Bleach fans have had an incredible year, since the franchise's final story arc has been steadily rolling out new episodes while simultaneously climbing to the very top of the anime rating charts. The current run of episodes belongs to Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, The Calamity, which is the fourth and final cour of the Thousand-Year Blood War anime adaptation. This last stretch of episodes began streaming on July 25, 2026, marking the true conclusion of a story that Tite Kubo originally wrapped up in the manga more than a decade earlier.
The Calamity picks up right at the most explosive point of the entire war, following the Thirteen Court Guard Squads and the surviving Quincies as they push into the Wahr Welt, the Royal Palace that has since been seized and transformed by the invading Wandenreich forces. The arc is building toward the long awaited final confrontation between Ichigo Kurosaki and Yhwach, the Quincy King whose ambitions have driven the entire conflict from the very beginning. Alongside that central showdown, the season is also resolving other major threads, including the tense rivalry between Uryu Ishida and Jugram Haschwalth.
New episodes have been releasing weekly, generally arriving on Saturdays, with the most recent installment, episode five, hitting screens on August 22, 2026. That episode was titled Defend You, and it delivered one of the more emotionally devastating moments of the entire final cour, centered on Orihime pushing her healing powers past their limits during the brutal fight inside the Wahrwelt. Fans and reviewers alike described the episode as one of the most gutting entries in the whole series, with the fallout from Orihime's disappearance from the battlefield expected to ripple directly into the next episode.
Episode six is scheduled to premiere on August 29, 2026, continuing to deal with the emotional aftermath of Orihime being swept away from the fight alongside Yhwach himself. That upcoming episode is also expected to finally bring the drawn out conflict between Uryu and Jugram to its conclusion, a storyline that has been simmering with tension since earlier cours of the adaptation. Following that, episodes seven and eight are already scheduled for early and mid September respectively, keeping the weekly release pattern intact right through to the finale.
For viewers wanting to catch these episodes as they release, the show currently streams through Hulu for audiences in the United States, while Disney Plus carries the series internationally for fans outside that region. Both platforms upload new episodes shortly after their original Japanese broadcast, which airs late at night through Japanese television networks before rolling out globally a few hours later. This same day international release model has helped keep spoilers to a minimum and let the global fanbase experience these major story beats together in something close to real time.
Beyond the streaming rollout, Bleach also had a notable theatrical moment earlier this year, when Fathom Entertainment partnered with Viz Media to bring the opening three episodes of The Calamity to movie theaters across the United States. This limited engagement ran from June 25 through June 29, offering both subtitled and English dubbed screenings alongside behind the scenes footage and commentary from creator Tite Kubo, chief series director Tomohisa Taguchi, and series director Hikaru Murata. The event underscored just how far the franchise's resurgence has come since its high profile return back in 2022.
When it comes to actual ratings, the numbers behind this final stretch of Bleach have been genuinely remarkable. According to MyAnimeList, one of the most widely used anime rating aggregators, The Calamity has climbed all the way into the platform's top ten highest rated anime of all time, officially bumping the long running favorite Hunter x Hunter down to eleventh place. At the time that ranking update was reported, both shows were sitting at a nearly identical score of around 9.03, showing just how tightly contested the very top of that list has become.
Individual episode reviews have also been extremely strong across other platforms, with the premiere episode of this final cour, titled God of Thunder, earning an especially impressive 9.5 out of 10 rating on IMDb shortly after release. More broadly, the Thousand-Year Blood War adaptation as a whole has maintained consistent scores of around 9.4 out of 10 across various fan and critic platforms, a remarkably steady level of praise for a show now several cours deep into its run.
The series has also been racking up serious industry recognition alongside these strong audience numbers. Thousand-Year Blood War previously won MyAnimeList's best anime of the year award back in 2022, took home anime of the year at the Anime Trending Awards in 2024, and picked up multiple nominations at the 2024 to 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, including nods for best action anime, best continuing series, and best score for longtime series composer Shiro Sagisu. The show's third cour, known as The Conflict, similarly topped MyAnimeList's own ranking of the best anime airing during its particular season.
Beyond critical acclaim, the show has proven to be a genuine commercial success as well. Viz Media's social media content built around the franchise reportedly generated over twenty five million views and more than one hundred and five million total impressions throughout 2025 alone, while the series has logged over sixty two million hours watched specifically on Hulu. With the story now barreling toward its true conclusion after more than two decades since the original anime first began, it is clear that Bleach's long awaited return has more than lived up to the hype surrounding it.
Editorial information
This legacy article is awaiting source, accuracy and rights review. It is not currently eligible for advertising.