Disney Announces Kingdom Hearts Anime Series and Confirms Kingdom Hearts 4 for Late 2027
Disney used its D23 fan event in California on Friday to announce an anime series based on Kingdom Hearts, the long-running video game series that crosses Disney characters with original heroes and worlds from Square Enix — the Japanese publisher behind Final Fantasy.
The anime will stream on Disney+ and air on the Disney Channel. It is being made in collaboration with Tetsuya Nomura, the franchise's longtime director, and the creative team at Square Enix, according to VGC.
The same presentation confirmed a release window for Kingdom Hearts 4: late 2027. The game will feature a world based on Pixar's Coco, the 2017 animated film set during the Mexican Día de los Muertos holiday. Kingdom Hearts 4 will also be available at launch on Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo's current-generation console.
D23 — officially "The Ultimate Disney Fan Event" — is a multi-day fan experience organised by Disney's official fan club. The 2026 edition's programming, announced in July, included a dedicated session titled "DEEP DIVE into KINGDOM HEARTS," promising new content from the franchise alongside reveals for Percy Jackson and a Muppets Musical (D23).
The D23 announcements cap a summer that already gave Kingdom Hearts fans plenty to digest. Earlier in the season, Square Enix revealed new gameplay from Kingdom Hearts 4 for the first time in four years. That footage arrived during a Nintendo Direct presentation in June, where the publisher also showed a new trailer for the game (Square Enix).
For anyone unfamiliar, Kingdom Hearts began in 2002 and pairs original characters — chiefly a Keyblade-wielding teenager named Sora — with worlds drawn from Disney's animated catalogue. Each entry lets players visit reimagined versions of films like Aladdin, Hercules, or Tangled, fighting alongside Disney characters in an action role-playing format. The series has sold over 36 million copies worldwide across its history.
The anime series and the game share a franchise but no confirmed release date has been given for the show itself. The late-2027 window applies only to Kingdom Hearts 4.
For fans, the D23 reveal answers a question that has lingered since Kingdom Hearts 4 was first teased in 2022: when the next game would actually arrive. A late-2027 target puts it roughly five years after its initial reveal, and the addition of a Coco world gives the first concrete sense of which Disney and Pixar properties the new entry will draw on. The anime, meanwhile, opens a second front — bringing the crossover to audiences who may never have picked up a controller.
