How old is Haymitch in ‘The Hunger Games’?

The Hunger Games lives on, with Suzanne Collins having recently announced a March 2025 release date for her latest novel set in the dystopian universe; Sunrise on the Reaping. Lionsgate revealed a November 2026 film adaptation more or less within the same breath, and now all we can do is somehow contain our excitement until then.

The book — and, by extension, the movie — will follow a young Haymitch Abernathy as he’s plunged into the 50th Annual Hunger Games, whose Quarter Quell twist saw him as one of four children reaped rather than two, and therefore bringing that year’s body count to 47 rather than 23. Is it any wonder he grew up to be both an alcoholic and a revolutionary?

In fairness, by the time he got around to mentoring Katniss and Peeta, Haymitch was plenty old enough to be allowed to claim aloof bitterness as a core personality trait.

How old is Haymitch in The Hunger Games?

Haymitch, as revealed in the book Mockingjay, was sixteen years old when he won the Hunger Games. We know that Sunrise on the Reaping is set 24 years before the events of the original Hunger Games novel, so that would put Haymitch at 40 years old by the time Katniss and Peeta were called upon to represent District 12. That would subsequently put him between 40-42 years old across the whole original Hunger Games trilogy.

And now the big question; what actor will be able to pass as both a sixteen-year-old and a younger version of Woody Harrelson by the time Sunrise on the Reaping enters production? Twitter, do your stuff!