It’s official: the Witch Hat Atelier TV anime won’t be premiering this year as was originally announced. Instead, it’s been pushed back to 2026.
The official statement says:
The TV anime “Witch Hat Atelier” will have its broadcast schedule changed from 2025 to 2026 in order to deliver the series with the highest possible quality and to fully showcase its charm. We sincerely apologize to everyone who has been looking forward to the broadcast.
Our staff is working with the utmost dedication and care on the production. Further updates will be announced via the official team as soon as they are decided. We kindly ask for your patience and understanding.
A delay announcement for the adaptation of Kamome Shirahama‘s fantasy manga series isn’t surprising. Beyond the lack of updates even at this point of the year, and animation studio Bug Films‘ previous history with production issues, Bug Films representative director Hiroaki Kojima (animation producer of Zom 100, Summer Time Rendering, and Komi Can’t Communicate) previously admitted that the production of Witch Hat Atelier was facing a “battle against time.”
“Again, as a huge fan of Witch Hat Atelier, speaking on behalf of our entire production team, I think it’s going to be a battle against time, which is the biggest challenge. How we fit everything we want to do into the schedule. I’m very confident that the completed animation we’re able to upload is going to be really good, but is it sustainable with the current setup and pipeline? Of course, the staff and I want to keep pushing the status quo and benchmark till the very end, but again, it’s going to be a battle against the schedule,” Kojima told Anime Trending last year.
Additionally, recent weeks saw the reveals of director Ayumu Watanabe‘s (Summer Time Rendering, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko, Children of the Sea) involvement with an Akane-banashi TV anime as well as a (short-form) Ganglion anime, even as Witch Hat Atelier received no assurance that it’d make its 2025 premiere date.
The original award-winning manga debuted in Kodansha’s seinen manga magazine Monthly Morning Two in 2016 and has 14 volumes as of April 2025. Kodansha USA describes the premise as:
In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: she wants to be a witch. But everybody knows magicians are born, not made, and Coco was not born with a gift for magic. Resigned to her un-magical life, Coco is about to give up on her dream to become a witch … until the day she meets Qifrey, a mysterious, traveling magician. After secretly seeing Qifrey perform magic in a way she’s never seen before, Coco soon learns what everybody “knows” might not be the truth, and discovers that her magical dream may not be as far away as it may seem …
A spin-off manga titled Tongari Boushi no Kitchen by Hiromi Sato began in 2019.
Crunchyroll has licensed the Witch Hat Atelier anime. The anime was announced in 2022.
Staff
• Director: Ayumu Watanabe
• Character designer: Kairi Unabara (Magical Girl holoWitches! main trailer co-character designer)
• Music composer: (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Dark Souls 3 main composer, Elden Ring composer)
Source: @tongari_anime
