All the Simpsons seasons: the complete timeline

THE SEASON RECORD

With the premiere of its twenty-first season, the show passed Gunsmoke's twenty seasons and became the longest-running American prime-time fiction in number of seasons. Season 20 had equalled the western the previous year.

THE EPISODE RECORD

Nine years later, "Forgive and Regret" became the 636th episode and passed Gunsmoke's 635. From then on the show held both records. At the end of season 37, it has 809, that is, 174 more than the western.

THE AUDIENCE PEAK

"Bart Gets an 'F'" drew around 33.6 million American viewers, at the time the biggest score in the history of the Fox network. Thirty-five years later, the figure remains out of reach: the show now runs at around two million on air.

THE AWARDS

37 Primetime Emmy Awards, including 12 in the outstanding animated programme (under one hour) category alone — the highest total of any animated series. Plus 34 Annie Awards and two Peabodys, the show being the first animated series to receive one.

THE STAR

The Simpson family received its star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1999, Time magazine had already named the show the best television series of the 20th century, and included Bart in its list of the hundred most influential people of the century — the only fictional character in the selection.

WHAT IT HAS NEVER HAD

The Simpsons has never been nominated in the outstanding comedy series category at the Emmy Awards, although it was submitted there in 1993 and 1994. Animated programmes have their own category, and the show has never left it.

James L. Brooks, Matt Groening & Sam Simon

The founding trio. Groening brings the characters and the point of view, Brooks the legitimacy of an Oscar-winning producer and protection from the network, Sam Simon the structure: he is the one who builds the writers' room and imposes the narrative rigour of the early seasons. Simon left the production in 1993 while keeping, by contract, his executive producer credit until his death in 2015 — he is still credited today.

Al Jean & Mike Reiss

The duo that makes the show take off critically. Under their direction, the writing gets denser, Homer takes the centre of the story and the supporting characters gain substance. Seasons 3 and 4 concentrate an implausible number of episodes considered high points, from the monorail to the nuclear plant strike, by way of Mr. Burns' softball match.

David Mirkin

He pushes the cursor towards the absurd and unapologetic surrealism, while taking care over the emotional endings. Homer goes into space, the show allows itself digressions of several minutes, and the pace of the gags accelerates markedly. He is also the one who orchestrates the end-of-season-6 cliffhanger, unheard of for an animated series at the time.

Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein

The two showrunners most attached to supporting characters and to experiments with format. They sign off episodes built entirely on a mosaic of sketches, give a genuine tragedy to a passing character and let the show mock itself. Many fans consider season 8 the last of the great golden age.

Mike Scully

He inherits a show at its peak and takes it towards a faster, more physical humour, with often extreme plots. It is the period most debated by the fandom: the one where the "Homer is too stupid" reproach appears. It is also the one that produces "Behind the Laughter", one of the show's most successful pieces of self-parody.

Al Jean, alone at the helm

Al Jean returns in 2001, for a reign of a length unique on television: twenty consecutive seasons, from 13 to 32. He stabilises the tone, restores part of the family tenderness and steers the show through the film, the move to HD, the Disney takeover and the arrival of streaming. It would be hard to be more continuous.

Al Jean & Matt Selman

From season 33, Matt Selman shares the post with Al Jean and signs off the most formally daring episodes: the double "A Serious Flanders", the musicals, the episodes that interrupt themselves. Five seasons of joint direction, during which the show changes rhythm without changing boss.

Matt Selman

In the autumn of 2025, Al Jean announced that he was leaving the chair after twenty-five years in total; his last episode as showrunner was broadcast on 2 November 2025. Selman remains alone at the helm and signs season 38 as sole showrunner. It is the first real generational handover since the early 2000s.

The title sequence

Present from the first episode, completely remade in 2009 for the move to high definition. Its long version, its short version and its end-of-season variants are often enough to place a decade. The music is by Danny Elfman.

The blackboard gag

Bart writes a repeated punishment on the blackboard during the credits. The sentence changes every episode, except when the title sequence is shortened — which happens more and more often. Some have become period documents in their own right.

The couch gag

The family arrives in front of its television and something goes wrong. Its original function is prosaic: to adjust the timing of an episode that is too short or too long. From the 2010s, it becomes a mini-short entrusted to guests — Banksy in 2010, Guillermo del Toro, Don Hertzfeldt, Sylvain Chomet, Bill Plympton. It is the only ritual that has grown longer instead of shrinking.

