Yes, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to The Hunger Games. It revisits Panem nearly 64 years before the events of the original trilogy, focusing on a young Coriolanus Snow and the 10th Hunger Games rather than Katniss Everdeen’s rebellion. The novel reframes the origins of the Capitol’s excess and the foundations of the authoritarian systems the earlier trilogy depicts.
This article explains how the book and its 2023 film adaptation position the story as prequel material, what that means for characters and worldbuilding, and how the timeline, themes, and political arc relate to Suzanne Collins’s earlier work.