AO3 goes down for maintenance
The gist
AO3, the volunteer-run fanfiction archive, went down for maintenance on Oct 29, with the site saying it expects at least 12 hours.
Users complained they got no advance warning and couldn't save stories to read offline.
How it unfolded
- Oct 23, 2026 23:13 UTCAO3 said it was aware of issues with email notifications, searching, challenge matching, history, and works and bookmarks showing in listings.
- Oct 24, 2026 03:30 UTCAO3 said it had caught up on the backlog and those functions were processing as normal, with no data lost.
- Oct 26, 2026Downdetector registered a surge in user-submitted outage reports for AO3 starting around 1:21 AM Eastern Time; 51% cited server connection issues.