Exactly When Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 Hits Your Time Zone — Plus Episode Guide and Key Details

Stranger Things is doing the most for the holidays. Volume 2 of Season 5 drops on Christmas Day and it is basically the penultimate stop before the giant series finale lands on New Year’s Eve. Expect long episodes, gnarly stakes, and a heavy dose of goodbyes as the show barrels toward the end.

When to watch Volume 2

Netflix is rolling out three feature-length episodes on Wednesday, December 25, 2025. The drop hits globally at 5:00 PM PT / 8:00 PM ET. For everyone doing time zone math: US times are 8:00 PM ET, 7:00 PM CT, 6:00 PM MT, 5:00 PM PT, 4:00 PM AKST, and 3:00 PM HST; UK is 1:00 AM GMT on December 26; Central Europe is 2:00 AM CET on December 26; Japan and Korea are 10:00 AM JST/KST on December 26; India is 6:30 AM IST on December 26; Australia is 12:00 noon AEST on December 26. Netflix also says timings can shift a bit by region thanks to licensing weirdness, so keep an eye on your app and turn on notifications if you do not want to miss the instant it drops.

Then, one week later, the show closes out with a big, long series finale on Tuesday, December 31, 2025. Volume 2 picks up right where Volume 1 left off and leads straight into that last chapter.

How the three episodes break down

• Chapter Five: Shock Jock - 1 hour 8 minutes. Ross Duffer says this one starts exactly where Episode 4 ended. It is supposed to be the darkest and scariest the show has gone yet. It is also listed as being directed by Frank Darabont, which is a surprise flex if you have been following this creative team.
• Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz - 1 hour 15 minutes. Directed by Shawn Levy, longest of the batch, and apparently the one that made the Duffers cry every single time they watched it. So, yeah, prepare accordingly.
• Chapter Seven: The Bridge - 1 hour 6 minutes. Co-directed by the Duffers and Levy, pitched as the most emotional chapter of the season outside the finale.

Total runtime for Volume 2 is roughly 3 hours and 29 minutes, which makes it feel less like a normal TV drop and more like a three-film marathon.

Quick refresher on Volume 1

Volume 1 premiered November 26, 2025 with the first four episodes. Hawkins is a mess and the Upside Down is bleeding into reality more each day. The big twist: Will Byers is developing powers, which immediately puts him on the board for whatever fight is coming next.

Max is in brutal limbo - her body is in a Hawkins hospital, but her mind is trapped inside Vecna’s psychic realm. Vecna himself is stronger than ever and working a plan that requires kidnapping 12 kids. He has already taken Holly Wheeler and is hunting more.

Meanwhile, the military slaps a quarantine on Hawkins and starts hunting Eleven. They are using her sister Kali to track her down. Eleven, for her part, heads into the Upside Down to rescue Holly.

What the trailer is teasing

All those threads tie straight into Volume 2. The group is staring down choices that, if they make the wrong ones, could change the rules of their world and their friendships for good.

We see Steve, Dustin, Nancy, and Jonathan trekking through the Upside Down, and Dustin drops a line that everything they thought they knew about the place is wrong. That is a pretty big hint that the lore is about to evolve. Holly and Max appear together inside Vecna’s psychic web trying to break out. Eleven reaches out to Kali for help taking Vecna down. There are flashes of the military throwing live rounds, and Will dealing with the fallout of what he is becoming.

It is time for a new world.

That is Henry morphing into Vecna in the closing seconds of the trailer.

You die, I die.

Steve tells that to Dustin, and Dustin fires it right back. If you are keeping score at home, this show is still extremely good at weaponizing friendship.

Bottom line: Volume 2 looks heavy on spectacle, heavier on emotion, and likely to leave the board in a very unstable place before the finale rings in 2026. Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 lands December 25, 2025, only on Netflix, with the series finale following on December 31.