Grey's Anatomy is returning this fall to ABC for its 23rd season, and the premiere date has just been revealed.
A lot of cast members have exited Grey's Anatomy over the years, including Sandra Oh, Katherine Heigl, Justin Chambers, T. R. Knight, and Patrick Dempsey. Kevin McKidd and Kim Raver joined their ranks this year when the Grey's Anatomy season 22 finale featured the departures of their characters Owen Hunt and Teddy Altman.
ABC has now announced that Grey's Anatomy season 23, sans Owen and Teddy, will premiere on Thursday, October 15 at 10 p.m. EDT.
This news was revealed as the network unveiled its premiere dates for the fall 2026 TV season, which kicks off with Monday Night Football on September 14, followed throughout the rest of the month by Dancing with the Stars, RJ Decker, 20/20, America's Funniest Home Videos, Scrubs ,and Shark Tank. Then October will see the return of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, Abbott Elementary, 9-1-1, 9-1-1: Nashville, and Grey's Anatomy.
The long-running medical drama will be the very last show this fall that ABC brings back to the air as it retains its Thursdays at 10 p.m. timeslot, which the show has held for the past two seasons. Before that, Grey's Anatomy aired at 9 p.m.
The Bachelor, Bachelor in Paradise, Celebrity Jeopardy (originally set for fall 2026 before being delayed), The Rookie, Will Trent, High Potential, and Shifting Gears won't return until 2027, along with Rookie spinoff The Rookie: North and a new Texas-based spinoff of Grey's Anatomy.
When Grey's Anatomy returns this fall, it will be the first season without Owen and Teddy in many years. The show has managed to overcome several cast departures, but McKidd and Raver were some of the longest-running actors in Grey's Anatomy history.
Only Chandra Wilson, James Pickens Jr., and Ellen Pompeo have been on longer than McKidd and Raver, and all three are original cast members. Pompeo was a full-time cast member until season 19, but she still makes appearances on Grey's Anatomy and serves as the show's narrator and an executive producer.
By contrast, McKidd joined in season 5, while Raver joined the following year and was a series regular before leaving. She then returned in a recurring capacity during season 14 before becoming a series regular once again until her most recent exit.
Pompeo, Wilson, Pickens Jr. Debbie Allen, Jason George, Caterina Scorsone, Camilla Luddington, Chris Carmack, Anthony Hill, Harry Shum Jr., Alexis Floyd, Niko Terho, Adelaide Kane, Trevor Jackson, and Jen Landon are all expected to return for Grey's Anatomy season 23.
Since it's an expensive show to make, Grey's Anatomy has been impacted by budget cuts, like many other shows. One way to deal with this issue is to have some cast members appear in fewer episodes, like Scorsone did last season, which was explained on-screen when her character Amelia Shepherd took a sabbatical.
Aside from Owen and Teddy's farewells, the Grey's Anatomy season 22 finale also featured a major bridge collapse, as well as Nick and Meredith's engagement.
The storylines for next season haven't been revealed, but Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital will have to find replacements for their vacated positions, and there are now less than three months until fans will find out how that unfolds.
Grey's Anatomy season 23 premieres Thursday, October 15 at 10 p.m. EDT on ABC.
20 Years Later, 'Grey's Anatomy' Needs To Stop Expanding
Once upon a time, the newest addition to the Grey's Anatomy roster felt like a special occasion, and there were various reasons for this, particularly the fact that someone could potentially die in increasingly ridiculous ways. But one of the biggest reasons was how well the show conveyed who the main characters were as individuals compared to virtually all other shows on network television.
Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl), and George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) built a strong connection with audiences throughout the first several seasons of the show. While all the medical calamities were very entertaining, they were ultimately worth watching only because they affected the lives of the central characters. As a result, when looking forward to ABC's Grey's Anatomy spin-off, it doesn't feel as exciting as it probably should.
