Is ‘Futurama’ Ending Again? What Matt Groening’s Team Has Revealed About the Next Season

‘Futurama’ fans have learned to hold their breath every time renewal season rolls around, and the multiverse’s most cancellation prone cartoon is once again raising questions about how much longer the Planet Express crew has left. Season 13 arrived with all ten episodes dropping on Hulu at once on September 15, a notable shift from the weekly rollout used for the two previous seasons. That release strategy alone has fans wondering whether this is building toward something bigger.

The short answer is that ‘Futurama’ is not ending with Season 13, but the show’s own creative team has started talking openly about what could be its next series finale, and that conversation is happening sooner than some fans expected.

New Season Release Plans

Hulu renewed the animated comedy for two additional seasons back in November, giving it 20 more episodes split evenly between Season 13 and Season 14, each running ten episodes. That renewal came just weeks after Season 11 wrapped up, a sign that Hulu wanted to lock in more ‘Futurama’ before any gap could put the show back in cancellation limbo.

Season 14 has not yet been officially confirmed for a Hulu release date, though co-creator David X. Cohen has teased that new episodes are expected sometime in 2026. That timeline lines up with the idea that both seasons may have been in production together, which would explain why the creative team is already discussing how the next batch of episodes might close things out.

Nothing about the current renewal suggests Hulu is pulling the plug early. Hulu has pointed to the show’s Nielsen performance, noting that ‘Futurama’ ranked among the top 10 streaming originals of 2024, which is the kind of number that tends to keep a series alive rather than bury it.

Still, the framing from the people making the show has shifted from casual optimism to something more deliberate, and that shift is worth paying attention to.

David X. Cohen Teases Another Series Finale

At San Diego Comic Con, Cohen gave fans a look at where Season 14 might take Fry, and it doubles as a hint that the writers are treating it as a potential capstone. Cohen revealed that the next series finale will dig further into the backstory of Fry and his brother as kids, telling the panel they plan to work that gold mine a little more in 2026, a response to a fan question about exploring the gap between Fry’s cryogenic freeze in 1999 and the year 3000.

That kind of backstory focus tracks with how ‘Futurama’ has closed out its previous runs, often circling back to Fry’s emotional core rather than leaning purely on sci-fi spectacle. The framing from Comicbook.com’s report is that this could end up being the last season if Hulu does not order more episodes beyond the current 20 episode commitment, though nothing has been finalized either way.

This is not the first time ‘Futurama’ has approached an ending with this kind of narrative intentionality. The show has technically wrapped up four separate times across its history, with the episode Meanwhile from the Comedy Central run often cited as its most fitting send off, since it was written specifically as a potential series closer.

Cohen’s comments suggest the team is once again writing with an ending in mind, even if the door stays open for more seasons afterward.

The Cast Weighs in on the ‘Futurama’ Cancellation Fears

The actors behind ‘Futurama’ have their own complicated relationship with the c word, given how many times the show has come back from the dead. John DiMaggio told Cinemablend that the cast is currently working on their third season back and has a fourth lined up after that, expressing hope the show keeps going.

That confidence is tempered by years of hard experience. David Herman, who voices Scruffy among other characters, admitted he was too superstitious to say much about the show’s future, joking that he would jinx it. DiMaggio brushed off the concern, but the exchange captures how the cast still treats every renewal as something that could be the last.

During a separate Comic Con panel, the cast and producers openly joked about the show’s history of cancellations while teasing upcoming guest stars and storylines, treating the show’s on again off again existence almost as a running gag at this point. It is gallows humor born from genuine experience, since ‘Futurama’ has been cancelled and revived across four different networks and platforms.

That history is part of why fans take every hint from the creative team seriously, even lighthearted ones.

‘Futurama’s’ History of Cancellations and Comebacks

To understand why fans get anxious every renewal cycle, it helps to look at how many times ‘Futurama’ has actually ended. The series originally ran on Fox for four production seasons and 72 episodes between 1999 and 2003 before being cancelled. Fox never formally announced the cancellation, it simply did not order a fifth season, effectively ending the show’s first run.

Strong DVD sales and popularity in syndication led to four direct to video films between 2007 and 2009, which were later split into a fifth broadcast season, and that success carried the show to Comedy Central for two more seasons and 52 episodes from 2010 to 2013. Comedy Central then declined to renew the show again, ending its 140 episode run with a final episode that aired on September 4, 2013.

A full decade later, Hulu revived ‘Futurama’ with an initial 20 episode order announced in February 2022, bringing back the original voice cast including Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille, Maurice LaMarche, Lauren Tom and David Herman. That revival has now stretched into a fourth distinct era for the show, with Season 13 currently airing and Season 14 penciled in for next year.

Given that track record, it is no wonder fans read every quote from Cohen or the cast as a potential clue about the show’s fate.

For now, ‘Futurama’ is safe through Season 14, but with Cohen already teasing another possible finale built around Fry’s childhood, how do you think the Planet Express crew should go out if this really is the end this time.