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The good news is Chicago PD Season 11 is officially happening. Now we have an idea of the episode count to expect, too.

It really wasn’t too surprising to find out that NBC had renewed all six of the current Dick Wolf shows. Wednesdays and Thursdays are popular nights for the network with the franchise nights. They’ve been so popular that other networks have set up franchise nights, such as CBS with FBI Tuesdays and ABC with The Rookie and Feds on Tuesdays and TGIT with Station 19 and Grey’s Anatomy.

So, it was good but not surprising news when we learned Season 11 of Chicago PD was definitely happening. Now we just need to know how many episodes will get with the team.

Chicago PD Season 11 episode count

NBC did bring a little bit of bad news with this. Initially, Deadline had reported that all but Law & Order: Organized Crime would get the usual 22-episode orders. Then that changed. In a later report, Deadline shared that while Organized Crime would still only get 13 episodes, the other five shows would see reduced episode counts from 22 to in between 18 and 20. There is no set number as of yet.

There was even more bad news with this. We won’t see every single character in every single episode. For PD, that means we may not see Voight leading the team each time, giving someone else the chance to step up in that position. We will have episodes were Atwater, Upton, Burgess, and Ruzek, among others, are all away.

This is a cost-saving measure. While the actors won’t take a pay cut per episode, they will see their overall compensation reduced as they’re not in as many episodes. The reduced episode count itself will also help to save some money without having to cut out a character completely from the series.

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Chicago PD* airs Wednesdays on NBC in the U.S. and on CityTV in Canada.