A clearer picture is emerging regarding WWE SmackDown’s ongoing back-and-forth between three-hour and two-hour formats.
According to Bryan Alvarez, WWE’s current agreement with NBCUniversal outlines a set schedule that will see SmackDown revert to two hours beginning in July, following a six-month stretch of extended episodes.
“WWE’s contact with USA stipulates three-hour shows from January through the end of June every year,” Alvarez wrote. “So this will be an ongoing thing, and we have two more months of three-hour shows to survive. July through the end of December will be two hours.”
In other words, the longer format isn’t permanent.
It’s seasonal.
SmackDown first made the jump to three hours on January 3, 2025, before returning to its traditional two-hour runtime on July 4 of that year. The same pattern repeated in 2026, with the show expanding again on January 2.
Alvarez and Dave Meltzer elaborated further on the structure of the deal during a recent episode of Wrestling Observer Radio at F4WOnline.com, confirming that the format split is built directly into the contract.
“The contract that they have signed now is January till the end of June would be three hours,” Meltzer wrote. “And then the end of June, in the first of July to the end of December, it would be two hours. So that’s the new, the way the deal is structured right now.”
That structure doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
“For the foreseeable future. Probably for the next four years,” he said.
For fans, that means the three-hour SmackDown era will continue to come and go in cycles.
At least for the duration of the current media rights deal.
As noted, production elements are expected to be changed as well in the coming weeks.
