Sunrise on the Reaping sends 48 tributes into the 50th Hunger Games. This guide maps the named tributes to the districts they come from, explains how the Second Quarter Quell doubled the field, and places the story in the wider Panem timeline.
If you only remember four things about the districts in Sunrise on the Reaping, make it these.
The protagonist and eventual victor of the 50th Hunger Games comes from District 12, Panem's coal-mining district. He is 16 during the Games.
The other District 12 tribute fans already know, and the original owner of the mockingjay pin that ends up with Katniss Everdeen.
Haymitch's girlfriend, a descendant of the Covey — the travelling musicians Lucy Gray Baird belonged to.
Because the 50th Games are a Quarter Quell, every district sends four tributes instead of two.
Quarter Quells are the editions of the Hunger Games held every 25 years. Each one carries a special rule twist written in advance by the Capitol, and the twist is always designed to hurt the districts a little more than the last one. The 50th Hunger Games — the Games at the centre of Sunrise on the Reaping — were the Second Quarter Quell, and its twist was brutally simple.
In a normal year the Games field 24 tributes: one boy and one girl from each of the twelve districts. For the Second Quarter Quell, each district had to send twice as many tributes. Districts provided four children instead of two, so the arena opened with 48 tributes — a field exactly double the usual size. Suzanne Collins' novel makes the rule plain at the reaping: every district must provide four tributes instead of the typical two.
That single rule change shapes everything about the story. Twice as many children means twice as many names in the bowl, twice as many families waiting on the broadcast, and an arena built for a much longer, much messier Games. It is also why the 50th Games look so different from the 74th and 75th Games that Katniss Everdeen survives: the Cornucopia is more crowded, the alliances are bigger, and the Career districts have more bodies to throw at the problem.
Three of the four tributes from District 12 are named, and two of them matter as much as Haymitch himself.
Haymitch is a 16-year-old from District 12, the poorest district in Panem. He lives with his widowed mother and his younger brother, Sid, and he supports them by illegally distilling moonshine for the bootlegger Hattie Meeney. The reaping for the 50th Hunger Games falls on his sixteenth birthday — a detail that makes the day even crueller. Twenty-four years later he is the drunk, broken mentor Katniss and Peeta meet in The Hunger Games, and this book explains how he got there.
Maysilee Donner is District 12's other headline tribute and Haymitch's most important ally in the arena. She is also the original owner of the mockingjay pin — the same gold pin that Madge Undersee later gives to Katniss, and which becomes the symbol of the rebellion. Maysilee is Madge's aunt, and in the film adaptation Mckenna Grace plays both Maysilee and her twin sister, Merrilee Donner. If you only follow one thread from this novel back to the original trilogy, follow the pin.
Lenore Dove Baird is Haymitch's girlfriend and, like him, from District 12. She is a descendant of the Covey, the travelling musician community that Lucy Gray Baird belonged to in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which links the two prequels directly. The disagreement between Haymitch and Lenore Dove about whether the reaping can ever end is what gives the novel its title. If that thread interests you, our Covey quiz covers the same corner of the lore.
District 12's remaining two tributes are Wyatt Callow, a betting oddsmaker, and Louella McCoy, Haymitch's neighbour and friend. That makes four children from the smallest, poorest district in Panem — the same district that will only ever produce a handful of victors.
The 48-tribute field means most districts sent two boys and two girls. These are the tributes named in published coverage of Sunrise on the Reaping and its film adaptation, grouped by district.
| District | Tributes named | What we know |
|---|---|---|
| District 1 | Panache Barker, Silka Sharp | Luxury-goods Career district; part of the Career alliance. |
| District 2 | — | Masonry and Peacekeeper district; part of the Career alliance. |
| District 3 | Ampert Latier | Technology district; Ampert is the son of Beetee, victor of the 34th Games. |
| District 4 | Maritte | Fishing district; part of the Career alliance. |
| District 5 | — | Power district; part of the Career alliance. |
| District 6 | Wellie | Transportation district. |
| District 7 | Ringina | Lumber district. |
| District 8 | — | Textiles district; no tribute named in the sources used here. |
| District 9 | Kerna, Clayton | Grain district. |
| District 10 | Buck | Livestock district. |
| District 11 | Hull | Agriculture district; later Rue and Thresh's district. |
| District 12 | Haymitch Abernathy, Maysilee Donner, Wyatt Callow, Louella McCoy | Coal-mining district. Haymitch wins the 50th Games. |
| The Capitol | — (not tributes) | Drusilla Sickle escorts District 12, Plutarch Heavensbee works as a cameraman, Caesar Flickerman hosts. |
A blank tribute column is not a mystery — it simply means the source material used here does not name a tribute from that district. The whole point of the Second Quarter Quell is that all twelve districts send four children, so District 2, 5 and 8 are in the Games whether their names survive the edit or not. If you want the full picture of what each district does and how its people live, our all-districts guide covers all 13 districts plus the Capitol.
