Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 26 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the twenty-sixth season of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which aired on NBC from October 2024 to May 2025, featuring Capt. Olivia Benson, Sgt. Fin Tutuola, ADA Sonny Carisi, Det. Joe Velasco, Det. Terry Bruno and Det. Kate Silva.
- 1
Fractured
After a pre-law student is beaten to death and two roommates are attacked in their off-campus apartment, a hidden camera in her bedroom leads SVU to her study partner.
- 2
Excavation
A woman’s discovery of her stepfather’s old journal leads SVU to investigate a retired federal judge for abusing her when she was eight.
- 3
Divide & Conquer
When an Albanian robbery crew shoots a wealthy gym owner and rapes his wife during a home invasion, SVU and Rollins’s Intelligence Division team up to catch them before they leave the country.
- 4
Constricted
When a 16-year-old is concussed and choked during her first sexual encounter, SVU traces the choking to pornography that her boyfriend’s father shared.
- 5
Economics of Shame
After a TV reporter is sextorted by a man she met online, SVU works its way up through a ring that uses bait, middlemen and hidden cameras to blackmail its victims.
- 6
Rorschach
An FBI agent asks SVU to take over an attack on two travel influencers at a remote campsite, and the gap between the couple’s online videos and their real lives points the squad toward one of the victims.
- 7
Tenfold
Fin and Bruno hunt the man who choked and raped Wallen Sipes, a sex worker who distrusts police, while Carisi asks Benson to help him check out a substitute teacher.
- 8
Cornered
Carisi stumbles into an armed robbery at his neighborhood deli and spends the day as a hostage while Benson and Rollins work the standoff outside.
- 9
First Light
A video of a professor’s wife in bed with a stranger she cannot remember leads SVU to an online forum and to the man who arranged the encounter.
- 10
Master Key
The search for a missing 16-year-old from a group home leads to a dead locksmith, a string of lies and the caseworker who was supposed to protect him.
- 11
Deductible
A junior insurance agent is assaulted by a prospective client, and SVU finds her boss arranged to leave her alone with him to close the deal.
- 12
Calculated
What looks like a minor case of a teenager with a classmate’s nude photo grows into a sting on dozens of predators, and Silva fears one of them is innocent.
- 13
Extinguished
When a teenage girl is raped in a Washington Heights park near Velasco’s home, he has to win over neighbors who distrust the police, starting with the vigilante upstairs.
- 14
The Grid Plan
A Midwestern tourist raped near Times Square refuses to wait for the police, and her secret diagnosis becomes the defense’s weapon at trial.
- 15
Undertow
A New Jersey teacher who had sex with a 16-year-old at a hotel pool says she was drugged, leaving Carisi to prosecute a case with two possible victims.
- 16
Let Me Bring Pardon
Ellie Hughes, comatose since her boyfriend’s attack, turns out to be pregnant, and the timing points to a rape inside the hospital.
- 17
Accomplice Liability
Carisi, a witness instead of the prosecutor this time, pushes a Brooklyn ADA to hold the surviving deli gunman responsible for everything that happened, including a hostage’s rape.
- 18
The Accuser
A welding shop owner is found sexually assaulted with a date carved into his back, and the investigation uncovers his abuse of a teenage apprentice and a girl whose case against him failed two decades earlier.
- 19
Play with Fire Part 2
In the second half of a crossover with Law & Order, Benson comes to suspect that the decorated lieutenant who supervised a murdered undercover officer raped and killed her and two women from the shelter where she worked.
- 20
Shock Collar
An eight-year-old is taken with her mother’s car during a food delivery, and the squad races to find her after she appears on a website that streams her torture for paying subscribers.
- 21
Aperture
A witness sees a gunpoint assault through a telescope, and the squad finds the victims are wealthy stepsiblings who were forced into sex on camera and are hiding what happened.
- 22
Post-Rage
After a psychiatrist is raped and nearly blinded in her office, the squad works through her patient list while a killer who targets therapists strikes again.