The Nine Titans Explained: Every Titan Power

Nine Titan powers, a chain of inheritance running back 2,000 years, and an explanation Attack on Titan spreads across four seasons. Here it is in one place: what each Titan does, who carried it, and what decides where a power goes next.

Spoiler warning: everything past the table covers holders and reveals through the anime's ending.

All nine Titan powers at a glance

#	Titan	Signature power	Holders in story order	Height
1	Founding Titan	Commands all Titans; rewrites Eldian bodies and minds	Ymir Fritz, the Fritz and Reiss kings, Frieda, Grisha, Eren	13 m
2	Attack Titan	Receives memories from holders not yet born	Eren Kruger, Grisha, Eren Yeager	15 m
3	Colossal Titan	Transformation blast of superheated steam	Bertholdt Hoover, Armin Arlert	60 m
4	Armored Titan	Plating for ramming and absorbing fire	Reiner Braun	15 m
5	Female Titan	Copies other Titans' traits; a summoning scream	Annie Leonhart	14 m
6	Beast Titan	Animal form; devastating throwing accuracy	Tom Ksaver, Zeke Yeager	17 m
7	Jaw Titan	Fastest of the nine; bites through hardening	Marcel Galliard, Ymir, Porco Galliard, Falco Grice	5 m
8	Cart Titan	Four-legged stamina; carries weapons and crew	Pieck Finger	4 m
9	War Hammer Titan	Weapons from hardened flesh; piloted from a crystal	Lara Tybur, Eren Yeager	15 m

How the Nine Titans work

All nine are shares of one power. Ymir Fritz gained it roughly 2,000 years before the main story, held it thirteen years, and when she died it split nine ways. The Walls, Marley's Warrior programme and Eren Yeager's war all grow out of the scramble for those fragments.

Inheritance and the thirteen-year clock

A power only moves when its holder dies, by one of two routes. The controlled route is a ceremony: the heir takes Titan serum, turns into a mindless Pure Titan and eats the holder, which is how Zeke Yeager took the Beast Titan from Tom Ksaver in 842, thirteen years after Ksaver inherited it. The other is theft in the field, as when Ymir ate Marcel Galliard. Unclaimed, a power is reborn in an Eldian child born soon afterwards, regardless of distance or bloodline. Whoever holds it gets thirteen years and no more, because no inheritor can outlast the founder: the Curse of Ymir, and the reason Marley hands Titans to children.

Why the Founding Titan needs royal blood

Only one of the Nine carries a lock. The Founder's full power switches on when its holder touches a Titan with royal Fritz blood, and any royal-blooded holder is bound by King Karl Fritz's renunciation of war, a vow that travels with his memories. That explains a lot of plot: why Grisha stole the Founder for a non-royal family, why Zeke's royal mother Dina matters, why Season 4 pushes Historia Reiss towards a Titan she never wanted. The Ackermans sit outside the system, immune to titanisation and to the Founder's memory control, which is why Mikasa Ackerman can still act against Eren.

1. The Founding Titan: the one that rewrites a whole people

Also called the Coordinate. It commands every Pure Titan at once and can alter the bodies and memories of every living Subject of Ymir. Karl Fritz, the 145th king, used it to wipe a population's memory of the outside world and to raise the three Walls out of Colossal-class Titans, named for Ymir's daughters Maria, Rose and Sina. Frieda Reiss, who ate her uncle Uri at fifteen to take the power, used it domestically, erasing her half-sister Historia's memories after every secret visit. Eren used it to call the Wall Titans back out, and our Rumbling explainer covers what that cost.

2. The Attack Titan: the power that remembers forwards

Shingeki no Kyojin, the show's own Japanese title, is this Titan's name. Physically it is unremarkable: fifteen metres, hardening, fast healing. Its real ability is the strangest thing in the series: it receives memories from holders who have not been born yet. In 832, handing the power over, Eren Kruger told Grisha to save Mikasa and Armin; asked who they were, Kruger said he did not know whose memories those were. Grisha knew the Founder's royal-blood restriction for the same reason, the memory reaching him backwards from his own son. Zeke calls it the power to transcend time. Marley never controlled it: it passed through the Eldian resistance in secret.

3. The Colossal Titan: a sixty-metre bomb with a person inside

The first Titan the anime shows you, putting a hole in Wall Maria in episode 1. At 60 m it dwarfs the rest, and the transformation itself is the weapon: a Colossal appearing releases superheated steam violent enough to flatten the ground around it, which Bertholdt Hoover also vented continuously to keep anyone off his nape. Armin Arlert inherits it in Season 3, Episode 18, "Midnight Sun", when Levi gives him the last serum instead of Erwin Smith.

4. The Armored Titan: built to break walls and take hits

Fifteen metres of plated hide built for one job. Reiner Braun shattered the inner gate at Shiganshina by charging it, the plating lets him stand under cannon fire that would kill any other shifter, and he can shed armour from chosen limbs when he needs speed. The reveal that he and Bertholdt were the attackers lands in Season 2, Episode 6, "Warrior", in the flattest tone the show can manage. Reiner is the only holder the series ever names, and the clearest case of what the Warrior programme does to the children it takes, followed in full in our characters guide.

5. The Female Titan: the copycat

Annie Leonhart's Titan has no signature move because it borrows everyone else's. By Annie's own account it picks up traits from the other eight far more easily than they copy each other, especially after eating parts of them, which is why Marley experimented on her so heavily after she inherited it around 843. That means selective hardening, a sprinter's frame that outruns mounted scouts, and a scream that drags every Pure Titan in range onto a chosen target, which turns the 57th Exterior Scouting Mission into a rout in the Forest of Giant Trees. The Stohess chase ends with Annie sealing herself in crystal, where she stays four years until Eren dissolves every hardened shell on the island.

