Best Anime of Spring 2026: Our Top Picks

Spring 2026 wrapped at the end of June, and it ran deeper than the pre-season charts suggested. A fantasy adaptation nobody expected to look that good took the rankings, MAPPA returned to the Hole after six years, Re:Zero ran its cruellest arc yet, and Dr. Stone quietly finished its televised story. Here are the ten still worth your time, with studios, episode counts and where each left off.

The ten best of Spring 2026 at a glance

#	Anime	Studio	Episodes	Why it made the list
1	Witch Hat Atelier	BUG FILMS	13	The season's best-looking fantasy; ends on a cliffhanger, Season 2 confirmed
2	Re:Zero Season 4	White Fox	19 (split cour)	Arc 6, paced like a closing trap
3	Dorohedoro Season 2	MAPPA	11	Six years late, and the CG finally blends
4	Nippon Sangoku	Studio Kafka	12	The sleeper political drama of the season
5	Dr. Stone: Science Future Part 3	TMS Entertainment	13	A long shonen that actually lands its ending
6	Akane-banashi	Zexcs	12	Rakugo staged like a sports anime
7	Daemons of the Shadow Realm	Bones Film	24	Dark fantasy from the Fullmetal Alchemist creator
8	That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime S4	8bit	24 (cours 1-2 of 5)	The biggest isekai, back at serious scale
9	Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2	Actas, Bandai Namco Pictures	12	The sequel that fixed its first season
10	One Piece: Elbaf arc	Toei Animation	26 a year now	A new production model, visible on screen

Spoiler warning: the entries below name arcs and say how far each season got. No deaths or twists are spoiled, but skip entry two to keep Re:Zero's sixth arc cold.

1. Witch Hat Atelier: the adaptation that had the most to lose

Kamome Shirahama's manga is known for page compositions nobody expected weekly television to match, so the bar was absurd. BUG FILMS cleared it. Thirteen episodes ran from 6 April to 22 June under director Ayumu Watanabe, who has described taking the project on as "a reckless undertaking": rather than simplify the artwork, the team drew more of it and asked the staff for higher quality and higher volume at once. That protects what the premise needs, because magic here is drawing. Every spell is a sigil somebody has to inscribe correctly, under pressure, with a pen, so the tension comes from a shaking hand rather than a power level. It finished first in Anime News Network's cumulative reader ranking and drew the biggest MyAnimeList audience of anything that premiered in the season. A second season is announced with Crunchyroll holding the rights, but it was undated as of October 2026. Our Witch Hat Atelier guide covers how it tracks the manga.

2. Re:Zero Season 4: the arc readers warn newcomers about

White Fox split season four in half. The first cours, the Loss Arc, ran eleven episodes from 8 April to 17 June and adapts Arc 6 of the novels, volumes 21 to 25. Subaru and company reach the Pleiades Watchtower chasing the sage Shaula and a cure for Gluttony's victims, and the season then takes things from him with the methodical patience the series was built on. The remaining eight episodes, the Recapture Arc, aired from 12 August and closed with a 45-minute finale on 30 September, so spring viewers have a second half waiting. At 9.11 on MyAnimeList it is the season's highest-scored show by a distance. New here? Arc 6 assumes everything, so start with the Re:Zero watch order.

3. Dorohedoro Season 2: MAPPA goes back to the Hole

Six years on, Yuichiro Hayashi returned to direct, Netflix and Crunchyroll dropped the first three episodes together on 1 April, and the run closed on 27 May at eleven episodes, one fewer than season one and the complaint most fans landed on. What you get in exchange is visible: the hand-drawn and CG layers that sat awkwardly together in 2020 now blend closely enough that the models stop announcing themselves, though the join still shows in places. Tone is untouched, and that is the point. Gyoza, casual dismemberment, and a cast who treat both with the same shrug. A third season was announced straight after the finale.