The untitled series, co-created by Shonda Rhimes and current Grey’s showrunner Meg Marinis, will move the franchise to rural West Texas for the first time. Instead of centering on an established Grey’s character like Private Practice did with Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) or Station 19 did with Ben Warren (Jason George), this series will reportedly focus on an entirely new group of doctors.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Already Feels Like a Different Show Than the One Fans Fell in Love With
Katherine Heigl, TR Knight, and Sandra Oh in an episode of Grey's Anatomy
Grey’s Anatomy has survived longer than almost anyone expected. It can be quite hard for a network drama to last upwards of 20 seasons, especially when it’s based on a rotating cast. Nonetheless, the amount of time a show has been on air and its continuing imaginative flow differ vastly. The original magic of the show stemmed from the comedic representation of dysfunctional, yet loving relationships and genuine emotional stories. Longtime fans of the show think that, as a whole, it has changed since it first began airing. The medical cases mattered more, but they also played a part in these characters' lives. The show struck a balance between that and never losing sight of the interns trying to survive impossible hours while ruining each other’s lives in on-call rooms.
Nowadays, it just seems like Grey's is trying to redo all of that. The show still knows how to manufacture cliffhangers, complete with explosions, hostage situations, near-death experiences, and surprise pregnancies, but there’s a growing sense that the series is repeating emotional beats instead of building toward anything meaningful. That’s part of why so many fans point to earlier seasons as the show’s natural endpoint. Some argue that Season 10 would have been the right place to stop after Cristina’s departure, while others think the COVID-focused Season 17 could have worked as a surprisingly poignant conclusion. There are even viewers who believe Season 14’s wedding-centered finale, “All of Me,” gave several core characters the closest thing the series has ever had to a satisfying ending. Instead, Grey’s kept going. And now, years after Pompeo stepped back from being the show’s full-time lead, ABC is preparing to expand the universe even further.
‘Private Practice’ Worked Because It Had a Reason To Exist
The cast of Private Practice in a promotional image.
Private Practice made sense because Addison was one of the franchise’s most beloved characters. The show also had a clear identity separate from Grey’s Anatomy. It traded Seattle’s chaotic surgical energy for a more intimate, slower-paced character drama in Los Angeles. Whether viewers loved it or not, it justified its existence almost immediately. On the other hand, Station 19 had a harder time carving out its own personality, but at least it still felt connected to the larger Grey’s world through familiar characters and frequent crossovers.
This new series doesn’t have either of those components just yet — news did just break, but where will the connections come from? Right now, the pitch mostly sounds like “Grey’s, but make it Texas.” That may change once casting details and storylines emerge, but it was the first impression fans got. A franchise can only expand so many times before audiences start noticing the machinery behind it.
ABC is turning nearly all of its biggest scripted dramas into franchises. 9-1-1 now has Nashville, The Rookie is getting The Rookie: North. One of the only ones missing is Grey's. Network television has become obsessed with expandable universes because recognizable IP is safer than launching something original from scratch. Viewers and advertisers know the name, and the network already knows there’s a built-in audience, but television history is full of franchises that kept growing long after the creative spark faded.
The Bigger Problem Is What the Spinoff Says About ‘Grey’s Anatomy’
Dylan Young (Kyle Chandler) carefully guiding Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) through removing a bomb in Grey's Anatomy.
What makes the timing of this announcement especially strange is that Grey’s Anatomy itself is reportedly receiving reduced episode orders for budget reasons, so while the flagship series gets smaller, the franchise keeps getting bigger. ABC clearly still sees enormous value in Grey’s Anatomy as a brand. The ratings remain solid, and the streaming numbers are strong because viewers have been tuning in to the show for numerous reasons over the course of 20 years, including as a habit, out of loyalty or nostalgia, or through an emotional connection with the show's veteran characters.
However, a show can continue to survive, sometimes for a very long time, but not necessarily have a chance to evolve. The medical drama genre has taken on a whole new approach since Grey's Anatomy began airing in 2005. The success of HBO Max's The Pitt, among others, relies heavily on the relatable realism and the emotional exhaustion that many viewers experience after watching Grey's, as well as Grey's original "glossy" style appearing more and more like an extreme version of reality TV, while maintaining some of its original elements (which was a huge part of the show's original appeal).
Yet it is hard to ignore that we, as viewers, currently see Grey's generating momentum towards a franchise rather than creative urgency. This does not indicate that the new spin-off will undoubtedly be a failure; after 20 years, Grey's has proven its critics wrong. Texas could bring a refreshing change of pace to the series. Perhaps a new group of doctors will strike a similar chord with viewers, just as they once did with Meredith and Cristina or George and Izzie.
It would just be nice if Grey's Anatomy just ended as we know it and aired reruns of Seasons 1-10. So many people would be here for that.
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