The final saga of One piece it already started in the anime, with its very first arc, Egghead. After roughly two years of Egghead, the arc is coming to a close at a lightning pace. Egghead will end before the end of this yearand the next great adventure of the straw pirates will soon follow. Naturally, all of them One piece fans are definitely excited.
During a One piece live event recently, it was revealed Elbaf, the upcoming One Piece arcofficially begins in April 2026. This arc will finally begin after a long anime hiatus, and sneak peeks have already been provided, including character designs. Elbaf is set to be exciting, but it will be the slowest One Piece arc ever adaptedand will drag on for years in the anime.
One Piece's Elbaf Arc is fast approaching in the anime
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The Egghead Arc is coming to a close
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The Elbaf Arc will begin in April 2026
A few days ago, fans were alerted to a big news regarding One piece anime will be revealed soon, and indeed, a ton of pretty massive news surfaced via Official yesterday One piece account during One Piece NEWS press conference. While some of the news was certainly good, other parts were decidedly sad.
First, Egghead is coming to an end and will end before the end of 2025. Egghead was definitely exciting, but fans are ready to move on another big One Piece arc.
However, before moving on, fans will have to wait 3 months as the One Piece anime goes on an extended hiatus from January to the end of March 2026. Only then can One Piece fans welcome the newest arc, Elbaf, in the anime and see the adventures of the straw pirates in the land of giants.
Elbaf was a fan favorite in the mangaand seeing it make it into the anime so soon has many fans outraged. The Straw Hat Pirates character designs have also been revealed and most of them look amazing.
One Piece Anime's new plan will stretch the Elbaf arc over years
With only 26 episodes per year, Elbaf will take about 4 years to adapt
While One Piece fans are excited to move on to the next arcA 3-month break doesn't sit well with many fans. The worst part is, it won't be the last break either. In fact, it was revealed that starting in 2026, fans should only expect 26 episodes a year from One Piece. This is a major shift that fans did not expect.
The One Piece anime is basically turning seasonaland splits the 26 episodes into two courses each year, probably with three-month breaks between them. Even though the number of episodes is being cut in half, fans really shouldn't expect an improvement in quality or pace as it's already been confirmed that Toei will continue to edit one chapter per episodewhich is for the most part what they already do with Egghead. In other words, Elbaf will the slowest One piece arch to ever adapt and will last over 3 years, depending on the final number of chapters once it ends in the manga.
When I was little, I thought to myself: Man, I would really like to draw a manga with the most famous final stage! I wonder if I can do it! Now we only have a small piece of the Wano arc left, the preparations are almost done. Took me 25 years lol. That said, it's okay to start reading from this point. Because from this moment on…it will be… ONE PIECE!! Mysteries of this world, I will draw them all! It will be super interesting! Fasten your seat belt! And please stay with me a little longer! — Eiichiro Oda, author of One Piece, 2022
You can watch the entire One Piece series on Crunchyroll, with the next episode of One Piece coming out later this week, on Sunday, as scheduled.
Source: X (formerly Twitter)
- Release date
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October 20, 1999
- Network
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Fuji TV
- directors
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Hiroaki Miyamoto, Konosuke Uda, Junji Shimizu, Satoshi Itō, Munehisa Sakai, Katsumi Tokoro, Yutaka Nakajima, Yoshihiro Ueda, Kenichi Takeshita, Yoko Ikeda, Ryota Nakamura, Hiroyuki Kakudou, Takahiro Imayomura, Yashiôhiro Mayuū Shishido, Hidehiko Kadota, Sumio Watanabe, Harume Kosaka, Yasuhiro Tanabe, Yukihiko Nakao, Keisuke Onishi, Junichi Fujise, Hiroyuki Satou
- Writers
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Jin Tanaka, Akiko Inoue, Junki Takegami, Shinzo Fujita, Shouji Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suga, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hirohiko Uesaka, Michiru Shimada, Isao Murayama, Takuya Masumoto, Yoichi Takahashi, Momoka Toyoda
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Mayumi Tanaka
Monkey D. Luffy (voice)
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Kazuya Nakai
Roronoa Zoro (voice)
