ABC has renewed AMERICAN IDOL for a landmark 25th season, the network confirmed Wednesday. It will be the singing competition’s tenth season on ABC, following 15 years on Fox before the reboot.
“Just stand out, right? Because I always ask myself, ‘Will I want to hear this person sing again,'” executive producer and showrunner Megan Michaels Wolflick told On The Red Carpet in June, describing what she looks for in a hopeful contestant. “You want to make sure that someone is bringing their ‘A’ game,” she added.
The renewal arrives with a full audition calendar attached. “Idol Across America,” the show’s virtual, nationwide talent search, kicks off Tuesday, Aug. 25, with a VIP Day capped at the first 250 registered singers, then rolls through regional and open-call dates in every state and Washington, D.C. through late September. Contestants must be at least 15 years old by Feb. 15, 2027, and international hopefuls remain eligible to apply.
Movieguide® flagged the renewal buzz back in May, when AMERICAN IDOL’s own Instagram account posted that “our search is on for #TheNextIdol” weeks before ABC made anything official. One hopeful commented that she felt too old to try out, since the show still caps entries at 29. Wednesday’s announcement did not mention any change to that rule.
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Season 25 will air on ABC next year, then move to Disney+ and Hulu the following day, with live rounds streaming in real time on Disney+ once the competition reaches its performance phase. The series remains a production of Fremantle and 19 Entertainment, a Sony Pictures Television company. ABC has not yet confirmed whether host Ryan Seacrest or judges Luke Bryan, Lionel Richie and Carrie Underwood will return, though deals for all four are reportedly still being negotiated.
The vote of confidence is not exactly a shock. Season 24 delivered AMERICAN IDOL’s biggest premiere audience in four years, and its finale became the most-talked-about reality broadcast of the year so far, generating 3.2 million social engagements, according to ABC’s own numbers.
That finale, back on May 11, crowned Missouri singer and mother of three Hannah Harper over runner-up Jordan McCullough and third-place finisher Keyla Richardson. Harper closed the three-hour broadcast in tears with a worship rendition of Chris Tomlin’s “At the Cross (Love Ran Red),” then posted on Instagram that she was “beyond thankful for the doors the Lord has opened.”
Movieguide® has followed AMERICAN IDOL’s contestants for years, and Harper’s season gave the show one of its more openly faith-forward runs. She wrote her breakout audition song, “String Cheese,” during a hard stretch of postpartum depression, and she told Christian Post that she wanted people to know “you’re never too far gone” — that God can meet anyone, anywhere, no matter their walk of life. Judge Carrie Underwood, a believer herself, cried through that first audition and kept championing Harper straight through the finale.
None of that guarantees Season 25 will follow the same script. ABC has not named a single contestant, and the judging panel itself is unsettled. But the pattern is hard to miss: a show built on searching for undiscovered voices keeps landing, season after season, on people willing to say plainly what they believe. Twenty-five years in, AMERICAN IDOL still seems to know that’s part of what makes an audience lean in.
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