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

Published April 15, 2026/5 min read/Niko D., Founder/Читать на русском

On April 8, 2026, 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.

Where 401 left readers matters. The chapter cut mid-Succession War — Kurapika cross-cutting between multiple princes aboard the Black Whale, the Phantom Troupe still lurking somewhere below decks, 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. Publicly everyone is 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. 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, 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 — drawn by her, 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 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 the return will probably look

Jump's pattern from 2022-2024 was four bursts of roughly ten consecutive chapters, each separated by months of silence. Twenty in the tank is a lot by Togashi standards, and the obvious shape is two bursts of ten with a planned pause between — a first run through late summer, a breather, a second run in autumn. Jump has reasons to ration: a weekly Hunter x Hunter is a circulation bump for every issue it appears in, and two cycles is two events instead of one. Togashi himself has said for years that returning to weekly for long isn't an option his back will allow. The 2018 break, the 2022 return, the 2024 break, the 2026 return — that rhythm is a body's rhythm.

The editorial announcement is expected before the end of April. When it lands, three things resolve at once: the date 402 comes out, the cadence, and whether the stockpile ships in one burst or two.

Why we keep showing up

Hunter x Hunter has one of the most punished fandoms in manga, and almost nobody actually leaves. The return-rate on a Togashi announcement is close to one hundred percent.

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 are all in the prior arcs. Part of it is stubbornness — quitting now would be admitting the time was wasted. And part of it is that a manga drawn this slowly has a kind of honesty most weekly serializations cannot afford. Togashi isn't drawing against an editor's deadline. He's drawing when the story is ready for the next panel.

Sixteen months is a long time. Another twenty chapters is not quite long enough. We'll be here.

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