What Is Happening With ‘NCIS’ Season 23 In The UK?

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If you’ve been waiting for ‘NCIS‘ Season 23 to appear on Disney+ UK, you can probably stop refreshing the app. After months of silence, Disney has finally given viewers a fairly definitive answer, and it is not the one fans were hoping for.

Responding to questions on social media about the missing season, Disney said:

Thank you for reaching out! We currently don’t have the streaming rights to season 23 of NCIS on Disney+ in the UK. Although streaming rights vary from content to content and by region/country, we’ll be sure to share your interest. Let us know if you have any other questions.

So, there we have it. Disney+ UK does not currently have the streaming rights to Season 23.

That explains why it has not appeared, but it raises a rather bigger question: who does have the UK rights, and where is the show going next?

How did we get here?

The strange thing about ‘NCIS’ being on Disney+ in the first place is that Disney does not own the series. It is a CBS Studios production, meaning it ultimately sits under Paramount.

Its UK home appears to be a hangover from the old FOX UK days. FOX had been the first-run UK broadcaster for ‘NCIS’ for years, including Season 18 in 2021. When Disney shut the FOX channel in the UK that summer following its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, much of the channel’s programming moved across to Star (now Hulu) on Disney+.

The most likely explanation is that the existing licensing arrangement for ‘NCIS’ continued with Disney after the channel closed. Season 19 began arriving on Disney+ UK in 2022, and the service continued as the UK home for new seasons through Season 22.

Now, however, that arrangement appears to have changed.

The Paramount+ question

The obvious candidate for Season 23 is Paramount+ UK. After all, it is Paramount’s show, and the service is already home to a sizeable chunk of the franchise.

Paramount+ UK currently carries Seasons 1 to 20 of ‘NCIS’, while Disney+ UK has Seasons 1 to 22. That overlap is interesting, as it suggests the UK rights are split across different windows rather than being one simple exclusive deal.

There is another interesting wrinkle to the rights situation. Paramount is actually already airing the more recent seasons in the UK through its free-to-air channel 5USA. Seasons 21 and 22 have both aired on the channel, with Season 22 still being repeated there.

That means Paramount clearly has some UK rights to the newer seasons already, just not necessarily the subscription streaming rights. Disney+ has been able to stream Seasons 21 and 22 while Paramount’s 5USA broadcasts them on linear television, showing just how fragmented the various rights windows are.

It also gives us another possible destination for Season 23. While Paramount+ UK still seems an obvious eventual streaming home, it is entirely possible that Season 23 could appear on 5USA first, particularly if Paramount’s existing deal allows it to broadcast new seasons while Disney’s previous streaming arrangement winds down.

Paramount+ is also the UK home of ‘NCIS: Origins‘, ‘NCIS: Sydney‘ and ‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva‘. The upcoming ‘NCIS: New York‘ will stream on Paramount+ in the US, but a UK home for the series hasn’t been confirmed yet (we’d be extremely surprised if it doesn’t land on Paramount+ UK though…).

There are also signs that Paramount may be increasingly keen to keep more of its CBS franchises on its own UK service. We recently learned that ‘Sheriff Country’, the spin-off from ‘Fire Country’, and ‘Boston Blue’, which continues the ‘Blue Bloods’ universe, are both heading to Paramount+ UK.

Those were particularly notable pickups because ‘Fire Country’ currently airs on Sky Witness, while ‘Blue Bloods’ previously had a long-running home on Sky. Rather than selling the spin-offs to the broadcaster already carrying their parent shows, Paramount has kept them for Paramount+.

That does not prove the same thing is happening with ‘NCIS’, but it certainly makes Paramount+ look like the most logical destination.

Could Paramount be waiting for the Disney deal to expire?

This is where we move firmly into speculation.

One possibility is that Paramount is waiting for some of Disney’s remaining rights to expire before making a bigger move with ‘NCIS’. Disney still has Seasons 1 to 22, while Paramount+ UK stops at Season 20. It is possible there are contractual windows or holdbacks around Seasons 21 and 22 which need to run their course before Paramount can consolidate more of the show on its own service.

That could potentially mean Season 23 arrives alongside a larger transfer of the back catalogue.

However, the fact that Seasons 1 to 20 already sit on both services shows these deals are not necessarily all-or-nothing. Paramount could also simply have chosen not to announce its plans yet, there could be another UK licensing deal in play, or there may be contractual details we know nothing about.

In other words, Paramount+ is our best guess, but it is still only a guess.

Why fans are getting impatient

The delay is now much longer than the usual gap between the US and UK.

Season 23 began airing in America in autumn 2025 and completed its 20-episode run in May 2026. Meanwhile, Season 24 is due to begin on CBS in October.

That means UK viewers are approaching the start of another US season without any official way to stream Season 23 here, which understandably has people wondering what on earth is going on.

For now, the one thing we can say with certainty is that Disney+ UK does not currently hold the streaming rights to Season 23 of ‘NCIS’.

Where Season 23 ultimately lands is still unknown, but given Paramount+’s growing collection of NCIS shows and its recent decision to keep other major CBS spin-offs for itself, Paramount+ UK feels like the most likely destination.

We will, of course, update you as soon as we hear anything official.

‘NCIS‘ Season 23 does not currently have a confirmed UK premiere date or streaming home.

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