How many episodes of World War II with Tom Hanks are there going to be?
The HISTORY Channel sold this one as event television, and the running order backs it up: one hour per milestone, no compression, no filler episodes. The obvious comparison is The World at War, the 1973 Thames series Laurence Olivier narrated across 26 episodes.
Twenty episodes, each about an hour, roughly 20 hours in total, all in a single season. The run started on Memorial Day, Monday 25 May 2026, with a three-episode launch, then went weekly on Mondays at 8pm ET, and finished on 27 July 2026. Every episode has now aired.
The full running order
- 25 May 2026 — "The Beginning", "Blitz", and "Barbarossa" open the run with a three-episode block.
- 1 June — "Pearl Harbor" and "The War at Sea".
- 8 June — "Guadalcanal" and "Darkness Falls".
- 15 June — "Operation Torch" and "Secrets and Lies".
- 22 and 29 June — "Stalingrad" alone, then "Italy" and "Battle for the Skies".
- 6 and 13 July — "Overlord" and "Long Road to Tokyo", then "Home Front" and "Resistance".
- 20 and 27 July — "No Surrender" and "Last Days of the Reich", then "Endgame" and "Fallout" to close.
New episodes landed on the HISTORY app and HISTORY.com the day after broadcast. The series rolled out to 200 territories in more than 40 languages, reaching the UK, Asia, and Africa on 26 May.
Who made it
Hanks narrates all 20 and executive produces. It was developed with the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, which supplied research, archival footage, and veteran interviews; historian Jon Meacham is among the executive producers and appears on camera.
On why the launch was pinned to Memorial Day, Hanks told TIME in 2026 about a passage in Stephen Ambrose's D-Day describing a paratrooper killed by a shell before he could jump:
"Memorial Day is about that guy."
How it went down
Reviews split along a predictable line. Decider recommended it, arguing that even people who consider themselves well read on the war would find something new across 20 hours. The Guardian gave it three stars, with Jack Seale criticising a monotonous rhythm of academics and popular historians offering takes short on insight, and concluding it works best as a grounding for anyone whose knowledge is patchy.
Is there a second season?
None has been announced, and the structure doesn't obviously invite one — the run ends with "Fallout", the postwar reckoning. Twenty is the whole thing.
Hanks isn't short of documentary work regardless: NBC renewed The Americas, which he also narrates, for a second season in June 2026.
