The American animated science fiction sitcom Futurama, created and developed by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company, originally aired from March 28, 1999, to August 10, 2003 before being effectively cancelled. Starting in 2007, 20th Century Fox Television released four straight-to-DVD Futurama films. These films were subsequently reconfigured into four episodes each and were broadcast on four separate nights in 2008 and 2009 on Comedy Central as a fifth season.[1][2][3] This was followed by a sixth and seventh season airing from 2010 to 2013 when the show was cancelled again.[4][5] In February 2022, Hulu revived the series with a 20-episode order covering an eighth and ninth production season, each of which began airing on July 24, 2023, and July 29, 2024, respectively.[6][7][8] On November 2, 2023, Hulu renewed the show for a tenth and eleventh production season, consisting a total of 20 episodes,[9] which will air from 2026.[10][11]
The original 72-episode run of Futurama was produced as four seasons, however Fox broadcast the episodes out of the intended order, resulting in five aired seasons (though the first season was aired entirely in order).[12] As consequence, the show's continuity is disrupted by the broadcast order. For example, the episode "Fry and Leela's Big Fling" follows on from the ending of the previous episode in production order (which is "T.: The Terrestrial"); however, the episodes were not aired consecutively. Each of the show's 26-episode sixth and seventh seasons on Comedy Central was split into two 13-episode halves and broadcast effectively as four separate broadcast seasons over four years. Some of the episodes of those seasons were also aired out of production order, though episodes always aired within the half-season they were produced. Moreover, different regions and networks use different ordering for the episodes. Some countries broadcast the original 72 episodes in the four-season production-order. In the UK, the first 13 episodes of the series' sixth (production) season were released on DVD/BD as "season five".
As of August 26, 2024,[update] 156 episodes of Futurama have been released, currently in its ninth season.