WWE SmackDown’s return to two hours is coming this summer, and it is not a temporary measure but rather the way the show’s USA Network deal is structured going forward.
Dave Meltzer reported on Wrestling Observer Radio that SmackDown will move back to two hours either in the last week of June or the first week of July, with the first week of July being his belief for the specific timing. The show will then return to three hours in January 2027, with that pattern expected to continue for years to come.
“It’ll go either the last week of June or the first week in July, I believe it’s the first week of July. The contract that they have signed now is January until the end of June would be three hours, then the first of July to the end of December would be two hours, so that’s the way the deal is structured right now,” Meltzer said.
When Bryan Alvarez asked whether the arrangement is the plan going forward, Meltzer confirmed it is a relatively long-term structure.
“For the foreseeable future, yeah. Probably for the next four years,” Meltzer said.
SmackDown has gone back and forth between two and three hours in recent years. The show ran at two hours during the period between July 4 and December 26, 2025, having first expanded to three hours on a weekly basis in January 2025. It returned to three hours in January 2026 and has remained there ever since. The pattern Meltzer describes essentially codifies that cycle into the contractual structure of the USA Network deal.
The timing of the switch will coincide with the second season of Braun Strowman’s Everything on the Menu series on USA Network, which does not yet have a confirmed release date but is expected in early summer. SmackDown streams on Netflix in a number of international territories.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit F4WOnline.com and consider a subscription to their website. A subscription gives you access to the weekly Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the F4WOnline message board, exclusive news updates in text and audio form, and thousands of hours of audio.
