Netflix Sets ‘Squid Game’ Season 3 Premiere Date, Reveals First Look Photos

Green light! Netflix’s hit original series Squid Game will return to screens this summer. The south Korean drama will debut its third and final season on Friday, June 27 just months after the Dec. 26 release of Season 2, Netflix announced Thursday as part of its annual Next on Netflix event.

Wednesday’s announcement also coincided with the release of several first-look images at the upcoming season. In the new photos, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), also known as Player 456, can be seen handcuffed, while another photo showed the game’s Front Man (Lee Byung-hun).

The streamer also dropped new key art for the season, teasing in a release, “Gone is the rainbow-hued track of season two’s six-legged pentathlon; in its place, a vivid swirling flower-pattern floor ominously foreshadows the cutthroat finale to come. The sinister silhouettes of Young-hee and her companion Cheol-su — first hinted at in last season’s post-credit scene — suggest that even more brutal games lie ahead.”

According to an official synopsis, Season 2 will pick up where Season 2 left off and follows “Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) after losing his best friend in the game and being driven to utter despair by the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun), who was hiding his true identity to infiltrate the game. Gi-hun persists with his goal to put an end to the game, while the Front Man continues onto his next move and the surviving players’ choices will lead to graver consequences with each round.”

In addition to Jung-Jae and Byun-hun, Season 3 is also set to star Yim Si-wan, Kang Ha-neul, Wi Ha-jun, Park Gyu-young, Park Sung-hoon, Yang Dong-geun, Kang Ae-sim, Jo Yuri, Lee David, and Roh Jae-won.

Created, written, and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk, Squid Game was a breakout hit for Netflix when it debuted on the platform back September 2021. Centering around a group of 456 people who accept a mysterious invitation to participate in a round of children’s games that have the potential to change their lives, the show became Netflix’s biggest series launch ever, and the first Netflix original title to top 100 million viewers within its first month on the platform. The series remains the most-popular show in Netflix’s history, beating out other hits like Stranger Things and Wednesday.

Despite the show’s popularity, Squid Game Season 3 will mark the end of the road for the hit show. Netflix revealed in July 2024 that the series was set to conclude with Season 3. Later opening up about the decision to end the series with just three seasons, Dong-hyuk told The Hollywood Reporter in November that when he was “thinking about the idea for the ending of Season 3, I think it sort of naturally came to me that this was the finale.”

“I believed that with that story, I was able to tell everything that I wanted to tell through the story of Squid Game and also in the perspective of Gi-hun as a character, and I thought that we don’t need any further stories from here,” he explained.

The first two seasons of Squid Game are available to stream on Netflix. Season 3 is set to premiere on June 27.