| October 8, 2026 |1 comments so far
It’s official: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds never showed on Nielsen’s top 10 original streaming series chart at any point in its fourth season. This makes the second Star Trek series this year (out of two) that’s held this unfortunate distinction, as freshman series Starfleet Academy never landed on the list either.
SNW S4 a Nielsen no-show
This afternoon Nielsen released their streaming ratings numbers for September 21 – 27, the week of the SNW season 4 finale “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.” Andjust like the season premiere (and all the weeks in between), Strange New Worlds was absent, even though three other Paramount+ shows made the top 10 that week, albeit with one getting a big boost from also appearing on Netflix.
In prior years, modern Trek has made several Nielsen appearances, since the service started including Paramount+, starting with Star Trek: Picardback in 2023. Since then, we’ve seen both Discovery and Strange New Worlds itself chart multiple times, most notably at the beginning of SNW season 3 — but that ranking fell off after the fourth episode of last year’s season and never recovered. If season 4 episodes had achieved the same level of minutes viewed (the metric Nielsen uses) as some of the early season 3 episodes, the new season would have made the charts.
(L-R): Anson Mount as Captain Pike and Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, episode 10, season 4, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: John Medland/Paramount+
On the other hand, Strange New Worlds did pop up in the top 10 most-viewed series rather often the Paramount+ app itself, as well as on Amazon channels. But these were appearances generally short lived, demonstrating that diehard fans tend to show up swiftly, but there’s not a lot of traction thereafter. SNW did show consistent popularity in certain international markets, notably Germany, the UK, Austria, and Switzerland. In fact, over at FlixPatrol, SNW remains aboard Paramount’s current top 10 in each of those nations.
When Paramount announced they weren’t picking up Starfleet Academy for a third season, a company spokesperson told TrekMovie that the series never making it into the Nielsen top 10 was a factor in the decision. The fifth and final season (of six episodes) for Strange New Worlds has already been shot, expected to arrive in 2027, so it’s too late for the ratings to be a factor in any more seasons of the show. But the series’ inability to hold on to a spot on the streaming charts was likely part of the calculation that has lead showrunner Akiva Goldsman to recently accept his dreams of the Star Trek: Year One follow-up are not going to happen.
(L-R): Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk, Martin Quinn as Scotty, and Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, episode 10, season 4, streaming on Paramount+, 2026. Photo Credit: Jan Thijs/Paramount+
Luminate shows a (somewhat) different story
There’s an intriguing wrinkle in all this number-crunching. The popular industry newsletter TedOnTV has been reporting on data from Luminate, another analytics firm, which shows a somewhat different story. Luminate tracks total viewers and over the summer Ted Linhart reported on the debut of SNW S4, showing how it trailed the S3 debut, but only by a little bit with 1.2 million viewers versus 1.3 million (over the first five days after release).
Luminate Paramount+ season premiere data
And this week the latest TedOnTV Substack newsletter (which was actually focusing on the recent debut of the Paramount+ series MobLand)compared how that series stacked up against other Paramount+ original shows for 2025 and 2026. In it you can see where the Star Trek shows sit with the streamer for the last couple of years. As expected, the Taylor Sheridan produced shows are the biggest hits for the streamer, with the Star Trek shows somewhat in the middle of the pack. According to Ted’s analysis of Luminate data, Strange New Worldsseason 4 overperformed season 3 by a bit, with 1.3 million viewers on average versus 1.2 million (during 5 five days after episode releases).
Luminate Paramount+ total season data
Taking both seasons as a whole, what this appears to insinuate is that season 3 started strongly but may have fallen off especially sharply. This seems even likelier when one factors an earlier Luminate report, which studied only the first episodes of 3 and 4 respectively; in that scenario, it was season 3 with 1.3 million and season 4 with 1.2 million. Put plainly, season 3 debuted higher, but season 4 seems to have gone up over time.
SFA > SNW?
You can also see from the Luminate’s data that Starfleet Academyactually averaged slightly higher than either of the two most recent seasons of Strange New Worlds, with 1.4 million for its final tally, including a strong series premiere averaging 2 million viewers. Even though it failed to appear on the Nielsen Top 10, the Luminate data indicates SFA opened to pretty good numbers.
Earlier this year TrekMovie reported the firm’s findings that the freshman series was watched by roughly 2.1 million people in the first eight days of its two-episode premiere. But here we have SFA listed as 1.4 million, once the whole season was over. That could mean a particularly precipitous dropoff from the first week to the last, which is never something execs want to see, especially so early into a run when ten more episodes are almost in the can.
Holly Hunter in season 1, episode 1 of Starfleet Academy streaming on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Brooke Palmer/Paramount+
Skydance still talking Trek
Regardless of the ratings, Star Trek’s new corporate owners continue to show support for the franchise, often citing it alongside bigger fare like DC and ‘Harry Potter.’ In addition to the latest stab at a movie, Paramount+ EVP and Head of Originals Jane Wiseman cited the next iteration of Star Trek on TV as “imperative.”
Earlier today, during a rather noteworthy publicity stunt, David Ellison and fellow Skydance execs popped over to Wall Street to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. According to THR, Ellison brought along a display or props and memorabilia to display at the NYSE to showcase the corporation’s vast catalog of IP, which included some stuff from Star Trek. At a time when investors are whistling at Skydance’s over $80 billion in debt for the closure of its Warner Bros. purchase, the leadership team is evidently hoping a little piece of Trek history will help inspire an upward tick in stock price.
Keep up with news about the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
