The Simpsons could end at Season 40, says Bart Simpson voice actor
The voice of Bart says she believes the show wraps at 40, which is exactly where its current renewal runs out. Season 38 premieres September 27 and season 40 would land in the 2028-29 season.
Nancy Cartwright has been Bart Simpson since 1987. Asked this week how much longer she thinks the show has, she gave a number.
Forty seasons.
“It’s my opinion,“ she added, when host Michael Rosenbaum pressed her on the Inside of You podcast to confirm she meant it.
What Nancy Cartwright actually said about The Simpsons ending
The answer came in one word and stayed there. Rosenbaum asked when the series ends, Cartwright said 40, he repeated it back, she said yeah.
She then walked it partway back, or at least left a door open. If everyone is still alive and well by then, she said, she’d keep going, and she’d go as long as the show wanted to go.
None of which is an announcement. Cartwright, 68, is a cast member giving a guess about a business decision that hasn’t been made.
She has been circling the topic for a while. Earlier this year, around the show’s 800th episode, she told the Associated Press the job had become part of her lifestyle and she wasn’t looking forward to the day it ends, adding that nobody knows what happens after 40.
Why season 40 is the number she landed on
Here’s the part that makes a casual guess look less casual.
Fox renewed The Simpsons for four seasons last year, and that renewal runs through season 40. Season 40 is not a round number Cartwright picked out of the air. It’s where the paperwork stops.
Which means her opinion is really an observation: the show has a contract that ends at 40, and she doesn’t assume there’s another one after it.
The series just wrapped season 37. Season 38 premieres September 27. Season 40 would air across the 2028-29 broadcast season, putting a finale in 2029 if nothing gets renewed.
What that would mean for Nancy Cartwright and Bart
Cartwright auditioned for the Tracey Ullman Show shorts on March 13, 1987, and carried Bart into the prime-time series when it launched in 1989.
Run that to a 2029 finish and it’s 42 years playing the same ten-year-old. Bart has been in fourth grade since the Reagan administration ended.
She also voices Maggie, Ralph Wiggum, Todd Flanders, and Nelson Muntz, which is a meaningful slice of Springfield coming out of one person.
Her castmates have been just as immovable. Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, and Yeardley Smith have been Homer, Marge, and Lisa the entire time, with Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer covering most of the rest of the town.
The Simpsons isn’t done making things either way
The Simpsons is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated series, and the longest-running American scripted prime-time series. Disney has it streaming in full on Disney+ and keeps commissioning shorts and specials for it.
A second feature film is due in 2027, two decades after the 2007 original.
Cartwright has also been clear elsewhere about what she doesn’t want to see happen to these characters. She has said publicly that AI has no heart and that if the roles ever pass on, they should pass to people.
So: a renewal that ends at 40, a cast that has never turned over, and a lead voice actor who thinks that’s the stop. Fox hasn’t said anything.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum (August 4, 2026), the interview itself
The Daily Beast (August 2026), the full exchange including Rosenbaum’s follow-up questions
ScreenRant (August 2026), Cartwright’s caveat about continuing past season 40 and her other character credits
ComicBook.com (August 2026), the note that season 40 is the final year of the existing four-season renewal
Associated Press (2026), Cartwright’s earlier comments around the show’s 800th episode