Welcome to Wrexham returned for its fifth season on Thursday, 14 May 2026, premiering with two back-to-back episodes on FX and Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ in the UK.¹³ The new season follows Wrexham AFC's historic first campaign in the EFL Championship — the second tier of English football — the highest level the 162-year-old club has competed at since 1982, and a milestone that marks the culmination of the extraordinary transformation co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have overseen since buying the club in 2020.¹⁴

What happened to get here

Wrexham's journey from the National League — the fifth tier of the English football pyramid — to the Championship in the space of three seasons under Reynolds and McElhenney has been one of the most widely reported sports stories of recent years.²⁵ The club won the National League title and gained promotion in 2023, followed by back-to-back promotions through League Two and League One that brought them to the Championship ahead of the 2025-26 season.⁴⁸ Season 5 of the documentary series covers that Championship debut, following the players, staff, community, and owners through the challenges and pressures of competing at a level far above where the club was when the cameras first arrived.¹

The Championship is a significantly more demanding environment than anything Wrexham has faced in the documentary's first four series. The division sits one step below the Premier League, features 24 clubs competing in a 46-game season, and is widely regarded as one of the most gruelling second divisions in world football due to its intensity, quality, and the pressure of promotion and relegation consequences.³⁷

The women's team storyline

The fifth series adds a parallel narrative strand that has been developing quietly in previous seasons. Wrexham AFC Women are competing for their first-ever Welsh Women's Premier League title, giving the documentary a dual championship storyline that runs alongside the men's campaign.¹⁴ The women's team has benefited from the wider investment and profile that Reynolds and McElhenney's ownership has brought to the club, and their title push gives the series a second major narrative thread with its own emotional stakes.⁵

Reynolds and McElhenney

The documentary has always been as much about its owners as the football club, and the dynamic between Ryan Reynolds — the Canadian actor best known for the Deadpool and Free Guy films — and Rob McElhenney, the creator and star of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has been central to its appeal.²⁶ Their combination of genuine enthusiasm, commercial acumen, and well-timed self-deprecating humour has made the show accessible to audiences with no prior interest in lower-league football and earned it substantial critical acclaim across its first four seasons.⁶⁸

Season 5 will test that dynamic in new ways. Managing a Championship club involves transfers, contracts, and financial pressures that operate at a different scale to League Two or the National League, and the series is expected to explore how Reynolds and McElhenney navigate co-ownership decisions at a level of investment and public scrutiny significantly higher than anything covered in previous series.⁴⁷

Release schedule

Following the two-episode premiere, Welcome to Wrexham Season 5 will release one new episode per week every Thursday on FX and Hulu in the US and on Disney+ internationally, running through to 25 June 2026.³⁵ The eight-episode run covers the arc of what promises to be the most consequential season in the club's recent history.

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Welcome to Wrexham Season 5 Launches on FX and Hulu: Reynolds and McElhenney's Club Takes on the Championship for the First Time Since 1982