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Hunter x Hunter Is Coming Back: Togashi Has 20 Chapters Ready

Published April 15, 2026/7 min read/Niko D., Founder/Читать на русском
Hunter x Hunter Is Coming Back: Togashi Has 20 Chapters Ready

On April 8, Yoshihiro Togashi posted a picture on X that, in its quiet way, was the news every Hunter x Hunter fan has been waiting for. In the frame: Kurapika, drawn by him. Beside him: Sailor Mars and Artemis the cat, drawn by his wife, Naoko Takeuchi. Sailor Mars held a small card that read "4/17" — Naoko's birthday, a week off. The caption said, almost offhand, that chapter 430 is inked. Chapters 411 through 420 are finished. 421 through 429 are close. The announcement of a return date, Togashi added, is coming from Jump editorial soon.

Sixteen months since the last chapter. Twenty new ones sitting in a drawer. The Hunter x Hunter return is real, finally, probably.

If you've been reading this manga for any length of time, you already know the shape of this feeling. Hope with a quiet edge of I'll believe it when I see it. Togashi has done this before.

What's actually in those twenty chapters

The last chapter readers saw was 401, in December 2024. It closed out a short 11-chapter burst — the pattern Togashi has fallen into since the 2018 hiatus. Every time he comes back, he comes back with a stockpile. Every time the stockpile eventually runs out, and the silence resumes.

What's in this one matters because of where the story stopped.

Chapter 401 left readers mid-Succession War — Kurapika cross-cutting between multiple princes aboard the Black Whale, the Phantom Troupe still lurking somewhere below decks, and the Dark Continent, the arc the entire journey has been a prelude to, still out of reach. If twenty new chapters ship, they will be the closest Hunter x Hunter has come to actual Dark Continent material since 2017.

That's the part fans are quiet about. Everyone's publicly hyped. Privately, a lot of us are doing the math: twenty chapters is probably not enough to wind down the Succession War, get off the Black Whale, reach the continent, and kick the next arc into gear. It's the middle of a middle.

Togashi is fifty-nine years old. Chronic back pain has structured his working life for more than a decade. The question fans don't like asking out loud, but keep asking anyway, is how many of these twenty-chapter drawers are left.

The sketch says more than the caption

The picture itself is the story.

Kurapika is Togashi's. Sailor Mars and Artemis are Takeuchi's — she drew them herself, on the same paper, in her own unmistakable line. Sailor Mars holds a date card that happens to be Takeuchi's birthday. The post ran a single hashtag: #Artemis2, the name of NASA's upcoming crewed lunar mission, because Sailor Mars's cat is named Artemis, because of course Togashi would make that joke. It's a love note, a birthday card, and a fan-art pun folded into one image.

Takeuchi does not draw for the public often anymore. She's been mostly absent from the manga industry since Sailor Moon ended in 1997, and her public appearances in the last decade have been rare. When she does draw, it is almost always for her husband's work — a Kurapika sketch here, a short message of encouragement there. She is, in her small, quiet way, the person most responsible for Hunter x Hunter still existing.

This is why the announcement reads differently than a typical manga-industry update. Togashi has made false promises to fans before. He has never made them to Naoko. An image of the two of them drawing on the same page is the single most reliable signal, short of Jump's own confirmation, that the chapters are going to ship.

How Jump will probably handle the return

Weekly Shonen Jump has been figuring out how to publish Togashi for a decade. They have tried everything — weekly until he collapses, monthly with fanfare, "we'll print him when he has chapters." The pattern from 2022 to 2024 was four bursts of roughly ten consecutive chapters, each burst separated by months of silence.

Twenty chapters in the tank is a lot by Togashi standards. The most likely shape:

  • A first burst of ten consecutive weekly chapters, probably running through late summer.
  • A planned pause, announced in advance, while Togashi finishes the back half.
  • A second burst of ten in the autumn.

That gives Jump two sustained runs, a breather, and a graceful on-ramp back into hiatus. It is the publishing equivalent of rationing a good meal. Jump has real reasons to ration: a weekly Hunter x Hunter is a circulation bump for every issue it appears in. Twenty consecutive weeks of it is one subscription event. Two cycles of ten is two.

Togashi, for his part, has said publicly for years that he does not want to return to weekly for long. His back will not allow it. The 2018 break, the 2022 return, the 2024 break, the 2026 return — the rhythm is not accidental. It's a body's rhythm.

Why we keep showing up

Hunter x Hunter has one of the most punished fandoms in manga.

The running joke is that you can measure the gap between your first read-through and your next by the release schedule of someone else's favorite series. You read One Piece while you wait. You reread Vinland Saga while you wait. Friends who picked up the manga after you lap you and finish whatever they started and move on. You are still waiting.

The weird thing is that nobody actually leaves. The return-rate on a Togashi announcement is close to one hundred percent. Fans who swore off the manga after the 2018 break show up the week chapter 391 drops. It happens every time.

Part of it is that the writing, when he is writing, is genuinely that good. The Chimera Ant arc is on every short list of the best manga arcs of the last twenty years. The Succession War, so far, is structurally unlike anything else in modern shōnen — a political game with roughly thirty named principals, played out on a closed boat, with the promise of a continent-shaped payoff. The proofs of his ability to pull it off are all sitting in the prior arcs.

Part of it is stubbornness. You have waited this long. Quitting now would be admitting the time was wasted.

And part of it is that a manga written this slowly has a kind of honesty most weekly serializations cannot afford. Togashi isn't drawing against an editor's deadline. He is drawing when the story is ready for the next panel. You can argue that's why we are here in 2026 with 401 chapters instead of 600. You can also argue it's why the 401 chapters are what they are.

What to watch for

Jump's editorial announcement is expected before the end of April. When it lands, three things become clear at once: the date chapter 402 comes out, the cadence — weekly or something slower — and whether the stockpile ships in one burst or two.

Chapter 402 itself will tell the rest. If it picks up on the Black Whale with all the princes still alive, the Succession War is moving into its endgame. If it opens on Kurapika somewhere new, Togashi has skipped ahead. If it's a flashback to the Dark Continent, everything changes.

Togashi has twenty chapters in the drawer. He has a crossover sketch with his wife on X. He has a fifty-nine-year-old's back. And he has, somehow, the most patient fandom in manga, quietly checking the Jump table of contents every Monday morning for six years running.

Sixteen months is a long time. Another twenty chapters is not quite long enough.

We'll be here.

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