“The Simpsons” closed its 38th season with 809 episodes, the most recent airing February 15, 2026. The first aired December 17, 1989. That is a fact about endurance, not quality. The quality is separate, and it is real.
Trailer, via Disney Plus.
Springfield, Unspecified
Matt Groening created the show for Fox, developing it with James L. Brooks and Sam Simon. The family began as animated shorts on “The Tracey Ullman Show” on April 19, 1987, then became a half-hour primetime series. It was Fox’s first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season, 1989–1990.
The setup is a satirical portrait of American life. Homer inspects safety at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a job at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. Marge is a housewife and mother. Bart is a ten-year-old troublemaker. Lisa is a precocious eight-year-old activist. Maggie rarely speaks and communicates by sucking on a pacifier.
The family is dysfunctional, but the show examines their bonds, and they are often shown to care about one another. That balance is the engine. It keeps the satire from turning cruel.
A Cast of Thousands, Voiced by Six
The show is evasive about where Springfield is. Its geography shifts: coastlines, deserts, farmland, mountains, whatever the story or joke requires. Groening said the town has much in common with Portland, Oregon, where he grew up, and that he named it after Springfield, Oregon, and the Springfield of “Father Knows Best.”
This will be cool; everyone will think it’s their Springfield.
That was the bet, and it paid. Groening also took the idea of a large supporting cast from SCTV, which is why one town can hold a mayor, a bartender, a principal, a shopkeeper and a clown.
Six actors carry most of it. Dan Castellaneta voices Homer, Abe Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie and Mayor Quimby. Julie Kavner voices Marge, Patty, Selma and Jacqueline Bouvier. Nancy Cartwright voices Bart, Maggie, Nelson Muntz and Ralph Wiggum. Yeardley Smith voices Lisa and Maggie. Hank Azaria voices Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Apu, Comic Book Guy, Carl Carlson and Superintendent Chalmers. Harry Shearer voices Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner and Lenny Leonard.
That is the technical achievement people underrate. Six performers built a town.
The satire is the other achievement. The show took on politics, media and American life without flinching, and it drew hundreds of celebrities to guest star. Few comedies get to be both a joke machine and a record of the country that made them.
“The Simpsons Movie” followed in 2007, a critical and commercial success, with a sequel set for 2027. TMDB users rate the series 8.0 out of 10, across 10,994 votes. That is an audience score, not this paper’s.
The run is the headline, but the run is not the argument. What matters is that a cartoon about a dysfunctional family in an unnamed town became the longest-running American sitcom, animated series and scripted primetime series in both seasons and episodes — and stayed funny enough to earn it. The show’s best trick was never the jokes. It was making everyone think Springfield was theirs.
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