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As of July 19, it has officially been twenty-nine years since One Piece's manga was first released in Issue #34 of Weekly Shonen Jump way back in 1997. And nearly three decades later, the series is bigger than anyone could have imagined back then, with Luffy becoming the face of Shonen Jump and the series itself growing into a vast, enduring franchise.
That said, across the last thirty years, One Piece has perhaps never seen more growth as a franchise than it has in the last three to five years, and it's largely due to the Netflix live-action series. Recent as it may be, One Piece's live-action is one of the biggest additions to the franchise in decades, and it has now dethroned the original anime as well.
One Piece's Live-Action Lands Major Streaming Milestone
Netflix's One Piece live-action recently wrapped up filming for Season 3, The Battle of Alabasta, which is set for a 2027 premiere. The upcoming season is expected to bring even greater success, though it seems the live-action series has already achieved a major milestone even before the release of Season 3. Netflix recently shared its What We Watched report for the first half of 2026, and ONE PIECE: Season 2 ranked #7 among the most-viewed series on the platform from January to June 2026.
More impressively, however, with this report for the first half of 2026, the One Piece live-action series as a whole has now surpassed 1 billion viewing hours on Netflix since its release in 2023. This number comes from Netflix's biannual What We Watched reports from the last three years, with both seasons combined adding up to 1,333,500,000 hours viewed, which equates to 172.9 million views. This number will likely only increase in the second half of 2026 and skyrocket with the addition of Season 3 in 2027.
2027 Will Be One Piece's Biggest Year In Decades
With this major milestone, there's no more denying that One Piece's live-action might just be one of the biggest, most important expansions to One Piece's franchise since the original anime itself. The live-action series not only continues to be praised and accepted by existing fans of the series but, more importantly, continues to attract new fans and mainstream audiences. Its sheer influence is clearer than ever, and the exposure it's given One Piece in the last three years has made the franchise bigger and more and more renowned than it's ever been in three decades.
What's more is that One Piece will only grow more and more popular with time, especially with the release of Season 3 in 2027. In fact, between Season 3 of the live-action and the Wit Studio remake, which is set for February 2027, the upcoming year is shaping up to be One Piece's biggest one in decades, and right in time for the series' 30th anniversary too.
The strong tag-team duo of the live-action and the remake are set to make One Piece bigger than ever, with the former drawing new fans in and the latter making the anime more approachable for these modern audiences. And, as the original anime only continues to get more and more stunning in the Final Saga, there will soon be no real reason not to dive into One Piece, or even escape it if it continues to grow popular at this pace.
