When will ‘Abbott Elementary’ return for its third season? ABC just announced a date

We finally know when we’ll see Janine Teagues in the halls again.

Abbott Elementary will return for its Season 3 premiere on Feb. 7, ABC announced Thursday. And it will be longer. The show’s premiere episode will be an hour-long compared to the usual half-hour format.

It’s part of ABC’s new midseason premiere schedule, which also includes new seasons for The Conners and 9-1-1.

TV sitcoms across networks were rocked by the respective writers’ and actors’ guild strikes for more equitable working conditions. The recently resolved strikes forced pauses in production schedules that would typically already be well under way by this time in fall.

Last year, Abbott Elementary’s second season premiered in September. And since its air schedule typically lines up with a traditional school calendar, a February debut has posed challenges, the show’s creator Quinta Brunson said.

» READ MORE: When will ‘Abbott Elementary’ be back? What we know after the end of the actors’ strike.

“Our season will still be on the school calendar. [But] last year, we started airing in September, when school started. We’re not doing that this year,” Brunson told Deadline. “It’s not like coming back to a family show where you can pop in on that family on any sitcom-y thing. It’s really like, what’s going on in the school?”

She added that the hiccup has forced her team to be creative when it comes to “explaining our absence ... in a way that we think engages the audience [and] protects the world we built.”

Brunson also confirmed that this season of Abbott will have fewer episodes because of the strikes’ impact. Last season, the show had 22 episodes.

Abbott Elementary’s Season 3 debut on Feb. 7 at 9 p.m. will be sandwiched between coinciding season premieres for Not Dead Yet and Judge Steve Harvey. Later that month and the following month, other anticipated shows including The Good Doctor and Grey’s Anatomy will also return.