What’s on The CW tonight? Here is the full The CW schedule for Thursday, October 29, 2026, with times in Eastern Time (ET).

The CW on Thursday: two game shows and a lot of blank space

See also: What's on tonight across all channels | Wednesday's TV guide

Tonight on The CW is a thin night, and there is no dressing it up. Two hours of primetime are game shows, Scrabble at 8pm ET and Trivial Pursuit at 9pm ET, and everything around them is marked Local Programs. If you want a quiet evening of word and trivia games, this is it. If you were hoping for a big scripted hour, it is not on here.

Trivial Pursuit is the better of the two

Trivial Pursuit airs at 9pm ET with the episode “Write, Not Wrong” (S02E26). The series originally aired on Freeform and has 195 episodes to date, so this is a show with real mileage rather than a one-season experiment. It is a game show in the plainest sense, and it fits the format that works best on a Thursday night: you can join at any point, you can play along from the sofa and nothing is lost if you miss ten minutes.

At 9pm ET the other networks have 9-1-1: Nashville on ABC, Ghosts on CBS and Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test on Fox. If you want something lighter than those, this is the obvious alternative. Three stars, and the pick of a quiet evening.

Scrabble opens the evening

Scrabble is on at 8pm ET. The series originally aired on NBC and has run 8 series and 1,574 episodes, a count that makes it the long-runner of the pair. That puts it up against a crowded 8pm, with 9-1-1 on ABC, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage on CBS and The Real Housewives of Orange County on Bravo all starting around the same time. A word game is not going to beat those on spectacle, but it asks for nothing from you either, and that is its case.

Both shows turn up on two days in the current window, today and a week earlier, which suggests a regular weekly place on the schedule and not a one-off. Three stars.

The Local Programs problem

Everything else on the CW’s Thursday is listed as Local Programs: midnight to 6am, 6am to noon, noon to 6pm and 6pm to 8pm, plus 10pm to midnight. Local Programs means the airtime is handed to your local station, so what you actually see there depends on where you live. We cannot tell you what is on in your market.

That includes the 10pm ET slot, the longest block in primetime at two hours. Check your local CW affiliate’s own listings for that stretch. Fox has the same gap at 10pm ET, so the late-night choice is also wide open for viewers who want something different.

How to use the night

Watch Trivial Pursuit at 9pm ET. Treat Scrabble as optional. For anything outside those two hours, look at your local station.


Also on TV tonight at 8pm ET

  • ABC: 9-1-1
  • NBC: The Traitors: New Blood
  • CBS: Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage
  • FOX: Hell’s Kitchen
  • PBS: This Old House
  • ION: FBI
  • TCM: The Beguiled
  • AMC: It (from 6pm ET)
  • FX: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (from 5:30pm ET)
  • Freeform: Monsters University (from 6:05pm ET)

Every channel tonight, side by side · Movies on TV this week · Tomorrow’s TV


Frequently asked questions

What’s on The CW tonight?

On Thursday, October 29, 2026, The CW shows Scrabble at 8pm ET, Trivial Pursuit at 9pm ET and Local Programs at 10pm ET.

Is there a movie on The CW tonight?

No. The CW has no movies in its evening schedule on Thursday, October 29, 2026.

What time does The CW’s evening start?

The evening schedule starts with Local Programs at 6pm ET.