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The Simpsons is officially celebrating Homer Simpson’s birthday for another year, and with it has highlighted one of the ongoing animated series’ biggest problems. The Simpsons is currently working through Season 36 of the animated series, and has even been renewed with Fox for four more seasons. It’s a historic deal that included many of the other animated hits with the network, and will be taking The Simpsons up through Season 40 when it’s all said and done. But for the characters themselves, they are all still existing within the same pocket of sliding time that they always have been in.
It’s the kind of sliding time period that really comes further into picture when celebrating Homer’s birthday. Homer was born on May 12th according to one picture of his driver’s license revealed in the past (and a recent update from the series’ official social media account), and he was revealed to be born in 1956 as a result. This lined up with every other instance of his past revealed in the series before, but that’s not really the case anymore the further the series continues. Because as of 2025, Homer’s now 69 years old.
How Old Is Homer in The Simpsons?
As of his latest birthday this year, Homer is now 69 after being born on May 12th, 1956. But that’s clearly not the case for The Simpsons itself as it’s been on a sliding timeline as the seasons rolled on. While there have been some key episodes that tied The Simpsons‘ most important events to particular time periods (such as Homer and Marge meeting in high school in the 1970s), the later seasons have instead chosen to no longer highlight how clear those eras really were. It wasn’t a full retcon or anything like that, but it’s gotten close before.
Episodes like the 90s inspired “That ’90s Show” back in Season 19 attempted to retool the timeline to have Homer and Marge be in college during the 1990s (and would thus make them about 20 years younger), but it led to such a huge backlash from fans that a shift on that scale hasn’t really been attempted ever since. But there have been small acknowledgements on how things have shifted in the seasons since, and even more where the characters have noted how they haven’t really aged over the years either.
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Will The Simpsons Ever Really Age?
The Simpsons themselves won’t ever really age despite how many years have gone by, and it’s because animation affords the series to have that kind of longevity. But the floating timeline has not been lost on those behind the scenes either as Season 36 famously kicked off by addressing how long the series has been directly. The first episode of this new season not only imagined what the series finale for The Simpsons would actually look like, but also focused it on a new birthday.
Because while birthdays have been celebrated on The Simpsons before, “Bart’s Birthday” saw Bart freaking out over the fact that he was actually be turning 11. It was the series openly challenging one of its biggest issues face to face, and acknowledging that time was passing. But at the end of the day, it was decided to keep things as they are to keep the animated series moving. So while Homer is basically knocking on 70, don’t expect The Simpsons to actually point it out any time soon. But if you watch the latest episode, he’s acting like a senior anyway so it all balances out.
