Seth Rogen is coming off an exceptional weekend for his career. The Studio, the Apple TV+ subscription-exclusive he co-created, won 13 categories at Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards, the most ever for a comedy TV show with just a single season. That makes it even better that The Studio is returning for Season 2, and his other Apple TV+ show, Platonic, is currently airing on the 2025 TV schedule. Now it’s been announced that Rogen will be bringing back The Muppet Show next year in a special way… in that it will literally be a special.
As shared by THR and other outlets, Seth Rogen is putting together a Muppet Show TV special that will be released in 2026 on Disney+. Singer, songwriter and fellow actor Sabrina Carpenter will star in the project and also executive produce. The special will air as The Muppet Show celebrates its 50th anniversary next year, and the goal is for this revival to function as a backdoor pilot for a new season.
Although The Muppets franchise began in 1955 when Jim Henson created the TV show San and Friends, it wasn’t until The Muppet Show began that characters like Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie and more got to have the spotlight to themselves. The variety sketch series had a rotating slate of guest stars and ran for five seasons, all of which can be streamed with a Disney+ subscription. As The Muppet Show was airing, its subjects also made the jump to the big screen with movies like The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper.
This will be the fourth Muppets project made exclusively for Disney+. The first was the improvisational comedy series Muppets Now, which ran for six episodes in 2020. A year later, the Halloween special Muppets Haunted Mansion followed, and then there was The Muppets Mayhem in 2023, which also only lasted one season. There was also a limited-run TV show in development in the late 2010s called Muppets Live Another Day, which would have taken place after The Muppets Take Manhattan, but that project was ultimately cancelled.
With Seth Rogen putting together this Muppet Show special with Sabrina Carpenter, his producing partner Evan Goldberg and many other behind-the-scenes individuals, I have high hopes for its level of quality. I know I’m not alone in thinking The Muppets have been underutilized by Disney in more recent years, and I was especially disappointed that The Muppets Mayhem didn’t get a second season. My fingers are crossed that this special that Carpenter is heading is not only an enjoyable watch, but also leads to a full-on revival of The Muppet Show.
We’ll see if that’s in the cards whenever this Muppet Show special premieres on the 2026 TV lineup. In the meantime, if you happen to find yourself in Walt Disney World next year, that’s when the Muppet-rebranded Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster will open following the closure of Muppet*Vision 3D.
