How long does it take to watch The Simpsons?

The Simpsons passed Gunsmoke in 2018 to become the longest-running American scripted primetime series, and it is still adding roughly 20 episodes a year. Watching it end to end takes longer than the show took to make its first four seasons. The arithmetic is unusually clean for a long-running show because the format never changed: it has been a 22-minute network half-hour since 1989, with no feature-length episodes and no streaming-era runtime creep. What has changed is the aspect ratio, which switched to widescreen in 2009 and makes a continuous watch visibly seam in the middle.

The numbers

Total

12 days 8 hours

In hours

296 hours

Non-stop

12.3 days without sleeping

Covers

808 episodes across 37 seasons, to February 2026

At a realistic pace

an episode a day

That works out as

about 808 days

What this assumes

808 episodes at 22 minutes each, the actual programme length of a US network half-hour once adverts are removed. Using the 30-minute broadcast slot instead would inflate the total by about 108 hours.

Episode count as of 15 February 2026, during season 37. The show is renewed through a planned 858 episodes, so this figure grows by roughly eight hours a year.

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