Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Calamity is the fourth and final part of TYBW, produced by Pierrot Films. It premiered on July 25, 2026 on Hulu (US) and Disney+ (international, outside Asia), with new episodes every Saturday.
Broadcast schedule
- Episodes: 10
- Final episode: September 26, 2026
- Music: opening "I-BULL" by jo0ji, ending "Rasen" by 9Lana; Shiro Sagisu continues to compose the score
The four parts of TYBW
- Part 1 – The Blood Warfare: 13 episodes, October–December 2022
- Part 2 – The Separation: 13 episodes, July–September 2023
- Part 3 – The Conflict: 14 episodes, October–December 2024
- Part 4 – The Calamity: 10 episodes, from July 2026
Background and production
TYBW adapts the final arc of Tite Kubo's manga. Tomohisa Taguchi and Hikaru Murata have directed across the parts, and Masaki Hiramatsu writes the series composition. Kubo serves as overall supervisor, personally rewriting dialogue for the new anime scenes and drawing storyboards for some added sequences. In the final part, Ichigo and his allies face Yhwach and Askin Nakk Le Vaar.
Why is The Calamity the most anticipated part? The Bleach manga ended in 2016, but the anime had been on hiatus since 2012, so nearly a decade passed before TYBW was announced to finish the unfinished final story. For many fans who followed the original anime in the early 2000s, The Calamity is not just a new season but the milestone that closes out the franchise's journey of nearly 25 years. Few series have made audiences wait this long for their ending.
OtaHub's take
Tite Kubo's direct involvement in rewriting dialogue and drawing storyboards for the new scenes is a rare and notable detail: most manga authors only hold a supervisory role at the level of approvals and do not get deeply involved in anime production. This hands-on participation significantly reduces the risk of a mismatch between the manga's and the anime's storytelling, a problem many other adaptations run into when they have to "pad" the story with original scenes to fill gaps in pacing. For an arc that wraps up many character threads at once, like TYBW, this may be the deciding factor in helping The Calamity avoid the rushed feeling often seen in the final seasons of anime adaptations.
Articles that call this part "The Farewell" or "Part 4 – October 2026" are wrong: the correct title is The Calamity, and it has been airing since July.
Updated September 24, 2026: this article was rewritten based on verified sources; the previous version contained outdated or inaccurate information.
Sources: GamesRadar+, CBR, IMDb.
