NBC’s One Chicago franchise might be over a decade old, but the franchise continues to do incredible things, and its latest seasons helped NBC pull off quite a feat in the television landscape.
With the 2025-26 television season now behind us in the rearview mirror, NBCUniversal is celebrating what has turned out to be quite a successful year. With help from events like the Super Bowl and 2026 Winter Olympics, NBC reclaimed the No. 1 spot, becoming the most-watched network in total viewers for the 2025-26 TV season.
In celebrating this achievement, NBCUniversal revealed several additional highlights from the season, which included a major win for the network courtesy of the One Chicago shows. With the help of the One Chicago Wednesday programming block comprised of Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, and Chicago PD, NBC was the No. 1 most-watched entertainment network on Wednesday nights for the entire season!
NBC’s One Chicago programming block indeed continues to make waves for the network and has given NBC an unbeatable block of programming. Even CBS’s historic 50th season of Survivor proved to be no match for the One Chicago shows, which consistently beat Survivor 50 in viewers throughout the season.
Chicago Med season 11 was the fifth most-watched program of the entire season by TV Series Finale’s tracking, which is an amazing feat for a show that is a decade into its run. Chicago Fire season 14 was just a few spots behind as the eighth most-watched program of the season, helping One Chicago lock down two key spots on the Top 10 list and putting the shows’ audiences above several top competitors across ABC, CBS, and Fox.
In fact, Chicago Med and Chicago Fire both were watched by more viewers than any ABC or Fox scripted drama! That’s no easy feat for shows in the current TV landscape, especially ones that have been on as long as the One Chicago shows have.
So many times we see viewers wanting to write off the success of long-running shows with jokes about how they need to just end already, but the reality is that it’s the longest-running shows that are running laps around many new series. Of the 10 most-watched programs of the 2025-26 season, only two shows managed to crack the list that have aired for fewer than five seasons (Tracker and Marshals).
Fans love their comfort shows, and the One Chicago shows' ratings continue to prove that the fans are just as invested in the franchise today as they were when it first began. Hopefully, this will translate to many more seasons ahead for all three One Chicago shows at NBC, and the shows will continue to lead NBC to victories, such as making it the most-watched network on Wednesday nights for years to come!
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