The Hunger Games is Suzanne Collins' story of Panem, a country in what was once North America, where a ruling city called the Capitol forces each of its 12 districts to send one girl and one boy aged 12 to 18 to fight to the death on live television every year. The Games began as punishment for a failed uprising, the Dark Days, and every 25th edition is a Quarter Quell with an extra twist. The newest chapter, Sunrise on the Reaping, follows Haymitch Abernathy into the 50th Games; the book came out in March 2025 and the film opens on November 20, 2026. Ladeeda Worlds puts you inside Panem and asks how you would get through it.
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In the Hunger Games, Panem, the country that replaced North America, is a ruling city called the Capitol plus 13 districts that each supply it with one thing: District 12 mines coal, 11 farms, 7 cuts lumber and 4 fishes.
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Sunrise on the Reaping is Haymitch Abernathy's story.
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In The Hunger Games, a Quarter Quell was a special edition of the Games held every 25 years to mark the districts' defeat in the Dark Days, each with a twist on who was sent into the arena.
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In the Hunger Games, each of Panem's 12 districts had to send one girl and one boy aged 12 to 18 to fight to the death on live TV every year.
Panem is a ruling city, the Capitol, and the districts that feed, fuel and build for it. There were 13. After the Dark Days, the rebellion the districts lost, the Capitol announced that District 13 had been wiped out, and the Treaty of Treason that ended the war created the Hunger Games: every year, on reaping day, each of the 12 remaining districts hands over two of its children as tributes, and only one is meant to come home.
The story is told across five books, all but the newest already filmed. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes goes back to the 10th Games and a young Coriolanus Snow, 64 years before Katniss Everdeen. Sunrise on the Reaping is set 24 years before her, at the 50th Games, the Second Quarter Quell, when every district had to send twice as many tributes, and it is Haymitch Abernathy’s story. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay follow Katniss from the day she volunteers in her sister’s place.
The guides here answer what people actually ask about this world: how the reaping works, what each district does, what made each Quarter Quell different and who won. Each one starts with a short answer, says when the books and films differ, and puts anything that spoils Sunrise on the Reaping below a clear warning line. Videos are on the way, and until each one is out, its guide shows when to expect it.
Lore reference: The Hunger Games Wiki on Fandom (text by Fandom contributors, CC BY-SA).