Picture: Netflix
First debuting on Netflix in February 2021, Tribes of Europa was Netflix’s big new German sci-fi series coming off the back of Dark, featuring a young cast and set in a future where nations have slipped into being warring tribal microstates.
We must confess that we’re quite late in reporting this cancellation, as the showrunner behind the title confirmed that the show wouldn’t return over the past two years. Either way, given that the top result for Tribes of Europa season 2 on Google currently results in some pretty bad spam on Google, we’re happy to close the book for good.
The cancelation was confirmed by the writer, director, and executive producer of the series, Philip Koch, on multiple occasions via Twitter/X when responding to fans enquiring about the future of the series.
The first major announcement came back in April 2022, when Philip responded to a fan who was asking about a second season, saying:
“Yeah, man, it was cancelled, unfortunately. Huge Bummer. I need a kickstarter or something for season 2, it’s all on paper and ready to go.”
From that, we can tell that a second season was already written and ready to go but didn’t do enough to warrant a second season. In early 2023, to confirm Netflix didn’t change its mind, Koch responded to another question about a second season and responded with:
“No, unfortunately”
Picture: Netflix
Why did Tribes of Europa get canceled?
It almost certainly came down to viewing numbers, although because the show was released so long ago, we don’t have refined numbers for shows as we do now.
What we do have is top 10 data courtesy of FlixPatrol, and there we can see a likely reason why the show failed to get a second-season renewal. Per their data, the show only resided in the Netflix top 10s for a period of 23 days, and crucially, it didn’t stay in the top 10s in its home region of Germany for more than 18 days. We typically find that a show has to be sticky within the top 10s for at least a month to warrant a renewal.
There’s some good news…
The good news is that Philip Koch has recently worked on a new Netflix project, which has just been released. Titled 60 Minutes, the frantic new German-language movie is about an MMA fighter who ditches his big match to attend her daughter’s birthday party.
We’re also led to believe Koch is working on another Netflix movie teaming up with Wiedemann & Berg Television, but we don’t have any concrete on that and have reached out to Netflix for more.
Are you disappointed that Tribes of Europa won’t be back for a second season? Let us know in the comments.