Happy Valley has turned into a proper town, the politics have curdled, and the tenth episode has already landed. For All Mankind season 5 ran on Apple TV from Friday 27 March 2026 to Friday, 29 May 2026. Nothing is left to wait for. Below you get every UK release date, the real monthly cost in pounds, and a straight answer on what comes next.
Season Five at a Glance
| Detail | What we know |
| Premiere | Friday 27 March 2026 |
| Finale | Friday 29 May 2026, titled “This Land Is Our Land” |
| Episodes | 10, released weekly |
| Where to watch in the UK | Apple TV |
| UK cost | £9.99 a month after a free trial |
| Setting | The 2010s, roughly nine years after the Goldilocks asteroid heist |
| Executive producers | Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi, Maril Davis |
| Critic score | 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, 83 on Metacritic |
| Spin-off | Star City, from Friday 29 May 2026 |
| Next | A sixth and final season in 2027, date unannounced |
Key Takeaways
- The season is finished. All ten episodes sit on Apple TV in the UK right now.
- Watching costs £9.99 a month, or comes bundled inside Apple One.
- The Soviet-set spin-off Star City arrived on the same Friday as the finale.
- Season six is confirmed as the last one, arriving in 2027. Everything about its date is guesswork.
- Critics loved it. A large chunk of the audience did not.
When Did For All Mankind Season 5 Come out?
For All Mankind season 5 arrived on Apple TV on Friday 27 March 2026 and ran weekly for ten episodes, ending with the finale on 29 May 2026. All ten are streaming now in the UK. Season six will follow in 2027 as the final run. No date is set yet.
Most guides you will find still read like pre-release previews. So here it is plainly: the season finished airing on 29 May 2026. No gap week to plan around, no half-season split. Start it tonight and finish it whenever you like.
Every Episode Date, and When it Landed in Britain
New episodes drop at midnight Pacific time. British viewers wake up to them rather than waiting all evening. There is a wrinkle worth knowing about. British Summer Time did not begin until Sunday 29 March 2026. Episode one therefore landed an hour earlier than the nine that followed it.
| Episode | UK release date | Approximate UK time |
| 1 | Friday 27 March 2026 | 7 am GMT |
| 2 | Friday 3 April 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 3 | Friday 10 April 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 4 | Friday 17 April 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 5 | Friday 24 April 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 6 | Friday 1 May 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 7 | Friday 8 May 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 8 | Friday 15 May 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 9 | Friday 22 May 2026 | 8 am BST |
| 10 | Friday 29 May 2026 | 8 am BST |
How to Watch in the UK, and What it Costs
Apple TV is the only home for the series in Britain. No Sky bolt-on, no Netflix window, no Freeview repeat. The subscription is the whole cost of entry.
A standalone subscription runs at £9.99 a month after a free trial, and it cancels in a couple of taps. That price covers the whole catalogue, not one series. If you already pay for iCloud storage or Apple Music, the bundle usually works out cheaper. Apple One starts at £18.95 a month for the Individual plan, rises to £24.95 for Family, and reaches £36.95 for Premier. All three include Apple TV. Total runtime for season five is roughly ten hours, so a determined binge fits inside a rainy weekend with time to spare.
Starting from scratch is a bigger commitment. A sensible catch-up plan for a UK viewer beginning at season one runs to fifty episodes across five seasons. Call it fifty hours, or two episodes a night for a month. Plenty of people watch this kind of slow-burn drama at a desk. The show streams in 4K, so a decent panel earns its keep. Our guide to 4K high refresh monitors covers what to look for if the living room television is spoken for.
What the Fifth Season is About
The official logline sets the scene. The season picks up in the years since the Goldilocks asteroid heist, and Happy Valley has grown into a thriving colony with thousands of residents. That colony now hosts missions heading further into the solar system.
That growth is the story. A research outpost with a dozen people follows orders from Earth. A settlement of thousands starts asking why it should.
Season five lands in the 2010s of this alternate timeline, about nine years on from the events that closed season four. The friction sits between the people living on Mars and the governments and corporations still holding the purse strings back home. Helium-3, mining rights, and who profits from them drive most of the arguments. The writing is sharper about incentives than about hardware. The same instincts turn up in ordinary life, which is the subject of our summary of The Psychology of Money.
The Cast, who Returned and Who are New
Apple lists Joel Kinnaman, Wrenn Schmidt, Edi Gathegi and Cynthia Wu among the returning faces. That keeps the through line back to the earlier seasons intact.
Five performers joined as series regulars:
- Mireille Enos as Celia Boyd
- Costa Ronin as Leonid “Lenya” Polivanov
- Sean Kaufman as Alex Poletov Baldwin
- Ruby Cruz as Lily Dale
- Ines Asserson as Avery “A.J.” Jarrett
Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi remain the creative leads, with Maril Davis also on the executive producer roster.
Star City, the spin-off That Arrived on Finale Day
The timing here was unusual. Star City premiered on Friday 29 May 2026, the same day the finale went live, so the universe never went dark.
Star City is a paranoid thriller set inside the Soviet space programme. It goes back to the moment the USSR put the first man on the moon. Eight episodes make up the run. The cast leans heavily British. Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Alice Englert and Priya Kansara all feature. Chasing that sort of credit trail is a habit for a lot of viewers here, much like our rundown of Jane Hazlegrove’s television credits.
On viewing order, keep it simple. Finish season five first. The finale expects you to have seen everything else. Then start Star City as a separate story. Think of it as a prequel in spirit, not a continuation. Skipping it costs you nothing on the main plot.
Season 6: What is Confirmed and What is only Rumour
Apple renewed the series before season five even premiered. It billed the sixth run as the final one, due in 2027. That is the confirmed part.
Here is the honest split:
- Confirmed: a sixth season exists, it is the last, and 2027 is the stated year.
- Not confirmed: the month, the episode count, and whether the weekly Friday pattern holds.
- Rumour only: any cast list, plot leak or specific date circulating now. Treat all of it as chatter until Apple says otherwise.
Judging by the gaps between earlier seasons, an autumn or spring 2027 slot is the sensible expectation. That is a guess based on the pattern, not an announcement.
Was Season Five Any Good?
Critics said yes, firmly. The season holds a 90% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes from 21 reviews and an 83 on Metacritic, which sits in its universal acclaim band. Viewers were less kind. The audience score sat at 45% on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter, with a Metacritic user score of 5.7.
That split is the most interesting number here. Reviewers praised the ambition and the political plotting. Plenty of long-term fans wanted more spaceflight and less boardroom. Your mileage depends on which of those two shows you signed up for.
Conclusion
For All Mankind Season 5 successfully expands its ambitious alternate-history universe with ten episodes packed with political drama, Mars colony conflicts, and compelling character arcs. Now that the full season is available on Apple TV+ in the UK, viewers can binge the entire story before diving into the companion series Star City.
While critics praised the season’s storytelling and world-building, audience opinions remained divided over its stronger focus on politics than space exploration. With Season 6 officially confirmed as the final chapter in 2027, fans have one last journey ahead to discover how this acclaimed sci-fi saga reaches its conclusion.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. All ten episodes are on Apple TV in Britain, with no regional delay compared to the US release.
£9.99 a month for a standalone subscription after a free trial, or from £18.95 a month as part of an Apple One bundle.
No. It is a companion series about the Soviet program, not a continuation of the main story, so the parent show still makes sense without it.
Yes. Season six has been announced as the final season, arriving in 2027.
You could. The season opens nine years after a heist you did not see, so read a season four recap first if a full rewatch feels like too much.
