In what year did Law & Order: SVU premiere?

“In what year did Law & Order: SVU premiere?” — The answer is 1999. The series premiered on NBC on September 20, 1999, with the pilot episode “Payback.”

Created by Dick Wolf, SVU was the first spin-off of the original Law & Order series. It introduced a new team focused on sexually based offenses, including detectives Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler, played by Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni. Richard Belzer also joined the cast as John Munch.

The first season ran across the 1999–2000 television season and contained 22 episodes. That span can cause confusion: although the season concluded in 2000, the series itself began in 1999.

Another common mistake is choosing 1990, the premiere year of the original Law & Order. SVU arrived nearly a decade later and eventually became the longest-running series in the Law & Order franchise, with its own cast, setting, and investigative focus.