Toei Animation has announced a revised production timetable for One Piece. After the Egghead Island storyline concludes in January, the television anime will pause for roughly three months and resume in April with the start of the Elbaph arc.
Beginning in 2026, the series will shift to a biannual season structure, delivering up to two seasons per year for a combined maximum of 26 episodes. Toei says this approach will allow the anime to better reflect the manga’s pacing and detail, improving tempo and fidelity to Eiichiro Oda’s storytelling. The studio also teased “exciting surprises” during the hiatus — including related projects such as the upcoming Netflix live-action season 2, which is scheduled to premiere during the break.
Toei Animation tweet about ONE PIECE production update (October 28, 2025)
The anime previously observed a six-month production hiatus from October 2024 to April 2025 to raise animation quality and give the manga additional room to get ahead. That pause helped the team deliver more polished action sequences, stronger visuals, and fewer recap-heavy episodes across the season.
According to the announcement on the ONE PIECE NEWS segment on YouTube — and translations shared by @WSJ_manga — the new schedule may result in a pacing closer to one manga chapter per episode in many cases, with some episodes covering around one-and-a-half chapters when necessary to balance runtime.
This change marks the end of the long-standing, near-year-round broadcast model that once produced many filler arcs in franchises like Naruto, Bleach, and earlier stretches of One Piece. Modern seasonal production — one or two seasons per year — gives studios the breathing room to increase animation quality and remain more faithful to the source material, even if it means occasional pauses between runs.
Source: Polygon
