CBS has confirmed Oct. 6 as the night its expanded NCIS franchise returns, with three shows in the universe premiering new episodes back-to-back on the same Tuesday.
LL Cool J, who reprises Special Agent Sam Hanna in the new spinoff NCIS: NEW YORK, told PEOPLE he “never stepped out” of the NCIS world, calling Sam Hanna “a character that I’ve been living and breathing and just bringing to the world” for years.
NCIS Season 24, the series debut of NCIS: NEW YORK and NCIS: ORIGINS Season 3 will all air new episodes Oct. 6, ScreenRant reported, filling out the three-hour “Super Tuesday” block CBS has built around the franchise for years. NCIS airs at 8 p.m. ET/PT, while NCIS: NEW YORK takes over the 9 p.m. hour ORIGINS used to hold, pushing the Gibbs prequel back to 10 p.m., and the whole night lands a week earlier than the franchise’s last couple of October premieres.
Michael Weatherly returns to the flagship show for a season-long arc as Tony DiNozzo, while Mark Harmon steps back into ORIGINS full time as the elder version of Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Eric Christian Olsen, who spent all 14 seasons of NCIS: LOS ANGELES playing Marty Deeks, joins ORIGINS this season as an executive producer under his Cloud Nine Productions banner, CBR reported.
The franchise’s roots go back to 2003, when creators Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill spun NCIS off from JAG. More than two decades and half a dozen spinoffs later — LOS ANGELES, NEW ORLEANS, HAWAI’I, SYDNEY and now NEW YORK — it remains one of the most reliable brands on network television.
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NCIS: NEW YORK follows Hanna back to his hometown field office, where he partners with a “roguish agent,” played by Scott Caan, to defend one of the country’s busiest ports and cities.
“I’ve been kind of on and off doing the character all along, whether it was going to HAWAI’I, whether it was doing the mothership, you know, the original,” LL Cool J said at CBS Fest in April. “I’m just having fun.”
NCIS: SYDNEY, meanwhile, won’t return until 2027. That gives the franchise a breather after a season that saw four NCIS shows running at once for the first time in its history — the flagship, ORIGINS and SYDNEY on CBS, plus NCIS: TONY & ZIVA on Paramount+.
Movieguide® has tracked the franchise’s expansion closely, from the showrunner shakeup ahead of ORIGINS Season 3 to CBS’s broader fall 2026 schedule reveal. Whatever fans make of a crowded slate — and the comment sections suggest plenty of opinions — the appeal underneath it hasn’t changed much in two decades: ordinary people running toward danger so someone else doesn’t have to.
Families who want to watch can catch NCIS, NCIS: NEW YORK and NCIS: ORIGINS all premiering Oct. 6 on CBS, with new episodes streaming the next day on Paramount+.
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