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Grey’s Anatomy Season 19 took a long winter break, but what does that mean for the episode count? How many episodes will be in the season?

With the long winter break, you’ll be forgiven worrying about the episode count for the season. It doesn’t seem possible for the show to get a full season when the fall finale was the sixth episode. Well, TVLine has the official episode count, and things are looking good.

Grey’s Anatomy Season 19 episode count

There will officially be 20 episodes to the season. That is slightly shorter than what’s considered a full season for many, but right now, it seems anything about 13 episodes is considered a full season. The TV landscape is changing with the cost of projects going up.

It’s not like 20 episodes isn’t a lot of episodes. We know the finale will see Ellen Pompeo return as Meredith Grey. The winter premiere was an anticlimactic goodbye to the character, which kinds of made it clear that this wasn’t a permanent exit. It’s just that Pompeo is cutting back her time on the show. And we can’t really blame her for that considering she’s been the consistent lead from the very beginning.

The good thing about the long winter break is that the show won’t need to take a lot of breaks before May. CBS and NBC will see an on-off schedule, while Grey’s Anatomy may take the odd week off here and there due to holidays or other big events on TV, but that’s going to be it. There are enough episodes for the rest of the TV season.

MORE: How did Meredith leave Grey’s Anatomy?

Grey’s Anatomy* Season 19 airs Thursdays at 9/8c on ABC.