Hunger Games new book and movie Sunrise on the Reaping release dates announced

Following her best-selling Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins published a prequel novel called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

The book was set 64 years before the events of the original novel and its follow-up has been announced today.

Sunrise on the Reaping will revisit the world of Panem 40 years later (24 years before The Hunger Games).

The fifth book in the series will begin on the morning of the 50th Hunger Games reaping, also known as the Second Quarter Quell.

Fans will know this is the one that Haymitch Abernathy competed in before later mentoring Katniss and Peeta in The Hunger Games.

Sunrise on the Reaping will be published on March 18, 2025 in print, digital and audio formats.

Scholastic said: “Suzanne Collins has done it again, bringing us back to the world of Panem in order to ask us important questions about our own world.

“Sunrise on the Reaping is a remarkable book, bringing new complexity, perspective, and revelations to a piece of the Hunger Games story that readers have longed to know more about.”

Collins herself added: “With Sunrise on the Reaping, I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.’ The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”

All four Hunger Games books so far have been adapted into movies by Lionsgate. Most recently The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was released in November last year.

And alongside the book Sunrise on the Reaping, its film adaptation is already in the works with a release date of November 20, 2026.

Woody Harrelson portrayed Haymitch Abernathy in The Hunger Games movies so the film will star a younger version of his character.