The Treehouse of Horror

Every season since the second contains its Halloween anthology in three segments, outside continuity, where anyone can die. There has been one per season without exception, and sometimes two since season 36.

The guest stars

Hundreds of celebrities have passed through Springfield. A few have created permanent characters: Kelsey Grammer as Sideshow Bob from 1990, Danny DeVito as Homer's half-brother, Glenn Close as Homer's mother, Albert Brooks as Hank Scorpio. The vast majority make only one appearance.

The song numbers

The show has written its own musical numbers since its early seasons, and has never stopped: the Moe's bar song in 1991, the monorail one in 1993, the bin men's in 1998, the big closing number of "Poorhouse Rock" in 2022. It is one of the rare areas where the recent era frankly rivals the golden age.

Canal+

THE PIONEER CHANNEL

The Simpsons arrived in France on Canal+ on 15 December 1990 at 7.05 pm, almost a year to the day after the first American episode. The scrambled channel broadcast the new episodes unencrypted, first on Saturdays then on weekdays, and kept exclusivity on new seasons until 2012 before stopping on 6 April 2016. It is by far the show's historic broadcaster in France.

France 3 · Les Minikeums

THE MOVE TO FREE-TO-AIR

From 10 January 1993, the show was also broadcast in the children's programme Les Minikeums on France 3, every Sunday at 5.30 pm with seasons 1 and 2, then daily in the summer of 1994 and with season 3 in 1995. The programme left the channel in 1996. That is where many French viewers without a Canal+ subscription discovered the yellow family — a curious scheduling context for a show its creators never intended for children alone.

W9

THE GREAT RERUN PERIOD

From 2 January 2006 until 5 December 2020, W9 broadcast the show almost daily, in access prime time and at weekends in the late morning. It drew up to 1.1 million viewers in 2010. It is the channel that did most to establish The Simpsons as a late-afternoon appointment in France. M6 also scheduled the show between 2007 and 2008.

Canal+ Family

THE HISTORIC BROADCASTER'S RELAY

From 20 October 2007 to 14 March 2017, the family offshoot of Canal+ picked the show up in reruns, in parallel with the main channel. Almost ten years of presence, in the shadow of the historic broadcaster.

6ter, Série Club and MCM

THE LAST BROADCAST RELAYS

6ter took over the torch from 30 June 2017 to 12 August 2022, Série Club broadcast the show from 15 July 2019 to 31 December 2022, and MCM from 31 May 2021 to the end of December 2022. These successive moves explain why so many French viewers feel they have seen the show "all over the place" without ever following the seasons in order.

Disney+ France

THE COMPLETE CATALOGUE

Disney+ arrived in France on 7 April 2020, two weeks after the rest of Europe, and became the only address where the seasons are available complete and in order. It is also where the exclusive episodes are, the ones that never go out on television. A setting there restores the original 4:3 format.

The French dub

THE SAME VOICES FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS

Philippe Peythieu has voiced Homer since 1990 and Véronique Augereau holds Marge; the two actors met through the show and married in 2001. Aurélia Bruno lends her voice to Lisa. Bart was first voiced by Joëlle Guigui, then by Nathalie Bienaimé from season 23. That continuity of casting is as rare as the original version's.

The complete run is on Disney+

Since 7 April 2020 in France, Disney+ has offered the thirty-seven seasons, plus the exclusive episodes commissioned by the platform since season 36 that television does not broadcast. It is the only complete, ordered offer: the French broadcast channels all dropped the show between 2020 and 2022.

The 4:3 format, to be switched back on

When Disney+ launched in November 2019, the first nineteen seasons were offered only recropped to 16:9, which cut off whole visual gags placed in the corners of the frame. After an outcry from fans, the platform restored the original 4:3 format on 28 May 2020, as an option. You have to go and find it in the player settings: it is not the default everywhere.

One missing episode

"Stark Raving Dad", the opening episode of season 3 in which Michael Jackson voices a psychiatric hospital patient, was withdrawn from circulation in March 2019 by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks and Al Jean, after the broadcast of the documentary Leaving Neverland. It no longer appears on Disney+ or in reruns: season 3 therefore starts there at the second episode.

The DVDs, an interrupted story

The first twenty seasons came out on DVD, the twentieth also on Blu-ray in 2010. The production announced the end of physical editions in April 2015, before reversing its decision in 2017: season 19 finally came out on 3 December 2019. Beyond that, nothing. It is streaming or nothing.