'Criminal Minds' Canceled Again, Ending Its Paramount+ Revival at Season 20

The 20th season, already filmed, premieres on Paramount+ in 2027, seven years after CBS first canceled the FBI profiler drama.

The FBI profilers of Criminal Minds finished filming their 20th season earlier this fall. Then it became their last.

Paramount+ said Friday that Criminal Minds: Evolution will end with that season, which premieres in 2027. The streamer shared the news along with first-look photos, TheWrap reported. Production wrapped before the call came, so the season won't give fans a real ending, Deadline reported, and longtime showrunner Erica Messer said in a statement that she was "suddenly navigating" the end.

Deadline added a small but pointed qualifier: the show is ending for now. That qualifier has history behind it. CBS ended Criminal Minds in 2020 after 15 seasons, and two years later Paramount+ brought it back as Evolution, TVLine noted.

Deadline reported that the call came recently and that it's the first show the new Paramount+ leadership has officially canceled. That team is led by Casey Bloys, co-chair and chief content officer of Skydance's direct-to-consumer business. Deadline's sources said the cancellation was recommended by the previous regime. That's the same group that renewed the show early, in March, before Season 19 had even premiered.

Back then, the streamer was in a party mood. Its own site tipped its hat in March to Joe Mantegna, A.J. Cook and the rest of the team for helping make the show one of television's longest-running dramas. Season 19 then ran from May to July, Variety reported.

The audience hasn't gone anywhere. Deadline reported that the show is in Paramount+'s Top 10 right now and suggested the problem may be its cost measured against that performance. Or it may be that it's a broadcast-style drama living on a streamer. It's the last one left on Paramount+, after continuations of SEAL Team, Frasier and NCIS: Tony & Ziva.

As recently as August, Jane Wiseman, then Paramount+'s head of originals, said she and her team were "big fans" of the show, Deadline reported. She left last week, after the merger.

It has been a long run. Criminal Minds premiered on CBS in 2005 with Mandy Patinkin leading the Behavioral Analysis Unit, and Mantegna took over as team leader after Patinkin left three seasons in, according to TVLine. The CBS years produced more than 300 episodes and two shorter-lived spinoffs, The Hollywood Reporter noted. On streaming, seasons shrank to 10 episodes, with story arcs that stretch across the whole season.

Twenty seasons ties it for fifth among the longest-running TV dramas, Deadline reported. Ahead of it are Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order, NCIS and Grey's Anatomy. All four are still on the air.

CBS let the BAU go once, and it came back. For now, Messer is calling this "the end of this chapter."

Source: Deadline, retrieved October 31, 2026. Other sources: TheWrap, tvline.com, paramountplus.com, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter.