Criminal Minds ran for 19 seasons and 364 episodes. Jeff Davis created the show for CBS, where it premiered on September 22, 2005. Its nineteenth season ended on July 23, 2026. That is not the end of the series. In March 2026, the show was renewed for a twentieth season.
Trailer, via Cheeto Breath.
David Rossi and the Behavioral Analysis Unit
The premise is simple and the show never pretends otherwise. A team of FBI profilers works inside the Behavioral Analysis Unit, using behavioral analysis to find a suspect the show calls the unsub, short for unknown subject. They read behavior, anticipate the next move, and get there before the strike.
That structure gave Criminal Minds a deep bench. Jason Gideon founded the BAU and was known as the best profiler in the Bureau. Aaron Hotchner ran the unit as chief, and Emily Prentiss later took the chair. Derek Morgan came from the Chicago police and knew obsessional crimes. Spencer Reid handled geographic profiling. Jennifer Jareau started as communications liaison and became a profiler. David Rossi, one of the original BAU agents, returned to help the team work new cases.
The cast rotated, and the show survived every exit. Joe Mantegna played Rossi. Paget Brewster played Prentiss. Adam Rodriguez played fugitive tracker Luke Alvez. Kirsten Vangsness played Penelope Garcia. A.J. Cook played Jareau. Aisha Tyler played forensic psychologist Tara Lewis. Zach Gilford played Elias Voit, and Ryan-James Hatanaka played Tyler Green.
A Ratings Machine for CBS
CBS had a hit on its hands early, and it held. Criminal Minds ranked among the network’s most-watched programs across its run. In 2017 it won the People’s Choice Award for Best TV Crime Drama. The show built a franchise around that success: several spinoffs, a South Korean adaptation, and a video game.
The original run closed after its fifteenth season on February 19, 2020. Two years later, Paramount+ brought it back as Criminal Minds: Evolution for a sixteenth season in November 2022. The revival stuck. In March 2025, the show was renewed for a nineteenth season, which premiered on May 28, 2026.
The BAU’s Case Order
The BAU format runs on a repeatable engine built from the roles the team fills:
- A profiler reads behavior at the scene.
- The profile narrows the suspect pool.
- The unsub makes a mistake.
- The team closes the case.
That is not a criticism. It is part of why the show reached 364 episodes. A procedural lives or dies on whether the ritual stays satisfying, and this one did.
Where Criminal Minds Actually Stands
The show’s reputation has a split. It was a ratings success and a franchise engine, and it holds an 8.1 out of 10 on IMDb. Both things are true.
The revival is the more interesting story now. Criminal Minds: Evolution moved to Paramount+ and picked up Elias Voit as a season-long antagonist, a shift from the case-of-the-week rhythm that defined the CBS years. A serialized villain gives the BAU a threat that builds across episodes rather than resetting each week. Whether the show uses that well across a nineteenth and twentieth season is the open question.
What holds up is the ensemble. Vangsness’s Garcia remains the show’s most distinctive presence. Mantegna’s Rossi gives the BAU its institutional memory, a founding member who returned to a unit he helped build.
An 8.1 out of 10 is the right score, and it is a score for endurance as much as craft. Criminal Minds is a great machine, built by Davis and maintained across 19 seasons by a cast that kept turning over without the engine stalling. The unsub always loses. The show, so far, never did.
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