4. Nippon Sangoku: the one nobody had on their chart

Studio Kafka adapted Ikka Matsuki's manga into twelve episodes, streaming on Prime Video from 5 April and finishing on Japanese television on 23 June. Its Japan has been knocked back to roughly Meiji-era technology by nuclear war, refugee crises, pandemics and earthquakes, then split into three rival states: Yamato, Seii and Buo. Aoteru Misumi is a cautious, by-the-book Yamato official whose declared method is words rather than violence: agricultural policy, diplomacy, and reading a room better than the people who outrank him. Battles happen, but the set pieces are negotiations. It scores 8.52 on MyAnimeList, the highest of any new series this season, and placed third in Anime News Network's cumulative ranking on a fraction of the top two's audience.

5. Dr. Stone: Science Future Part 3: an ending that works

Part three ran thirteen episodes from 2 April to 25 June, carrying Science Future to thirty-seven and the televised adaptation to its finish line in step with the manga. TMS Entertainment spent that final stretch answering the question the series has circled since episode one: what petrified humanity, and why. Landing a long shonen's ending is rare; landing it while still making room for Senku to build something ridiculous out of rocks and arithmetic is rarer. If you drifted off during the earlier cours, this is the part that makes finishing Dr. Stone worthwhile.

6. Akane-banashi: a sports anime about sitting on a cushion

Rakugo is solo storytelling: one performer, one cushion, every character played through voice and posture alone. Not an obvious weekly watch, except Zexcs staged it as a competition series. Six years before the story starts, Akane's father was expelled from the Arakawa school during his shin'uchi promotion test, despite a performance people still talk about. Akane's plan is to reach that same top rank and make the verdict look ridiculous. Each performance arrives with a scoreboard attached and a rival who has already found her weakness. Twelve episodes ran from 4 April to 20 June, Netflix took it internationally on 17 May, and Ayumu Watanabe directed it concurrently with Witch Hat Atelier, a strange double shift to have pulled off. A second season is set for January 2027.

7. Daemons of the Shadow Realm: the Fullmetal Alchemist creator's dark fantasy

Hiromu Arakawa's Yomi no Tsugai finally got adapted, and Bones Film gave it twenty-four episodes from 4 April under Masahiro Ando. Twin siblings Yuru and Asa were born between day and night, which is why they can command the creatures called daemons. They were separated as children, and the village that raised Yuru has been sealed off from the modern world for centuries, so finding his sister means walking into a present he has no vocabulary for. The habit of cutting from a grim reveal into a joke will be familiar to anyone who knows Arakawa. The spring half lays out the mythology patiently, which some viewers read as slow; give it six episodes before deciding. It ran through to 19 September, and a second season was announced immediately after.

8. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 4: ambitious, and clearly setup

8bit committed to five cours for season four, the largest isekai production currently in the air. The first two, twenty-four episodes, ran from 3 April to 25 September and moved Rimuru out of nation-building into conflict on a continental scale. The honest read on the spring stretch: it positions pieces. Alliances drawn, threats named, payoffs banked for a third cour scheduled for July 2027, with the final two cours still undated as of September 2026. Start it if you are current on Slime, and wait if you are not.

9. Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2: the fix worked

Wistoria's first season had a strong hook and uneven execution. Season two sorts out the execution. Actas and Bandai Namco Pictures ran twelve episodes from 12 April to 28 June, and the swordsmanship, the entire point of a protagonist who cannot cast a single spell inside a school of mages, finally gets choreography worth the premise. Will Serfort's fights are staged as problems rather than power-ups: no magic means every win comes from positioning, timing and closing the distance before a spell lands. The back half builds to Zeno and Elfaria colliding and a decision Will cannot dodge in the 28 June finale. It sits at 8.17 on MyAnimeList, and our pick of its best fights covers the standouts.

