The first season of Degrassi: Next Class (previously known as Degrassi) premiered on January 4, 2016, in Canada and was released on January 15, 2016, internationally. It was the first season to air on Family in Canada and on Netflix internationally.

This season follows a group of high school sophomores and juniors from Degrassi Community School, a fictional school in Toronto, Ontario, and depicts some of the typical issues and challenges common to a teenager's life. This season will depict a new school year after the previous seniors, some of whom debuted during "The Next Generation", graduated in the previous season. This season will feature another rebranding for the series and is being considered a stand-alone series.

This series is a continuum from Degrassi: Next generation as it follows the remaining underclassmen along with few new students as they enter their sophomore and junior year. This series dives into serious and dark topic that affect the new generation of viewers watching otherwise known as Gen Z. Issues such as Cystic fibrosis, Racial discrimination, Sexuality, Islamophobia, Immigration, Cyberbullying, mental illness, school shootings and social media.

The first season has nineteen actors receiving star billing with fourteen of them returning from the previous series. Those in bold are new to the cast this season:

After the cancellation of Degrassi's 14-season run on TeenNick, Nickelodeon passed on the pitch for "Degrassi: Next Class". This reboot of the series was later picked up by Netflix and is considered a stand-alone series for a new generation—a new incarnation. This season was filmed along with season 2. The show was given a 20 episode order with the episodes being split into two seasons on Netflix and Family. Series stars' Amir Bageria and Stefan Brogren, confirmed this before the airing of episode 10. F2N and Degrassi are also advertising episode 10 as the season finale of season 1. Filming for the two seasons began in June 2015 and wrapped early September the same year.