SpongeBob SquarePants, also known simply as SpongeBob, is an American animated comedy television series created by marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg for Nickelodeon. It first aired as a sneak peek after the 1999 Kids’ Choice Awards on May 1, 1999, and officially premiered on July 17, 1999. It chronicles the adventures of the titular character and his aquatic friends in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom.

Hillenburg joined Nickelodeon in 1992 as an artist on Rocko’s Modern Life. After Rocko was cancelled in 1996, he began developing SpongeBob SquarePants into a television series, and in 1997, a seven-minute pilot was pitched to Nickelodeon. The network’s executives wanted SpongeBob to be a child in school, but Hillenburg preferred SpongeBob to be an adult character. He was prepared to abandon the series, but compromised by creating a boating school so SpongeBob could attend school as an adult.

SpongeBob SquarePants received widespread critical acclaim in its early years, with praise given to its characters, surreal humor, writing, visuals, animation, and Hawaiian-influenced soundtrack, with the show’s first three seasons often referred to as its “golden era.” However, the series has also received criticism for a perceived decline in quality, particularly after Hillenburg departed from the series starting with its fourth season onward. Despite this, it is considered by many to be one of the greatest animated series of all time.

The series has run for fifteen seasons, with its sixteenth premiering on June 27, 2025. SpongeBob is the fourth-longest-running American animated series in history, and the longest-running American children’s animated series as of 2025. The series’ popularity has made it a multimedia franchise and Nickelodeon’s most profitable program. By 2019, it had generated over US$13 billion in merchandising revenue.

Since its debut, the series has also had four theatrical feature films, which started with The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004, two feature films for streaming, a Broadway musical, a comic book series, and numerous video games. The series eventually expanded into spin-off series, with the CGI-series Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years and traditionally animated series The Patrick Star Show both premiering in 2021, with the former ending in July 2024.