The Straw Hat pirates’ adventures never seem to end. With more than 1000 episodes of the One Piece anime already available, we’re about to start season 21 of the iconic Shonen anime. Eiichiro Oda’s manga has already begun its final arc, which should bring Luffy’s story to its epic conclusion, with the anime adaptation closing in behind the source material.

One Piece is one of the few anime still following the intense year-round production schedule, with new episodes airing throughout the calendar year on Japanese TV and streaming on Crunchyroll. As such, the concept of seasons is a bit more arbitrary than in most shows, which only air for a few weeks or months at a time. Because of this, what is generally considered the anime’s 20th season will consist of 194 episodes that aired between July 2019 and November 2023.

One Piece Season 21 Release Date

Season 21 of One Piece is expected to begin airing on 3 December 2023 with episode 1086, titled The New Emperor! Buggy the Clown!. It will tackle the Egghead Island arc of the manga, which is the first story arc of the Final Saga of One Piece. This means that the show is slowly coming to an end. Since the introduction of Luffy’s Gear 5 form, the stakes and scale of One Piece have rapidly increased so it will be fascinating to see how the anime grapples with this daunting task.

While we know when the season will start, we can’t be sure how long season 21 of One Piece will last. This is because the Egghead Island arc is still going in the manga. It has already lasted nearly 140 chapters and still hasn’t reached its conclusion, so One Piece season 21 could be nearly as long as season 20’s 194 episodes.

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