One Piece prepares for a sad day on July 5th with a hiatus announcement

One Piece is arguably 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 for more every week for over 25 years now. For the vast majority of Toei Animation's run One Piece anime, it ran on a weekly schedule, but since 2025, a major change has seen Toei Animation release it in a half-season format. This officially meant more breaks and hiatuses and fewer episodes per year. With all this in mind, One Piece will officially air its 13th episode of the year soon, before going on hiatus.

During this break, One Piece Heroines will be sent in its place. After that, however, the future of anime is unclear. This might be it for the current batch of One Piece episodes; it could simply continue. 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 indefinite hiatus on July 5, 2026

The One Piece manga was created by Eiichiro Oda in 1997. The series has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump ever since and is still going strong today in 2026. 2 years after its debut, One Piece went on to receive an anime adaptation by Toei Animation. It also has a remake by Wit Studio in the works, but the Toei adaptation is still ongoing with no signs of stopping anytime soon. Currently, the Toei anime is airing the Elbaf arc. But fans are already expecting a hiatus for the Toei anime coming very soon.

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

One Piece Heroines will air in place of Anime on July 5th

With a break on July 5, 2026, fans are wondering what to expect that weekend instead. Sometimes One Piece simply skips the episode and airs nothing at all. Other times, a filler episode airs instead, or a recap episode airs, as was common with Egghead during the anime weeks. This time, however, things are very different, as One Piece is getting an exciting new episode on July 5th to replace the original anime.

As we know, One Piece Heroines has been a long-awaited project that will adapt a One Piece spin-off novel of the same name, written by Jun Esaka and illustrated by Sayaka Suwa. This will be a one-episode release and will specifically cover the chapter on Nami, although Robin is also expected to make an appearance.

The future of One Piece Anime is unknown, but major hiatus may begin after episode 1186

One Piece Heroines is an exciting side project to watch, but fans are most looking forward to the return of the actual anime, especially considering how episode 1186 will leave things in Elbaf. This episode will mark the key reveal of Harley and the story of the three worlds, which was officially covered One Piece Chapter 1138 of the manga.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the return date of One Piece anime is unknown. Usually the breaks last two weeks, but we don't know if One Piece will return as no further information is provided by Toei at this time. Since One Piece episode 1186 is the 13th since the return in April, it could very well be the finale of the batch, meaning the return could happen after three months. This is because Toei Animation had previously stated that One Piece will no longer be a weekly anime, and instead of 40+ episodes per year, the series would receive 26, split over two courses. In that sense, the 13th episode should be the centerpiece. The Harley reveal is also a perfect point to end the course right now. That said, without any announcement from Toei, there is also the possibility that the anime will resume two weeks after the release of episode 1186 on June 28, 2026. Things will become clearer in the coming weeks, and we will keep all fans updated accordingly.

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