Kicked off HBO Max, Elmo and friends find a new home

Get ready for episodes of Sesame Street sponsored by the letter “N,” as Netflix has stepped in to stream the no-longer-homeless children’s show. 

The makers of Sesame Street made the announcement Monday morning, noting on X that “all new Sesame Street episodes” will soon be streaming on Netflix. 

The news comes roughly six months after Max—soon to (once again) be HBO Max—chose not to renew its deal with Sesame Workshop for new Sesame Street episodes. Max still has a deal for streaming older Sesame Street episodes, which will remain on the streamer until 2027, according to Deadline. 

Besides appearing on Netflix, all the new episodes for Sesame Street season 56 will air day-and-date on PBS stations as well as the PBS Kids app, a change from the Max days when Sesame Street fans had to wait before watching new episodes on PBS. 

Sesame Street’s move to Netflix is yet another sign of the identity crisis over at Max—or HBO Max, or whatever it’s called these days. 

HBO had been Sesame Street’s home since 2016, well before HBO Max came on the scene. Still, the legendary kids show fit in with Max’s former strategy of being a big tent rather than a specialty purveyor of adult-oriented programming, hence the rationale behind jettisoning the “HBO” part of the “HBO Max” brand. 

But sentiments about Max’s future began to shift in late 2024, as the streaming service began to drop some of its more popular kid-friendly programming in the interest of “prioritizing our focus on stories for adults and families,” as Max said in a statement at the time. That shift culminated late last week, when Warner Bros. Discovery announced that Max would go back to being called “HBO Max” this summer. 

So it’s interesting that Netflix, by far the largest of Max’s competitors, swooped in to save Sesame Street, a move that notches another win for its own collection of children’s programming. Clearly, Netflix is all too happy to go big-tent with its streaming selection.