One Piece‘s anime is finally coming back for new episodes this April as part of the new wave of Spring 2026 anime, and fans have gotten a cool new look at what’s coming in the Elbaph Arc with the first look at a major new addition to the cast. One Piece wrapped up the Egghead Arc last year with the announcement that the production was going to go through a massive change from then on. Starting in 2026 and beyond, One Piece is going over to a new seasonal release schedule.
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Rather than releasing new episodes every week, we’re now going to get the anime as part of the rest of the seasonal anime schedule from now on. One Piece: Elbaph Arc will be seeing Monkey D. Luffy finally land on the legendary island of giants that has been teased for decades, and the newest trailer released during the AnimeJapan 2026 weekend introduces fans to a major new addition to the cast, Yuichi Nakamura (Satoru Gojo in Jujutsu Kaisen) as the voice of Loki. Check it out below.
When Does One Piece: Elbaph Arc Premiere?
One Piece: Elbaph Arc will premiere on April 5th in Japan as part of the Spring 2026 anime schedule, and will be streaming with Crunchyroll on United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Then just a week later on April 11th, the newest episodes will be available for streaming with Netflix as well. Release information about the English dub release has yet to be revealed as of the time of this writing, however.
Also revealed with this newest AnimeJapan 2026 trailer is the newest opening theme for the anime titled “Luminous” as performed by Aina The End. The new ending theme is titled “Sono Mirai” as performed by 36km/h. One Piece is entering an entirely new era for the production behind the Elbaph Arc thanks to an entirely new release schedule, and fans are about to see a much better paced version of the series moving forward.
One Piece: Elbaph Arc Will Have Less Episodes Than Previous Seasons
With the change in this schedule, the production team behind One Piece have confirmed that the anime will only release 26 episodes in total this year compared to the episodes aired throughout the entire year seen before. This change is going to be the schedule the anime follows from now on, but it’s also planning to adapt Eiichiro Oda’s original manga at a much quicker pace than ever before.
The One Piece team is promising to deliver episodes that better reflect the pace and flow of Oda’s original version of the story, and that’s been one of the biggest criticisms that fans have had about the anime release for a very long time. But if the anime tightens all of that up and continues to deliver on the kinds of visual spectacle that fans have come to hope from the anime, then there’s not going to be any issues at all.
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