10. One Piece: Elbaf, and the biggest format change since 1999

The most consequential thing on this list is not a story beat. Episode 1155 closed out Egghead on 28 December 2025, Toei took January to March off, and the show came back on 5 April with episode 1156 and a new model: a maximum of twenty-six episodes a year in two split cours, instead of the near-continuous weekly broadcast it had run since October 1999. Toei also said it would adapt chapters at a faster pace than recent arcs, and Elbaf itself is laid out as twenty-six episodes in two blocks of thirteen. The difference shows in how much actually happens per episode. Luffy reaching the giants' homeland was always a landmark; One Piece getting there at a sustainable pace is the bigger story, and the watch order will get you to Elbaf.

What finished in June, and what carried on

Six of the ten have finished airing, so there is no weekly wait: Witch Hat Atelier, Dorohedoro, Nippon Sangoku, Dr. Stone, Akane-banashi and Wistoria all ended by 28 June. Re:Zero ran to 30 September on its split cour, Daemons of the Shadow Realm to 19 September and Slime to 25 September, and One Piece continues indefinitely. Our rundown of summer 2026's biggest sequels covers what came next.

Also worth your time

Classroom of the Elite dropped its first four episodes together on 1 April, then ran weekly to 24 June for sixteen in all at Lerche, finally animating the first semester of the Year 2 sequel novels and giving Ayanokouji new ground after three seasons in the first year. Ascendance of a Bookworm changed hands after three seasons at Ajia-do Animation Works, with WIT Studio taking the twenty-four-episode fourth season from 4 April to 3 October. Go For It, Nakamura-kun!! was the warmest surprise, thirteen episodes from Drive about a shy gay teenager working up the nerve to talk to the classmate he likes. And The Ramparts of Ice matched Dr. Stone's 8.25 across fourteen episodes at Studio KAI, closing on 2 July with a second season already dated for 1 October 2026.

What we would skip

Needy Girl Overdose split viewers harder than anything else. Yostar Pictures' thirteen episodes ran to 28 June and finished sixth in Anime News Network's cumulative ranking on strong weekly scores, yet the user average settled at 6.89. The adaptation of the visual novel Needy Streamer Overload follows a streamer persona called KAngel and is relentless about addiction, self-harm and the economics of being adored online, so take the content warnings seriously. Rent-a-Girlfriend's fifth season, twelve episodes from TMS between 11 April and 27 June, carries on the Hawaiians arc, set at the Spa Resort Hawaiians in Iwaki, Fukushima, and is strictly for people already four seasons deep. And Madhouse's Liar Game, twenty-six episodes across two straight cours, drew 6.86: the voice work is strong, but the manga's sharpest games are still ahead.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the best anime of Spring 2026?

Witch Hat Atelier. BUG FILMS' thirteen-episode adaptation ran from 6 April to 22 June 2026 and finished first in Anime News Network's cumulative reader ranking for the season, ahead of Dorohedoro Season 2 and Nippon Sangoku.

What was the highest-rated Spring 2026 anime on MyAnimeList?

Re:Zero Season 4, at 9.11. Nippon Sangoku is the highest-rated new series at 8.52, and Witch Hat Atelier sits at 8.47 with the largest audience of the three at over 450,000 members.

Which Spring 2026 anime finished within the season?

Six of our ten picks wrapped inside it: Witch Hat Atelier (13 episodes), Dorohedoro Season 2 (11), Nippon Sangoku (12), Dr. Stone: Science Future Part 3 (13), Akane-banashi (12) and Wistoria: Wand and Sword Season 2 (12) all ended by late June 2026.

Did Dr. Stone end in Spring 2026?

Yes. Science Future Part 3 aired its final episode on 25 June 2026, taking Science Future to thirty-seven episodes and finishing the televised adaptation in step with the manga's ending.

Is there a second season of Witch Hat Atelier?

Yes. A second season was announced after the season one finale in June 2026, and Crunchyroll holds the streaming rights for it. As of October 2026 no premiere date or episode count had been confirmed.

Which Spring 2026 anime is best if I have no backlog?

Nippon Sangoku, Akane-banashi and Witch Hat Atelier are all first seasons, so they need no prior watching. Witch Hat Atelier is the easiest to recommend at thirteen episodes.