks. In a 2023 forum thread, a TMDB moderator explained that the site treats Amazon Prime releases as going live at midnight GMT on the advertised date and Apple TV releases at midnight Irish time. For a US show, that means TMDB records the previous day, because that is when the episode actually becomes available in the United States.

Why the date can look a day off

Time zones are the usual reason. A release at midnight GMT reaches New York in the evening of the day before, so a US viewer and a European viewer can both be right about different dates for the same episode.

Late-night broadcasts are the other reason, and databases handle them differently. TVmaze's episode policy counts anything that starts at or after midnight but before 5:00 as part of the previous day, so an episode that starts at 00:35 early on a Tuesday is listed under Monday, in line with TV guides. That rule applies to broadcast shows and web channels that operate in a single country; for global web channels TVmaze stores no air time at all. TVmaze keeps a separate airstamp field with the technically correct date and time.

TMDB makes a different call for anime. Its guide notes that Japanese TV listings often run the clock past midnight, so a slot listed as 2017-05-12 26:00 is 2 a.m. the next day, and the correct TMDB air date is 2017-05-13. Two sites can therefore show the same episode one day apart without either being wrong.

Reading a show's status

On TMDB, Returning Series is the status used from the premiere to the very last episode. The guide says it means the show will return tomorrow, next week, in two months or in a year, and that every series is assumed to be returning until an official cancellation or end, or after an abnormally long hiatus. It does not mean a new season has been announced.

Ended means the series is over and the end was planned in advance. Cancelled means the network cancelled it, which TMDB describes as usually a sudden end to the story and production. In Production covers a series that has been greenlit or started production but has not been released. When a show you follow says Returning Series and has no upcoming dates, the honest answer to when the next episode comes out is that nobody has said yet.

Getting reminded instead of checking

Netflix lets you tap Remind Me on titles that show a future release date. According to its Help Center, your reminders appear in a Reminders You've Set row in My Netflix on TVs and mobile devices, and once the title is available you may get a notification on Netflix, an email, and the title added to My List. Netflix also warns that release dates may change because of delays in video production or in finalizing licensing contracts.

A streaming service can only remind you about its own catalogue. If the shows you follow are spread across several services, the alternatives are a reminder in each service or a tracker that watches every show on your list and tells you when a new episode is due.

Common mistakes when checking air dates

Reading the date without the hour. A Netflix original dated Friday goes live at midnight Pacific, which is already Friday morning in Europe and Friday afternoon in much of Asia.

Treating Returning Series as a renewal. On TMDB it only means the show has not been declared over.

Assuming one database is wrong. TMDB and TVmaze use different rules for late-night and streaming releases, so a one-day difference is often a rule, not an error.

Trusting a lookup from months ago. Netflix itself says release dates can change. ShowShelf keeps a calendar of upcoming episodes for the series on your shelf from TMDB air dates and sends a phone notification on the air date. Because those are original air dates, treat the reminder as the day to look, not a promise of the hour.

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