Here’s what to know about the major One Piece hiatus

The One Piece anime has announced that it’s going on a major hiatus in 2026, with the series making some major changes to its release schedule after.

One Piece is one of the longest running anime shows in history (although Sazae-san takes the top spot) so it’s understandable that it has to take occasional breaks. It even recently took a two week break from October 5.

Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re already up to date on the show so we won’t go over the entire premise, but Season 21 has involved Luffy going up against the Five Elders as part of the Egghead Island arc.

But Toei Animation is changing things up as One Piece will go on a three month hiatus at the start of 2026.

One Piece is going on a three month hiatus in January 2026

Yes, One Piece is going on hiatus from January 2026 to March 2026. Toei Animation announced the break on the One Piece YouTube channel on October 28 as part of an update on the entire franchise.

Fans have been frustrated in recent years because the show has crammed in recap and filler episodes into its run as a way of making production easier for the animators.

The 2026 hiatus means that they won’t need to pad out each season with these disappointing episodes, especially as the One Piece anime moves into the Elbaph arc from the manga.

What’s the new One Piece release schedule?

As well as the hiatus, Toei Animation announced that the show will get a new release schedule when it returns in March. Instead of airing weekly episodes, One Piece will get a new episode every two weeks.

This is again to help with the strain on the animators that work on the show, and it means they’ll depict the manga more accurately since they won’t need to cram in extra episodes to bulk out the story to meet the weekly demand.

Despite the One Piece hiatus, some fans were quite pleased about the show’s new release schedule in the comments of the YouTube livestream. “Sad there won’t be weekly episodes, great we’ll be eating even GREATER PEAK every two weeks,” one fan wrote, and another added, “I still want to enjoy it, so I think it’s fine to take it slow.”

Others were less positive, with one person writing, “It’s been 30 years just end the damn show already,” while someone else commented, “It seems like the anime is being stretched out badly.”

When is the next episode of One Piece out?

There’s still a few months to go until the hiatus, so fans have a bunch of episodes to look forward to before then (as well as the second season of the live action Netflix show!) and the next episode of One Piece will be available to watch on Crunchyroll and Netflix.

Crunchyroll users will be able to watch One Piece Episode 1148 on November 2, while Netflix subscribers have to wait an extra week till November 9 because the streamer is a week behind the ongoing series.