One Piece is preparing for a sad day on July 5th with the hiatus announcement

One piece is undoubtedly one of the biggest anime IPs in the entire world. While its manga is the best-selling series of all time, its anime is also a successful series that has kept fans coming back every week for over 25 years. For the vast majority of Toei Animation's run One piece anime, ran on a weekly schedule, but starting in 2025, there was a big shift for Toei Animation to release in a semi-seasonal format. This officially meant more breaks and breaks and fewer episodes per year. With all that in mind, One Piece will officially air its 13th episode of the year before going on hiatus.

During this break, One Piece Heroines will broadcast in his place. After that, however, the future of the anime remains unclear. This could be for the current batch of One Piece episodes; it could just keep going. We'll all have to wait and see what Toei has in store for the series in 2026.

One Piece Anime will officially go on an undefined hiatus on July 5th, 2026

The One piece manga was created by Eiichiro Oda in 1997. The series has since been serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump and continues today in 2026. 2 years after its debut, One piece received an anime adaptation from Toei Animation. A remake by Wit Studio is also in the works, but Toei's adaptation is still ongoing and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Currently airing Toei Elbaf arc anime. However, fans are already anticipating a break for the Toei anime coming very soon.

Toei Animation has officially confirmed that July 5, 2026 will be the hiatus for the One Piece anime. The delayed episode is One Piece 1187, which would cover the events following the reveal of Harley in One Piece. This means that the last episode of One Piece 1186 titled “Ancient History — The Sacred Texts Passed Down in Elbaph” will air before the hiatus on June 28, 2026.

One Piece Heroines will air instead of the anime on July 5th

With the break on July 5, 2026, fans are wondering what to expect this weekend. Sometimes One Piece simply skips an episode altogether and doesn't air anything at all. Other times, a filler episode airs instead, or a recap episode airs, as was common with Egghead during the anime's hiatus weeks. However, things are very different this time as One Piece gets an exciting new episode on July 5th to replace the original anime.

As we know, One Piece Heroines is a long-awaited project that aims to adapt the One Piece side novel of the same name written by Jun Esaka and illustrated by Sayaka Suwa. It will be a one-episode release and will specifically cover the Nami chapter, though Robin is expected to make an appearance as well.

The future of One Piece Anime is unknown, but the big hiatus might start after 1186 episodes

One Piece Heroines is an exciting side project to watch, but fans are mostly looking forward to the return of the actual anime, especially given how Episode 1186 leaves things in Elbaf. This episode will mark the key reveal of Harley and the history of the Three Worlds being officially covered One piece Chapter 1138 in the manga.

Unfortunately, there is a return date at this time One piece anime is unknown. Usually the hiatus lasts for two weeks, but we don't know if One Piece is coming back as Toei is not giving any other information at this time. Since One Piece episode 1186 is the 13th since the return in April, it could very well be the last in the batch, meaning the return could be three months away. This is because Toei Animation previously stated that One Piece will no longer be a weekly anime, and instead of 40+ episodes per year, it will be a series of 26 divided into two courses. In that sense, episode 13 should be the middle. The Harley reveal is also the perfect point to end the course right now. This means that without an announcement from Toei, there is also a possibility that the anime will resume two weeks after the release of episode 1186 on June 28, 2026. Everything will become clearer in the coming weeks and we will keep all fans informed accordingly.

All the latest episodes of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece anime are available to watch on Crunchyroll.