KEN BURNS’S FILM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION TO STREAM FOR FREE ON PBS IN LEAD UP TO 250th ANNIVERSARY ON JULY 4, 2026
Film Will be Available on All PBS Streaming Platforms from Monday, May 25th (Memorial Day) through Sunday, July 12th
First Episodes of Burns’s War Films on YouTube for Free Starting May 25th: THE CIVIL WAR, THE WAR, THE VIETNAM WAR AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION also on PBS Stations beginning Friday, July 3 through Saturday, July 4, 2026
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, the six-part, 12-hour documentary series directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt, that premiered on PBS in November 2025, will stream for free on all PBS platforms from Memorial Day, Monday, May 25th through Sunday, July 12th, PBS and the filmmakers announced today. All six episodes will be available on PBS.org and on the PBS App. The first episode is also scheduled for re-broadcast on PBS stations nationwide in primetime on Friday, July 3, 9:00 – 11:00 PM. Episodes 2-6 are scheduled on Saturday, July 4, 9:30 AM – 8:00 PM, leading into the live Independence Day special, AMERICA – MADE IN VIRGINIA: 250 YEARS TOGETHER (w.t.) from Colonial Williamsburg.
In addition, the first episode of each of Burns’s war films will be available for free on the Ken Burns Channel on YouTube beginning with THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (5/25/2026), THE CIVIL WAR (6/1/2026), THE WAR (6/6/2026) and THE VIETNAM WAR (6/15/2026).
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION broke all PBS streaming records when it premiered last November, pushing PBS – for the first time in its history – onto the Nielsen’s Top Ten Streaming list, with 565 million minutes viewed. As of February 2026, 20 million viewers have watched the broadcast on PBS and more than 4 billion minutes of the series have been seen on all streaming platforms.
“We are very excited to share again THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION with the entire country as we approach the 250th anniversary of our founding,” the filmmakers said in a joint statement. “The American Revolution changed the world 250 years ago, giving birth to ideas that ultimately established liberty, freedom and democracy as concepts that would transform the United States and much of the world. We are hopeful that even more people have a chance to watch and reflect on the significance of the story and what they can do to ensure that we as a country live up to our founding values.”
The much-anticipated series, which was in production for more than nine years, was directed and produced by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward. The filmmakers and PBS scheduled the broadcast for 2025, the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, which began in the spring of 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence.
In addition, by airing the series during the lead up to 2026, PBS LearningMedia was able to generate educational materials for use by elementary, middle, and high school teachers in time for the 250th anniversary. The materials are available free of charge to educators across the country and can be found at Ken Burns in the Classroom hub, the PBS LearningMedia site devoted to Burns’s films. Additionally, The American Revolution Engagement Resource Center was launched by WETA, the producing station of the film, to provide hundreds of free resources to communities around the country for screenings and activities leading up to and beyond the Semiquincentennial. The education and engagement programs for the film were funded in part thanks to a grant from the Kern Family Foundation. Corporate funding for the film, along with additional support for outreach and engagement, was also provided by Burns’s long-time underwriter, Bank of America.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION examines how America’s founding turned the world upside-down. Thirteen British colonies on the Atlantic Coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired centuries of democratic movements around the globe.
An expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States of America, the film follows dozens of figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. Viewers will experience the war through the memories of the men and women who experienced it: the rank-and-file Continental soldiers and American militiamen (some of them teenagers), Patriot political and military leaders, British Army officers, American Loyalists, Native soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free African Americans, German soldiers in the British service, French and Spanish allies, and various civilians living in North America, Loyalist as well as Patriot, including many made refugees by the war. The American Revolution was a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war. It impacted millions – from Canada to the Caribbean and beyond. Few escaped its violence. At one time or another, the British Army occupied all the major population centers in the United States – including New York City for more than seven years.
The Revolution began a movement for people around the world to imagine new and better futures for themselves, their nations, and for humanity. It opened the door to advance civil liberties and human rights, and it asked questions that we are still trying to answer today. “I think to believe in America, rooted in the American Revolution, is to believe in possibility,” the historian Jane Kamensky says in the series. “Everybody, on every side, including people who were denied even the ownership of themselves, hadthe sense of possibility worth fighting for.”
Kamensky is one of dozens of scholars and writers who appear in the film or advised the production, including Rick Atkinson, Friederike Baer, Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk, Darren Bonaparte, Christopher Leslie Brown, Vincent Brown, Colin G. Calloway, Stephen Conway, Iris de Rode, Philip J. Deloria, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Kathleen DuVal, Joseph J. Ellis, Charles E. Frye, Annette Gordon-Reed, Don N. Hagist, William Hogeland, Maya Jasanoff, Edward G. Lengel, William E. Leuchtenburg, Jennifer Loren, Holly A. Mayer, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jeffrey Rosen, Claudio Saunt, Barnet Schecter, Stacy Schiff, Alan Taylor, Michael John Witgen, Kevin J. Weddle, Gordon S. Wood, Serena Zabin, and the late Bernard Bailyn.
