The Bleach anime is gearing up for a fiery and flashy end, as highlighted by this explosive new preview trailer for the final cour of the Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War adaptation.
The anime will return in July 2026 as part of the Summer anime season, to conclude the splashy return of the Studio Pierrot Films series.
The original TV anime series ran from October 5, 2004 to March 27, 2012, concluding at 366 episodes and failing to cover the final chapters of the manga series.
The Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War premiered in October 2022, over a decade later, to right that wrong. The series is simulcast by Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ in other international territories outside of Japan.
At Jump Festa this past weekend in Japan, Bleach made its presence known by dropping the trailer, announcing a special website launching, Bleach - The Stories, which offers a comprehensive look back at the groundbreaking, original Big Three member of the Weekly Shonen Jump manga.
The Bleach stage event at Jump Festa 2026 was the source of the new trailer above and the key visual below. The Summer 2026 anime season premiere was also confirmed at the event. In addition to these announcements, a brand-new smartphone game titled BLEACH: Mirrors High is slated to launch in summer 2026, expanding the franchise even further into the mobile gaming space.
With the Blood War anime set to cover the final arc of the main manga series, there are several different avenues for the franchise to continue in anime form.
First, there's a 20th-anniversary one-shot chapter, which is a direct continuation from the final chapter of the manga. It reveals that when Captains are killed in Bleach, they are actually sent to Hell to maintain balance there. But with the deaths of powerful Captains like Yamamoto and Unohana, the balance in the cycle of rebirth has been broken, and the doors of Hell have been opened, allowing past defeated adversaries to escape back to the real world.
Secondly, there are a couple of light novels, set between the final battle in the manga, and the epilogue chapter, which jumps several years into the future to reveal that Rukia and Renji are married as well as Ichigo and Orihime. In the Can’t Fear Your Own World (CFYOW) light novel, the focus shifts to Shuhei Hisagi in a dark adventure that reveals the origin of the Soul King and Soul Society.
Lastly, there's also the Burn the Witch manga series, with is a spin-off project from Tite Kubo that focuses on how the Western World deals with the afterlife. Instead of shingami and hollows, over in the UK, there's witches and dragons to entertain readers.