One Piece Anime Confirms Elbaph Arc Premiere Date With First Look Trailer

One Piece is gearing up to return for the anime’s take on the Elbaph Arc next Spring, and a premiere date for the next season has been confirmed with the first look trailer showing it all off. One Piece is going through a massive schedule change for 2026 and beyond. With the Egghead Arc wrapping up its final episodes later this week, One Piece will be shifting over to a new seasonal release schedule with the plan of releasing only 26 episodes a year from now on.

This new anime schedule will be kicking off with One Piece: Elbaph Arc. One Piece‘s anime will be taking a few months off before returning next April with the next season of the series, and those behind the scenes are promising it will be adapted at a faster pace than seen in the TV series before. As for how Elbaph is going to make the jump to the anime, you can check out the first look at the arc with a new trailer and poster released during the Jump Festa 2026 weekend.

When Does One Piece: Elbaph Arc Come Out?

One Piece: Elbaph Arc will be making its premiere in Japan on April 5th as part of the Spring 2026 anime schedule, and will be running for 26 episodes through the rest of the year. It’s yet to be revealed what this new pace is going to look like in motion, but the staff at Toei Animation did detail that each episode is going to adapt at least a single chapter of Eiichiro Oda’s original manga with the intent of matching the manga’s pacing more closely.

These changes to One Piece’s schedule are some of the most monumental seen in the current anime landscape. It was one of the final major franchises still producing weekly episode releases, and now that it is going fully seasonal, this might be the way we see new anime adapted from now on. Weekly anime releases are quickly going to be a thing of the past in the wake of this change, but the full scope of that impact likely won’t be fully realized for quite some time.

What’s Next for One Piece in 2026?

One Piece: Elbaph Arc will be debuting next April, but it’s not the only major release One Piece has planned for the next year. Netflix is also going to be releasing Season 2 of the One Piece live-action series next March (with the third season already in production), so it’s going to be a very eventful Spring for fans of the franchise following a few months of hiatus. There’s also going to be new chapters of the manga still released every week, and it’s getting further through the Final Saga with each new entry.

During Jump Festa 2026, Eiichiro Oda also confirmed that a new One Piece movie is in the works. But while fans are excited about the idea, Oda did reveal in a message to fans that it’s likely going to be much further off than fans might expect, “As for the new anime film—they haven’t said I’m allowed to say this—I can’t say it’s going particularly well,” the creator stated. “But maybe saying this will light a fire under everyone, LOL. But it’s about something that I’m sure all of you will be very interested in, so I hope you’ll wait patiently for it.”

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