Burns’s long-time collaborator Geoffrey C. Ward (THE VIETNAM WAR, JAZZ, BASEBALL, THE CIVIL WAR) wrote the script and is the primary author of the companion book, The American Revolution, which was published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on November 11, 2025.
Led by the cinematographer Buddy Squires, the series features original footage that highlights the beauty and diversity of the North American landscape. The team shot in every season over the course of several years and at nearly a hundred locations, within and beyond the original 13 colonies, including at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, Colonial Williamsburg, Fort Ticonderoga, Jamestown Settlement, Minute Man National Historical Park, Monmouth Battlefield State Park, Mount Vernon, Valley Forge National Historical Park, the South Carolina backcountry, overseas in London and the English countryside, and elsewhere. The filmmakers also worked with extensive networks of reenactors to film troop movement and camp life.
The film, narrated by Peter Coyote, includes the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures, read by a cast of actors, including Adam Arkin, Jeremiah Bitsui, Corbin Bleu, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, Bill Camp, Tantoo Cardinal, Josh Charles, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Keith David, Hope Davis, Marcus Davis-Orrom, Bruce Davison, Leon Dische Becker, Alden Ehrenreich, Craig Ferguson, Morgan Freeman, Christian Friedel, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Michael Greyeyes, Jonathan Groff, Charlotte Hacke, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Lucas Hedges, Josh Hutcherson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gene Jones, Michael Keaton, Joe Keery, Joel Kinnaman, Tracy Letts, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Josh Lucas, Michael Mando, Carolyn McCormick, Lindsay Mendez, Tobias Menzies, Joe Morton, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Jon Proudstar, Matthew Rhys, LaTanya Richardson, Liev Schreiber, Chaske Spencer, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep, and Yul Vazquez, among others.
The film uses a wide variety of music, both from the period and newly composed pieces for the series. Music from the documentary, featuring performances by Brooklyn Rider, Nora Brown & Steph Coleman, Rhiannon Giddens, Jennifer Kreisberg and Yo-Yo Ma among others, was released by In a Circle Records on November 7, 2025.
In addition to using hundreds of 18th-century maps, the filmmakers created and commissioned over a hundred new maps. There are also well over a thousand still images in the film, including paintings, letters, lithographs, and other archival materials, from museums, galleries, and libraries throughout the United States and abroad.
PBS and Florentine Films, Burns’s production company, are working on outreach and engagement with a wide-range of national and local organizations focused on commemorating the country’s founding, including, the National Constitution Center, Colonial Williamsburg, The Smithsonian Institution, The National Parks Service, The National Archives, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, The Museum of the American Revolution, Monticello, Mount Vernon, the American Association for State and Local History, the Aspen Institute, state and local 250 organizations, and many others.
Following the free streaming period, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION will continue to stream on PBS Passport and the “PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel.” PBS station members can view the documentary via PBS Passport as part of a full collection of Ken Burns films. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION is distributed internationally by PBS International.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION is a production of Florentine Films and WETA Washington, D.C. Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. Written by Geoffrey C. Ward. Produced by Sarah Botstein, David Schmidt, Salimah El-Amin and Ken Burns. Edited by Tricia Reidy, Maya Mumma, Charles E. Horton, and Craig Mellish. Co-Produced by Megan Ruffe and Mike Welt. Cinematography by Buddy Squires. Narrated by Peter Coyote. The executive in charge for WETA was John F. Wilson (who passed away in November of 2024). Executive producer is Ken Burns.
Corporate funding for The American Revolution was provided by Bank of America. Major funding was provided by The Better Angels Society and its members Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine with the Crimson Lion Foundation; and the Blavatnik Family Foundation. Major funding was also provided by David M. Rubenstein; The Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Family Foundation; Lilly Endowment Inc.; and the following Better Angels Society members: Eric and Wendy Schmidt; Stephen A. Schwarzman; and Kenneth C. Griffin with Griffin Catalyst. Additional support for The American Revolution was provided by: The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations; The Pew Charitable Trusts; Gilbert S. Omenn and Martha A. Darling; Park Foundation; and the following Better Angels Society members: Gilchrist and Amy Berg; Perry and Donna Golkin; The Michelson Foundation; Jacqueline B. Mars; Kissick Family Foundation; Diane and Hal Brierley; John H. N. Fisher and Jennifer Caldwell; John and Catherine Debs; The Fullerton Family Charitable Fund; Philip I. Kent; Gail Elden; Deborah and Jon Dawson; David and Susan Kreisman; The McCloskey Family Charitable Trust; Becky and Jim Morgan; Carol and Ned Spieker; Mark A. Tracy; and Paul and Shelley Whyte. The American Revolution was made possible, in part, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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