Glee Is Officially Coming Back: Disney+ and Hulu Order a Reboot 11 Years After McKinley High Closed

Don't stop believin' — because this time it is actually happening. Glee is officially coming back. The reboot was confirmed on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, through the show's official Instagram account, and it comes with the only kind of announcement that counts in 2026: a series order. Disney+ and Hulu have ordered the new Glee, produced by 20th Television, eleven years after the original signed off from William McKinley High and left a generation of theater kids humming Journey covers in their cars.

If you grew up with this show, you already know why this is not just another reboot announcement. Glee was a genuine phenomenon — a musical comedy-drama about a ragtag high school show choir in Lima, Ohio, that somehow became one of the defining pop-culture events of its era. And if you did not grow up with it, the next few months of your group chats are about to be very confusing. Either way, McKinley High is reopening.

The original creators wrote it themselves

Here is the detail that separates this from a cash-in: the script comes from the people who built the show in the first place. Co-creators Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan wrote the reboot script — the same trio who wrote the original's first two seasons, widely remembered as its sharpest and funniest run. This is not a stranger's cover version of Glee. It is the original band getting back in the studio.

Murphy has been leaving breadcrumbs for months. In September, he told Entertainment Tonight that he had "just finished the script an hour ago" — and, more tantalizingly, that he had already contacted around 10 original cast members about it. They were enthusiastic, he said, though at that point they had not yet read the script. A month earlier, in August, he had been more coy with The Hollywood Reporter, saying he was "considering" a return. His reasoning then is the reasoning behind the whole project now: "For many, many people now in their 20s, they grew up on that show and it meant something to them."

He is not wrong. The original Glee ran on Fox from 2009 to 2015, six seasons of show-choir competitions, slushies to the face and an improbable number of charting singles. It made stars, it started arguments, it put a cappella arrangements of pop hits into the mainstream, and for a lot of viewers it was the first show that treated being the weird kid in the choir room as a superpower instead of a punchline.

So who is coming back? Nobody is saying — yet

Let's be precise about what we do not know, because the internet will not be: no cast list has been revealed, and no story details have been announced. We do not know whether the reboot returns to McKinley with a new class, catches up with the original graduates, or does some gleeful combination of both. What we have instead is a trail of cast members talking — on the record — like people who would pick up the phone.

Start with Lea Michele, the original's Rachel Berry. In September, she told E! News that she would follow Murphy anywhere — which, given that Murphy wrote Rachel Berry for her, is about as close to a yes as an actor can give before the contracts exist. Jane Lynch, whose Sue Sylvester remains one of television's great comic villains, told People back in 2024 that she would "absolutely" revisit the character. Somewhere, a tracksuit is being pressed.

The most thoughtful answer came from Kevin McHale, who played Artie Abrams. He told Insider in 2022 that he was not sure he should play Artie again — but that he would play a different character. It is an honest, complicated answer, and it hints at the creative puzzle this reboot has to solve: how to honor a cast and a set of characters that meant everything to people, in a story that also has to work in 2026 and beyond.

The full original ensemble remains one of the most stacked casts a network show ever assembled: Michele, Cory Monteith, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera, Heather Morris, Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, Harry Shum Jr. and Chord Overstreet, among others. Any honest telling of this story also notes the absences that can never be filled — Monteith and Rivera are gone, and whatever this reboot becomes, it will be made in their shadow as much as in their honor. Fans will feel that. You can be certain the creators feel it too.

Why Disney+ and Hulu make sense

The home tells you a lot about the intention. All six seasons of the original Glee already stream on Hulu and Disney+, which means the audience this reboot is aimed at — the twenty- and thirty-somethings who grew up on it, plus the new viewers who keep discovering it — is already there, already pressing play. A series order from both services, with 20th Television producing, puts the reboot on the same shelf as the original from day one. Finish your rewatch, roll straight into the new chapter. That is not an accident; that is a strategy.

It also means the bar is high. A reboot of a beloved musical has to sing — literally — and it has to justify itself to an audience that can pull up the original's best episodes in thirty seconds and compare. The involvement of Murphy, Falchuk and Brennan is the strongest possible answer to that skepticism. So is the timing: eleven years is long enough for nostalgia to ripen into genuine demand, and for a whole new class of high schoolers to be ready for a choir room of their own.

What happens next

For now: watch the show's official channels, because that is where this was announced and where casting news will almost certainly land first. Expect the cast question to dominate every entertainment headline until Disney+ and Hulu answer it. Expect the original soundtrack albums to climb the streaming charts again this week, because they always do when this show re-enters the conversation.

Mostly, though, take the win. A beloved show is coming back with its original creators holding the pen and a real series order behind it — not a reunion special, not a rumor, a series. McKinley High's doors open again. Warm up those vocal cords.

Previously covers television comebacks and streaming orders daily — browse the latest in the news feed, catch up with the original six seasons on our browse hub, and find more to watch on the watch page.