At Last: ABC Reveals The Rookie Season 8 Premiere Date
ABC has set The Rookie Season 8 premiere date, sending the hit police procedural back on patrol after Season 7 wrapped in May 2025. Created by Alexi Hawley and debuting in 2018, the series is gearing up for its next chapter—here’s when it returns.
ABC finally slapped a date on The Rookie Season 8, and the show is doing something different this time: it is literally leaving Los Angeles. Yes, the LAPD drama is going global.
The basics
- Premiere date: January 6, 2026 on ABC
- Where to watch: New episodes on ABC, streaming on Hulu; past seasons are on Hulu too
- Creator: Alexi Hawley
- Season 7 timeline: Premiered January 2025, wrapped in May 2025
Season 8 goes international
ABC dropped a promo teasing an overseas operation with real stakes. Nathan Fillion is back as Officer John Nolan, and the footage has him stepping into a global mission aimed at terrorist targets. It is a big swing for a series that usually keeps its action on the streets of L.A., and the network is clearly leaning into the scale.
Cast tease: bigger, flashier, different
Jenna Dewan (who plays Bailey) recently told PureWow that the premiere was shot on location outside the U.S. and felt more like a feature than an episode of network TV. In her words:
I am really excited for the first episode because we go international. We have a very cool storyline that takes us into a new country. It felt like a film. The locations were gorgeous, and the action scenes were major. It is bigger for us and really exciting.
Translation: expect a noticeable bump in scope right out of the gate.
Fillion on the long run
Back in April, Nathan Fillion celebrated the renewal with a thank-you video, calling it rare and genuinely challenging to keep a show going this long. He credited fans sticking around for seven seasons as the reason Season 8 exists at all.
Quick refresher
The Rookie launched in October 2018, created by Alexi Hawley. The hook from day one: Nathan Fillion as Jonathan Nolan, the oldest rookie in the LAPD, navigating the job with a lot of experience in life and much less in uniform. Seven seasons in, that premise has stretched into international territory for Season 8. Plot details beyond the big first-episode swing are still under wraps, but the message is clear: they are aiming bigger this year.