The clearest district map in the novel is the alliance structure. Districts 1, 2, 4 and 5 form the Career alliance — the trained, well-fed, well-sponsored tributes who hunt together while everyone else scrambles. The remaining districts, including District 12, are lumped together by the others as the "Newcomers".
That division is the same pattern you see in Katniss's Games, just with more bodies. Our Career districts guide unpacks why Districts 1, 2 and 4 train volunteers in the first place — and why District 12, with one victor in fifty years, never could.
District 12 also had no reachable victors to mentor its tributes in the 50th Games. As a result the tributes were assigned mentors from other districts: Wiress of District 3 and Mags Flanagan of District 4 — both characters fans will recognise from Catching Fire.
The novel is set 24 years before the events of the first Hunger Games book, during the 50th Hunger Games. Reading the franchise in chronological order, that puts Sunrise on the Reaping between the 10th Games covered by The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the 74th Games of The Hunger Games. The 75th Games — the Third Quarter Quell — follow a year later, and the fact that the Second Quarter Quell was also a victor's worst memory is part of why Catching Fire keeps glancing back at Haymitch.
So the ordering runs: the Dark Days, then the first 25th-anniversary Quarter Quell, then the 50th Games and Haymitch's victory, then Katniss's Games, then the Third Quarter Quell and the Second Rebellion. Our full Hunger Games timeline walks through every era with the Quarter Quell rules spelled out, and the Victors Database lists what we know about the winners either side of Haymitch.
What has been publicly confirmed for the film adaptation.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is scheduled for release in the United States on November 20, 2026, in IMAX. It is directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay by Billy Ray and Michael Lesslie, adapts Suzanne Collins' 2025 novel, and is the sixth film in The Hunger Games series — both a sequel to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023) and a prequel to The Hunger Games (2012). Principal photography ran from July to November 2025 in Spain and Germany, and a second official trailer was released on September 16, 2026.
Cast mapped to districts: Joseph Zada plays Haymitch Abernathy and Whitney Peak plays Lenore Dove Baird, both of District 12; Mckenna Grace plays District 12's Maysilee Donner. Ralph Fiennes plays President Coriolanus Snow, Jesse Plemons plays a young Plutarch Heavensbee, Glenn Close plays District 12's Capitol escort Drusilla Sickle, Kieran Culkin plays host Caesar Flickerman, and Elle Fanning plays Effie Trinket. Maya Hawke plays Wiress, Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays Beetee, and Lili Taylor plays Mags.
The novel itself was published by Scholastic on March 18, 2025, as the second prequel in the series. If you would rather test what you already know before the film lands, the Sunrise on the Reaping trivia quiz covers the 50th Games in 20 questions.
Everything above is safe to read before you finish the book. Everything below is not.
The 50th Games are fought in a beautiful arena that turns out to be thoroughly poisonous. Haymitch survives by working with Maysilee Donner at the arena's edge, where he discovers that the force field around the arena's generator repels anything thrown at it. In the final confrontation, the last remaining Career tribute throws her axe at Haymitch; he dodges, the axe rebounds off the force field, and she is killed by her own weapon. A badly injured Haymitch wins the Second Quarter Quell.
Maysilee Donner does not survive to see that ending. She is killed in the arena by engineered waterbird mutts, and the mockingjay pin she carried eventually reaches Katniss Everdeen decades later through Madge Undersee. District 12's Louella McCoy is killed before the Games even properly begin.
The aftermath is the part that turns Haymitch into the man of the original trilogy. On his return to District 12 he finds his home burned and his mother and younger brother Sid dead, and his reunion with Lenore Dove ends with her dying in his arms after Snow arranges a poisoned sweet. Snow's message is unmistakable: winning in a way that embarrasses the Capitol is its own kind of loss. The novel's epilogue is set after the original series, with Haymitch finally telling Katniss and Peeta what happened to him.
The facts on this page are drawn from the following publicly available references.