Science & Tech · Big Tech & Internet · 1 hr ago
Archive of Our Own could be offline for up to four weeks
Archive of Our Own went offline for maintenance on Thursday, leaving its fanfiction and creative-writing archive unavailable.
The site is run by the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit.
AO3 hosts more than 18.4 million works across over 82,900 fandoms, according to figures from September.
The operator estimates restoration will take around two weeks, but says it could take up to four weeks.
It hopes to bring the site back sooner in a limited state, though it may need to take it offline again while work continues.
The outage matters to the many readers and writers who use AO3 to share and access fan-created stories.
The organization will post updates as restoration progresses on its status page and social accounts.
Archive of Our Own (AO3) went offline for maintenance on Thursday, October 29.
The Organization for Transformative Works, which runs AO3, said restoring service could take around two weeks and up to four weeks.
Nerdist described the expected outage as two to four weeks, while 404 Media reported an estimate of around two weeks and a possible maximum of a month.
OTW said it hoped to restore the site sooner in a degraded state, with possible temporary outages while the issue is resolved.
As of September, AO3 hosted more than 18.4 million works across more than 82,900 fandoms.
- Who
- Archive of Our Own (AO3), run by the Organization for Transformative Works.
- What
- The site went offline for maintenance. Restoration could take around two weeks and up to four weeks.
- When
- Thursday, October 29, 2026.
- Where
- Online; the site is unavailable.
- Why
- The site was taken down for maintenance. The reason for the maintenance is not stated.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
OTW said AO3 was down for maintenance and initially estimated the outage would last at least 12 hours.
OTW said restoration would take around two weeks and could take up to four weeks.
- Estimated restoration
- Around two weeks; up to four weeks
- Operator
- Organization for Transformative Works
- Works hosted
- More than 18.4 million as of September
- Fandoms represented
- More than 82,900 as of September
4 sources
What people are saying
We are hopeful that we will be able to bring the site back up in a degraded state sooner. If that does happen, there may be times when the site has to be brought down temporarily until this is fully resolved. Please stay tuned for further info
Posts on X
We estimate that service restoration for #AO3 will take around 2 weeks but it could be up to 4 weeks. We are hopeful that we will be able to bring the site back up in a degraded state sooner. Refer to our status page for updates: