Every Quarter Quell Explained: the 25th, 50th and 75th Hunger Games

Spoiler guide. Everything about the 25th and 75th Games (all of Catching Fire) is open. For the 50th Games, the story of Sunrise on the Reaping, only the twist and the winner appear above the marked spoiler line near the end.

What is a Quarter Quell?

A Quarter Quell was a special Hunger Games held every 25 years, with a twist on who had to fight. Each one marked another quarter-century since the Capitol defeated the districts in the Dark Days, and was meant to keep the memory of that rebellion fresh. Every known Quell changed the reaping in some way; the 50th and 75th also came with arena twists.

The twist was kept secret until the Quell was announced. The President took a card from a box of envelopes said to have been sealed when the Games’ laws were written, and read out that year’s rule along with the Capitol’s reason for it.

Every Quarter Quell at a glance

	First Quell	Second Quell	Third Quell
Games	25th	50th	75th
The twist	Each district voted for its tributes instead of drawing names	Twice the tributes: two girls and two boys per district, 48 in all	Tributes reaped from each district’s living victors
The Capitol’s stated reason	To remind the rebels their children died because the rebels chose violence	Two rebels died for every Capitol citizen, so the districts pay double	Even the strongest rebels can’t overcome the Capitol
The arena	The first one built from scratch, and the first with a Cornucopia	Spoiler: see below	A clock: 12 wedges, each with an hourly horror
Victor	Unknown	Haymitch Abernathy, District 12	None: the Games were broken off
Where it’s told	Mentioned in Catching Fire and Sunrise on the Reaping	Sunrise on the Reaping (book 2025, film due November 20, 2026)	Catching Fire (book 2009, film 2013)

What happened in the First Quarter Quell?

For the 25th Hunger Games, the districts didn’t hold a reaping: they held an election, and voted in the 24 tributes they would send. When Katniss hears about it in Catching Fire, she thinks it must have been worse than the lottery, because your own neighbours chose you.

The vote wasn’t the only new thing. The 25th is where much of the Games you know began:

• The first purpose-built arena. From the 11th to the 24th Games, the Gamemakers reused wild land or bombed-out towns. For the 25th they built a one-time arena from scratch.
• The first Cornucopia stood in that arena.
• The chariot rides through the Capitol, in costumes themed on each district, were introduced the same year.
• “May the odds be ever in your favor” was first said by Dr. Volumnia Gaul, Head Gamemaker of the early Games, who commentated alongside host Lucky Flickerman. It caught on as Panem’s way of wishing a tribute luck.

What nobody knows is who won. The victor is never named, and none of the other 23 tributes are either. Peeta guesses the winner had died by the 75th Games, because Effie only sent him and Katniss tapes of living victors, and the 25th wasn’t among them.

What was the Second Quarter Quell?

The 50th Hunger Games doubled the reaping: every district sent four tributes, two girls and two boys, instead of the usual two. Haymitch Abernathy of District 12 won it, and 24 years later, when Katniss is reaped, he is still his district’s only living victor.

It’s the Quell behind Sunrise on the Reaping (2025) and its film adaptation, due in cinemas on November 20, 2026. Our Sunrise on the Reaping guide covers what to know before you watch. How the 50th Games actually went, including how Haymitch won, is in the spoiler section at the end of this page.

What happened in the Third Quarter Quell?

For the 75th Hunger Games, the tributes were reaped from each district’s living victors, so people who had already survived the arena were sent back in. It’s the second half of Catching Fire, and the twist was so convenient for President Snow that Katniss believed it was chosen to kill her and stamp out the uprisings she had sparked.

(Spoilers for Catching Fire in this section.)

• Who went in: 59 victors were alive to draw from, and every district had at least one man and one woman. Katniss was District 12’s only living female victor. Haymitch’s name came out for the boys, and Peeta volunteered to take his place. In District 4, 80-year-old Mags volunteered for Annie Cresta.
• Adults in the arena: the 12-to-18 age rule was ignored for the only time in the Games’ history. Katniss and Peeta, both 17, were the only tributes under 18.
• The arena was a ring of jungle and beach around a saltwater lake, laid out like a clock. Each of its 12 wedges set off its own horror at its own hour: lightning, blood rain, poison fog, monkey mutts, jabberjays screaming in loved ones’ voices, a tidal wave. The Cornucopia held only weapons; fresh water was hidden inside the trees.
• How it ended: in the early hours after the third day, Katniss tied Beetee’s wire to an arrow and shot it into the force field just as lightning hit, blowing it out. Rebels from District 13 lifted out Katniss, Finnick and Beetee; Peeta, Johanna and Enobaria were captured by the Capitol.

