KonoSuba is getting a fourth season in 2027! Kadokawa confirmed it earlier this week at the anime's 10th-anniversary "Colorful" event at Pacifico Yokohama, complete with a teaser visual and the returning cast on stage, per Anime News Network.
We covered the vague sequel tease back in March 2025, when nobody could say whether it was a movie, an OVA, or an actual Season 4. It's an actual Season 4.
But the announcement buried something more interesting than the year.
Season 4 is being animated by ENGI. That's the fourth animation studio to handle this franchise. Studio Deen made Seasons 1 and 2 back in 2016 and 2017. J.C. Staff took over for the Legend of Crimson film in 2019. Studio Drive handled both the Explosion spin-off in 2023 and Season 3 in 2024. Now it's ENGI's turn.
Most long-running anime treat a studio change as a crisis. Fans brace for it. Whole comment sections melt down over it. KonoSuba has done it three times and has come out the other side each time with the show still recognizably itself.
Part of that is the staff. Takaomi Kanasaki, who directed Seasons 1 and 2, returns as chief director. Makoto Uezu is back on series composition, Koichi Kikuta on character design, Yoshikazu Iwanami on sound, and Masato Koda on music. Manabu Kurihara steps in as director. The building changes, the people making the calls pretty much stay the same.
So the honest question is what the churn actually costs. Maybe KonoSuba really is studio-proof at this point. Or maybe the small differences fans argue about between seasons are exactly what you get when six years of production pass through four different houses.
Natsume Akatsuki started KonoSuba as a web novel on Shosetsuka ni Naro in December 2012, and Kadokawa put the first light novel volume out in October 2013. The main series wrapped with volume 17 in May 2020, with more than 10 million copies in circulation. A sequel novel series kicked off in 2024, so there's plenty of material left.
Season 3 ran 11 episodes from April to June 2024 and landed as one of the most-watched shows of that spring. It also left a few threads dangling that fans are still waiting on. Divine Treasures. Emperor Zell. The Silver-Haired Thief Brigade. Season 4 has plenty to work with!
2027 is the whole window. No season, no month, no episode count. The 10th anniversary being marked here is the anime's, which premiered in January 2016, so the celebration is running through the anniversary year rather than pointing at a specific week.
The anniversary slate around it is bigger than the season, too. Kadokawa lined up an original audio drama, a new official game, fresh publishing releases, and an 88-track music box set that already dropped back in March. For a comedy that started life as a free web novel about a dead teenager and a useless goddess, that's an absurd amount of infrastructure!
Which studio era is your favorite: Deen's scrappier original run, Drive's cleaner Season 3, or are you about to tell me you can't tell the difference? Which dangling thread do you need Season 4 to pay off first?
Let us know in the comments below!
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