Attention, Hearties! When Call the Heart is getting a temporary schedule shakeup. 

Keep reading to find out why the next episode of the Hallmark Channel show won’t be airing in its usual Sunday night timeslot and when you can watch it instead. 

The next episode of ‘When Calls the Heart’ Season 12 will air Feb. 8 

New episodes of When Calls the Heart typically air on Sunday evenings and stream the next day on Hallmark+. But that’s changing for season 12’s sixth episode. 

Rather than airing on Sunday, Feb.9, “When Autumn Leaves Begin to Fall” will air on a special night and time: Saturday, Feb. 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. (Stream the next day on Hallmark+.) The new episode airs immediately after the premiere of The Wish Swap, which features a special cameo from When Calls the Heart cast member Pascale Hutton, aka Rosemary Coulter. 

What’s behind the When Calls the Heart schedule change? You can blame the big game. Super Bowl LIX will take place on Feb. 9, and Hallmark doesn’t want to go head-to-head against that event, which will see the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans. 

This isn’t the first time Hallmark has made schedule adjustments for football. In 2024, the network decided not to air a new episode of The Way Home on Super Bowl Sunday. 

Instead of a new installment of When Calls the Heart, Hallmark will air a marathon of The Way Home Season 3 episodes on Sunday. Also on the schedule are repeats of two football-themed romances. Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story airs at 12 p.m. ET/PT. It stars Hunter King as a Chiefs superfan and Tyler Hynes as the team’s director of marketing. At 10 p.m. ET/PT, tune it to Fourth Down and Love, which stars Hutton as a single mom who connects with a former pro football player (Ryan Paevey). 

Melissa Gilbert guest stars on the Hallmark Channel series 

While the When Calls the Heart schedule switch might throw some fans off, they’ll definitely want to make an effort to catch the next episode, which will feature a special guest appearance from Little House on the Prairie alum Melissa Gilbert. She’ll play a forensic investigator named Georgie McGill who shares a past — and perhaps a romantic connection — with Bill Avery (Jack Wagner). Gilbert will have a two-episode arc. 

Here’s Hallmark’s synopsis for “When Autumn Leaves Begin to Fall”: 

“When Allie and Oliver discover a threat, Rosemary invites the kids to debate Lucas on the radio. Bill interrogates a suspect with an old friend’s help. Elizabeth fights a cold.”

For more on the entertainment world and exclusive interviews, subscribe to Showbiz Cheat Sheet’s YouTube channel.