Fan fiction website AO3 is down, and it could take weeks to recover

The site's data is reportedly intact, but the cause of the outage is still unknown.

By Ian Carlos Campbell Oct. 29, 2026 5:18 pm EST Garun .Prdt/Shutterstock Add Engadget on Google: Google Discover

Archive of Our Own (AO3), one of the best-known homes for people who read and write fan fiction online, is currently down for maintenance. The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the nonprofit that founded AO3, took the site offline just after 3AM ET and originally planned to keep it down for only 12 hours, per its status page, but now says maintenance could take weeks.