Six tributes were still alive, so no victor was ever crowned, the only Games to end without one. Fifteen minutes later, the Capitol bombed District 12 and the Second Rebellion began. The 75th turned out to be the last official Hunger Games.

Were the Quell twists really written 75 years in advance?

The Capitol said so, but the story gives reasons to doubt it. The official line was that the twists were all drawn up when the Games’ laws were written after the Dark Days, with “centuries” of Games planned. Katniss didn’t believe it: the victors’ twist was too useful to Snow, arriving exactly when he needed her gone. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, set ten years after those laws, also never mentions Quarter Quells, which suggests they were added later, as the Games grew into their modern form.

In the films it’s different. A deleted scene from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire shows Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee opening a locker marked LXXV (75) and burning the envelope inside, the original twist. The room holds enough lockers to suggest around 80 Quells were prepared. That scene isn’t in the books.

Was there ever a fourth Quarter Quell?

No. The fourth would have been the 100th Hunger Games, and the Games were abolished after the Second Rebellion, under President Paylor. The nearest thing to a sequel was President Coin’s proposal, in Mockingjay, for one last “symbolic” Games using the children of the Capitol’s leaders. The surviving victors approved it 4 to 3, but it was never held. Any “4th Quarter Quell” twist you see online is fan invention.

Books vs films: what’s different?

	Books	Films
The 75th envelope	Snow reads the card aloud; Katniss only suspects the twist was picked to target her	A deleted scene shows Plutarch burning the original 75th envelope
Haymitch’s Games in Catching Fire	Katniss and Peeta watch a recap of the 50th Games, a whole chapter	The recap isn’t in the film
Arena outfits in the 75th	Thin blue jumpsuits with a padded belt that floats	Black wetsuits with grey and white accents; no float belt
Mags in the 75th	Needs a cane to reach the stage	No walking aid
Length of the 75th	The shortest known Games	Counted as the second shortest

For the 50th Games, only the book is out. We’ll add any film differences after November 20.

---

Spoilers for Sunrise on the Reaping below.

How did Haymitch win the Second Quarter Quell?

Haymitch won by spotting that the arena’s force field threw back anything that hit it. In the last fight, Silka Sharp of District 1 threw her axe at him near the cliff edge; he dropped, the axe struck the force field, flew back and fatally wounded her. In Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta watch this ending on a recap. Sunrise reveals that recap was heavily edited by the Capitol, which cut out the rebel side of his Games.

The rest of the 50th, briefly:

• Haymitch wasn’t drawn. The boy whose name was called, Woodbine Chance, ran and was shot; Haymitch was picked to replace him. He’s the only person ever reaped for two Quarter Quells. District 12’s tribute Louella McCoy died in the chariot parade and was replaced by a body double, so the 50th technically had 50 tributes, not 48.
• The arena was a “poison paradise”: a gorgeous meadow where nearly everything was poisonous, except rainwater and the Cornucopia’s supplies. Its snowy mountain was a volcano.
• The deadliest bloodbath: 18 of the 48 tributes died in the opening fight at the Cornucopia.
• A rebel plot ran through it. Haymitch, with help from Ampert Latier of District 3, bombed a water tank under the arena (Ampert brought the bombs and fuse; Haymitch planted the charge alone); after he won, Haymitch threw a bomb at the arena’s generator. Beetee, Wiress, Mags and Plutarch were tied up in this plot and in the one at the 75th Games.
• Who else died near the end: his District 12 ally Maysilee Donner was killed by bird mutts, and Wellie of District 6 by Silka, leaving Haymitch and Silka as the final two.
• The cost: Haymitch’s trick made the Capitol look foolish. Within two weeks his mother, younger brother and girlfriend Lenore Dove were dead, which goes a long way to explaining the mentor Katniss meets.

Where to go next

• Sunrise on the Reaping explained: Haymitch’s story, with and without spoilers.
• How the Hunger Games work: the normal reaping, tesserae and the Careers that every Quell twisted.
• The districts of the Hunger Games: who sent the tributes, and what each district makes.
• Everything else is on the Hunger Games world page.