6. The Beast Titan: the artillery piece

The Beast never looks the same twice, because its shape follows its holder: Tom Ksaver's was a woolly, horned ram, Zeke Yeager's a seventeen-metre ape. The constant is throwing. Zeke's accuracy with a handful of rocks works as an artillery battery, and it nearly annihilates the Survey Corps at Shiganshina from a distance no cavalry can close. Zeke also carries royal blood through his mother Dina, so Eldians who have swallowed his spinal fluid turn into Pure Titans the moment he screams, and they answer to him.

7. The Jaw Titan: small, quick, and it bites through anything

At five metres this is the smallest and fastest of the Nine, with claws for climbing and jaws that shear through hardened flesh and crystal: the natural counter to armour. Its ownership history is the busiest in the set. Marcel Galliard carried it to Paradis with the Warriors in 845 and lost it there: Ymir ate him while still a mindless Pure Titan, which handed back the humanity she had lost for sixty years. Marcel's younger brother Porco reclaimed it by eating her, then fed himself to Falco Grice, who had accidentally drunk Zeke's spinal fluid. Falco's Jaw Titan came out with talons, a beak and working wings.

8. The Cart Titan: the one that wins battles without punching anyone

Pieck Finger's four-legged Titan is the only one of the Nine built for logistics rather than combat. It holds a transformation for stretches nobody else survives: Pieck spent roughly two months on all fours during Marley's Mid-East War and came out on a crutch, having half forgotten how to stand upright. It carries crates, a cannon and a gun crew on a back harness, and she talks fluently in Titan form, which the others barely manage.

9. The War Hammer Titan: a weapons factory on legs

The last of the Nine to appear, and the oddest. It shapes hardened flesh into hammers, lances, spikes bursting out of the ground or a shell around itself, and its holder need not sit in the nape. Lara Tybur ran hers from a crystal buried under the festival stage, linked to the body by a cord of flesh, so cutting the nape did nothing. The Tyburs kept it out of Marley's Warrior programme for generations. It debuts in Season 4, Episode 6, where Eren works it out and severs the cable; he takes the power the following week in "Assault", jamming the crystal into the mouth of Porco Galliard's crippled Jaw Titan and using its own bite to break her open.

Ranking the Nine by raw power

The Founding Titan, by a wide margin: any fight against it becomes a fight against every other Titan on the board. Below that it depends on the ground: the Beast wins at range, the War Hammer wins wherever the enemy assumes the nape is the weak point, the Colossal wins beside a city, and the Jaw beats armour. Holders matter as much as powers, so we rank the people in our strongest Attack on Titan characters list.

Three things fans get wrong

"Shifters cannot really be killed"

Regeneration burns the holder's own body mass and stamina, which is why Eren folds after a hard fight and why taking a shifter's limbs buys minutes. The nape is still the answer for eight of the nine.

"The Nine are nine different creatures"

They are nine shares of one power carried by ordinary Eldians, and the Titan body is grown from the holder. That is why the Beast changes shape with each inheritor and why the Female Titan has Annie's face and Annie's stance.

"Marley controlled all of them"

After the Great Titan War, Marley held seven of the Nine and handed six to Warriors it could leash. The Founding went behind the Walls with the Reiss family, the Attack Titan stayed hidden in the Eldian resistance, and the War Hammer stayed Tybur property rather than Warrior issue.

Where the story leaves the Nine Titans

Spoiler warning: this section gives away the ending.

As of September 2026 the anime is finished, not paused: 94 episodes plus eight OADs, animated by Wit Studio for Seasons 1 to 3 and by MAPPA from the Final Season on, closing with the feature-length Final Chapters specials in March and November 2023. The compilation film Attack on Titan: The Last Attack re-cut those two specials into one 145-minute feature, opened in Japan in November 2024, reached North America in February 2025 and returned to US and Canadian screens in May 2026. No sequel series has been announced. For a rewatch that tracks each reveal, use our Attack on Titan watch order.

The finale passes nothing on. Once Ymir Fritz lets go of the bond that kept her serving the Fritz line, the power of the Titans leaves the world: the Wall Titans stop, converted Eldians turn back into people, and the surviving shifters become human. Nothing is left to inherit, so the curse ends with it, and our list of anime like Attack on Titan is the usual next stop.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Nine Titans in Attack on Titan?

The Nine Titans are the Founding, Attack, Colossal, Armored, Female, Beast, Jaw, Cart and War Hammer Titans. They are the nine parts Ymir Fritz's power split into when she died roughly 2,000 years before the story, and only a Subject of Ymir can hold one.

Who holds each of the Nine Titans?

In the final arc Eren Yeager holds the Founding, Attack and War Hammer Titans, Armin Arlert the Colossal, Reiner Braun the Armored, Annie Leonhart the Female, Zeke Yeager the Beast, Falco Grice the Jaw and Pieck Finger the Cart.

Which of the Nine Titans is the strongest?

The Founding Titan. It commands every other Titan and can alter the bodies and memories of all Subjects of Ymir. The Beast is strongest at range, and the War Hammer is hardest to kill because its holder need not sit in the nape.

Why do Titan shifters only live 13 years?

It is the Curse of Ymir. Ymir Fritz held the power for thirteen years before she died, and no inheritor can exceed the founder, so every holder dies thirteen years after gaining a Titan.

How many Titan powers does Eren have?

Three. He inherits the Attack Titan from his father Grisha, and the Founding Titan with it because Grisha had taken that from Frieda Reiss, and seizes the War Hammer from Lara Tybur during the Liberio raid.

What happens to the Nine Titans at the end?

They stop existing. Once Ymir Fritz is freed, the power of the Titans leaves the world: every shifter becomes human again, Eldians turned into Titans change back, and there is nothing left to inherit.