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The Archive of Our Own (AO3) outage described in the January 21, 2026 report was scheduled maintenance, not an unannounced incident. It was expected to last about 15 hours while AO3 worked on bookmark and series search. The dates and times below refer to that past maintenance window; they are not a current service alert.
When was AO3 scheduled to go down?
Mashable reported that maintenance was due to start Wednesday, January 21, 2026, at 3:00 a.m. ET / 12:00 a.m. PT and last approximately 15 hours. The report estimated AO3 might return around 6:00 p.m. ET / 3:00 p.m. PT at the earliest. Those were estimates: the work could finish sooner or take longer. Read the January 21 report republished by Yahoo Tech.
What was the maintenance for?
The planned work focused on improving bookmark and series search, rather than addressing a reported security incident or an unannounced outage. The announced changes included:
- Adding filtering and sorting of works by word count.
- Fixing bookmark search results when a work’s tags contain both letters and numbers.
- Preventing series blurbs from including tags used only on draft works.
Is AO3 down now?
The January report does not establish AO3’s current status. If you are checking whether the site is available now, consult AO3’s official status page or its official Tumblr, Bluesky, or X accounts for current updates. An old estimated return time should not be treated as a live service notice.
Quick Recap
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