While we're waiting for a premiere date for season three of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which will hopefully be in the first quarter of 2025, Trek Central reports that Production Weekly has confirmed that pre-production on the fourth season has already begun. Series star, Jess Bush, who plays Nurse Chapel, said back in November that the fourth season would begin filming in March 2025. It's entirely possible that filming will be underway while new season three episodes are airing.
Production Weekly has listed the first quarter of 2025 to July 2025 as the dates for work on season four of Strange New Worlds. While pre-production usually includes scheduling, sets, costumes, and the like, the second stage of the production involves the actual filming. The final stage of production is post-production which includes any edits, sound mixing, and special effects which can take a while. Filming for season three of the series wrapped on May 24, 2024, and, eight months later, we still don't have a release date yet.
We don't expect to see both season three and four in 2025, so after the ten episodes we get from season three, we'll most likely be waiting another eight months or so for a season four release. It does seem like a long wait for ten episodes when network television series generally only have a four-to-five month delay between seasons that often run close to twenty-two episodes.
If Paramount gave us more episodes, the wait time would probably be a lot less. Alas, it doesn't look like that's going to happen as Strange New Worlds has stuck to the ten episode schedule since the series debuted in May 2022. And, as has been the tradition, the series will more than likely receive a season five pick-up order before season four premieres.
At least we know we have season three to look forward to this year, unlike last year when we didn't have any new episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!