How many episodes of Coronation Street are there?
Settle in, because the number is genuinely absurd — Coronation Street has been on air since 9 December 1960, and it has never stopped.
The short answer
As of July 2026, there have been 11,894 episodes of Coronation Street. It's the world's longest-running television soap opera, a title confirmed by Guinness World Records on its 50th anniversary in 2010.
How the count got so high
The maths tells the story of the schedule. Tony Warren's creation started as just two episodes a week in 1960 — Wednesdays and Fridays at 7pm on ITV. A third weekly episode arrived on 20 October 1989. The show kept adding slots over the decades until it hit six half-hour episodes a week.
Then came the latest shake-up. Since January 2026, Corrie has aired as five 30-minute episodes a week, Monday to Friday at 8.30pm, paired in an hour-long block with Emmerdale.
ITV said in its February 2025 announcement that half-hour episodes were "streaming-friendly" and better suited to modern storyline pacing.
So the counter now ticks up by five every single week.
How long would it take to watch it all?
At roughly 22 minutes of drama per episode, 11,894 episodes works out at well over 4,300 hours. That's around six months of round-the-clock viewing — no sleep, no breaks, just the cobbles. Nobody has ever needed to, mind: the show is built so you can drop in at episode 11,895 and pick it up within a week.
One man has been there for all of it
William Roache has played Ken Barlow since episode 1 on 9 December 1960 — the only member of the original cast still in the show. That makes him the longest-serving actor in the history of television serials, a record he claimed outright when the American soap As the World Turns ended in September 2010.
For the record: Granada's founder Sidney Bernstein initially rejected the whole idea. Producer Harry Elton talked him into commissioning 13 pilot episodes. Only 11,881 more followed.