Ghibli's Valley of Witches Short Runs Into 2027

The rarest movie ticket in anime just got easier to claim. Studio Ghibli's newest short film, A Night in the Valley of Witches, will keep screening at Ghibli Park through around June 2027 after a packed summer run, according to an announcement from the park covered by CBR on October 21. The fourteen-minute film debuted on July 8 of this year, the studio's first new anime production since The Boy and the Heron arrived in 2023, and it plays in exactly one cinema on the planet.

That cinema is the Cinema Orion screening room inside the Grand Warehouse at Ghibli Park in Aichi Prefecture. SoraNews24, which reported the extension the same day, points out that Ghibli's shorts normally rotate on a monthly schedule between just two venues worldwide, the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo and the park itself. The park almost never breaks that rotation, so an extension into next summer says plenty about how audiences have received this Valley of Witches short.

A night shift, a new guy, and a witch

The short was co-directed by Goro Miyazaki, the son of studio co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, alongside Akihiko Yamashita, whose credits include Spirited Away and The Secret World of Arrietty. It was made specifically for the park and its attractions, including the sixty-five-foot replica of Howl's famous moving castle. Goro Miyazaki said in an interview cited by CBR that the parked castle sparked the whole idea, joking that sitting still for that long could be rough on the castle's health.

Ghibli Park's official site describes the plot: a new employee gets an unusual stack of repair requests across the park grounds in his first days on the job. A fireplace lights itself, water sprays from the taps, and his senior colleague Kikue brushes off every complaint. Then, after midnight, he heads into the Valley of Witches for his first night shift and finds Kikue there in a cloak, chanting a spell and swinging her lantern down as the magic starts.

It is a Halloween story in everything but name, which makes the timing of the extension easy to understand. CBR reports that the park will hold a special after-hours screening on October 31 at six in the evening, designed for elementary school students. Kids get to watch the film at night after the park's normal closing time, then join staff for a guided walk through the actual Valley of Witches area. The area honors Ghibli's witchy characters with buildings like the bakery from Kiki's Delivery Service, so the walk doubles as a tour of the film's real-world set.

How to actually see it

Catching this Valley of Witches short takes planning, because it will not stream, and likely not anytime soon. Ghibli has a long-standing practice of keeping its museum and park shorts exclusive to those venues. The only way in is a trip to the park, and tickets must be booked in advance. SoraNews24 notes that reservations generally open at two in the afternoon on the tenth of each month for visits two months out, and that December screenings went on sale on October 10. Demand is expected to stay high through the extended run, so booking early is the sensible move for anyone building a Japan trip around it.

For anime fans mapping out that trip, the Valley of Witches short lands in a packed season. October already delivered a stacked fall anime lineup, according to our earlier reporting, and the return of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners universe has dominated anime conversation this month. A Ghibli exclusive you can only watch in one room in Aichi is a different kind of event, and a stranger one.

That exclusivity is the point. Ghibli's shorts have always been built as rewards for showing up in person, from the Totoro sequel Mei and the Kittenbus to this newest Valley of Witches entry. Extending the run into next summer gives international visitors a real window to plan around, and for a fourteen-minute film most of the world may never otherwise see, that window matters. Keep an eye on our Anime & Animation coverage for whatever plays next at the park.