Black Clover Season 2 Premieres October 3 After 5-Year Break

Black Clover Season 2 is coming back to Saturday nights. After more than five years off television, Asta's story premieres on October 3, 2026, airing at 11 p.m. JST on TV Tokyo and its affiliate stations, with Crunchyroll carrying the simulcast as it airs. The premiere episode, the 171st overall, is titled "War Begins," and it wastes no time easing viewers back in. It headlines a crowded fall season that also brings the webtoon adaptation Overgeared, which premieres September 27.

The original anime ran from 2017 to 2021 for 170 episodes before going on hiatus. The production halted because the adaptation had nearly caught up to Yuki Tabata's manga, and the team chose to stop rather than pad the schedule with filler arcs. The manga itself wrapped up in 2026, so Black Clover Season 2 has a complete story to work from.

What the new season will cover

Black Clover Season 2 picks up exactly where episode 170 left off. The Magic Knights are mobilizing to rescue Yami Sukehiro and William Vangeance after their abduction by the Dark Triad, while Morris pushes ahead with the plan to open the gates of the underworld in the Spade Kingdom. Asta and Liebe are still training to master Devil Union following their contract, and Yuno is preparing for another confrontation with Zenon after their earlier defeat. The title of the premiere reflects the shift: preparation is over, and the larger battle begins.

According to Animehunch, reports circulating online claim Black Clover Season 2 will run for 26 episodes in total, split into two parts across 2026 and 2027. The first block would cover the Spade Kingdom Raid arc, with the remaining episodes adapting the manga's final arc. With roughly 122 chapters still unadapted, that pace would translate to about four to five chapters per episode. Animehunch notes the figures come from leak reporter SugoiLite, who cautioned that the second block's count is still in the planning stage and could change.

Studio Pierrot returns to animate the season, with Ayataka Tanemura directing. Tanemura previously helmed episodes 153 through 170 of the original run and the 2023 film Black Clover: Sword of the Wizard King. Keiichiro Ochi handles series composition, Itsuko Takeda returns as character designer, and Minako Seki composes the music. DANAMIC reports the manga has more than 24 million copies in circulation worldwide, and that the anime was the most-watched series on Crunchyroll in 2020 across dozens of countries and territories, so the returning team has a franchise that kept growing while it was away, and Black Clover Season 2 inherits that momentum.

New music and where to watch

Black Clover Season 2 brings new music on both ends of each episode. Rock band WANIMA performs the opening theme, "Kienai Riyuu," while the eight-member group ONE OR EIGHT takes the ending with "Yellow Brick Road." The ending song arrives as a digital single at midnight JST on October 7, four days after the premiere, which means fans will hear it over the end credits before they can stream it anywhere else.

The booking is a break from the franchise's usual pattern. Earlier openings and endings came from acts with an established following, from Vickeblanka's fan-favorite "Black Rover" and "Black Catcher" to Snow Man and TOMORROW X TOGETHER. The 2023 film pushed that logic further by handing both theme songs to K-pop group TREASURE. This time, the franchise handed the slot to a group that debuted in August 2024 and is still building its audience. DANAMIC reports the group went from 1.5 million social followers in February to about 1.73 million by August, backed by a tour schedule and festival appearances in the United States.

In Japan, the season airs on TV Tokyo affiliates in its Saturday late-night slot, and Crunchyroll will stream Black Clover Season 2 internationally as episodes air, including North and South America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East, and much of Asia. The fall anime calendar is stacked: Demon Slayer Infinity Castle streams on Hulu September 28, and Chiikawa's English dub arrives free on YouTube October 1. Viewers in the United States and Canada already got an early look through Crunchyroll Anime Nights on September 21. Dub schedules have not been announced yet, which matches how Crunchyroll has handled its other fall 2026 simulcasts.

Five years is a long gap for a shonen anime to survive. Most series that stop for that long come back as a reboot or a legacy sequel with a different cast. Black Clover Season 2 is coming back as a straight continuation, with the same studio, the same director, and the story resuming mid-war. That kind of patience used to be a risk. With the manga finished and the full arc ahead of it, the wait looks like it was the plan all along.