Dragon Ball Super's Manga Hiatus Drags On — A Leaked Jump Festa 2027 Lineup Suggests No 2026 Return

Dragon Ball Super's manga has now gone longer without a new chapter than the gap between some of its entire story arcs, and the newest piece of information about its status isn't exactly reassuring. A leaked Jump Festa 2027 programming lineup, reported by CBR and repeated across outlets on September 24 and 25, 2026, reportedly shows no dedicated panel for Dragon Ball Super at the event — a notable omission when franchises like One Piece, Chainsaw Man, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Sakamoto Days, My Hero Academia, and Spy x Family are all expected to get their own stage time. It's the latest data point in a hiatus that's now stretched well past a year, even as the Dragon Ball anime franchise is arguably more active than it's been in years.

Where the hiatus actually started

The manga's last new chapter, Chapter 104, was released in February 2025. According to reporting at the time, it was a prequel-style chapter that Akira Toriyama had written before his death in March 2024 — meaning it wasn't new material generated after the fact, but something Toriyama had already left behind. Since Chapter 104, there has been no Chapter 105, and no announced date for one.

By February 19, 2026, a full year after that chapter, GameRant's reporting on V-Jump's April 2026 issue confirmed the manga was "still on hiatus, with no return date in sight." That's worth sitting with on its own: this isn't a short scheduling gap between issues, and it isn't a case of the manga just being slow to update — it's a full calendar year with zero new pages, confirmed as ongoing by the publication that would know first if anything had changed.

The May 2026 chapters weren't new material

One point of confusion worth clearing up directly, because it's an easy headline to misread: on May 2, 2026, Shonen Jump Plus released 23 chapters of the "Moro Saga," also referred to as the Galactic Patrol arc, for free — but only for a limited window, through May 14. According to CBR's coverage, this was explicitly not new Chapter 105 material. It was a promotional re-release of chapters that had already been published, timed to coincide with the new Galactic Patrol anime adaptation gearing up. If you saw "23 new Dragon Ball Super chapters" circulating around that date and got excited, the manga's hiatus didn't actually break — Shueisha was just using existing material to funnel readers toward the anime.

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Toyotarou's own reassurance, and its limits

The most direct comment from the creative side came in June 2026, on the 100th installment of Toyotarou's "Toyotarou Tries to Draw" livestream and art series. According to CBR's reporting, Toyotarou stated: "in 2026, 37 years later, the end of Dragon Ball is still nowhere in sight!" Outlets picked that line up as reassurance that the manga isn't cancelled — a reasonable read, given it's a direct statement from the person actually responsible for drawing it — but it's worth being precise about what it does and doesn't confirm. It's a statement about the franchise's longevity and creative intent, not a return date. No specific timeline for Chapter 105 came with it. Separately, the official Dragon Ball website has continued to refer to the series as "ongoing," which lines up with Toyotarou's framing but is, again, a status label rather than a schedule.

There's a smaller but interesting supporting detail here too: Toyotarou reportedly updated his X/Twitter bio to read to the effect of "everything is for the return of the series," language interpreted by fans and press as confirmation he's actively working toward bringing Dragon Ball Super back into serialization, rather than having simply stepped away from it. Combined with reports that he's been focusing almost exclusively on Dragon Ball-related livestreams and artwork in the run-up to the current news cycle, the picture that emerges isn't of a stalled or abandoned project — it's of someone who appears to be building toward a return without a date attached to it yet.

The Jump Festa 2027 leak

That brings things to the newest development. Jump Festa 2027 is set for Makuhari Messe in Chiba, expected around December 20–21, 2026, though at least one source has cited December 19–20 — a minor date discrepancy worth flagging rather than treating as fully settled either way. What's actually driving the current round of coverage is a leaked programming lineup, first reported by CBR on September 24, 2026 and repeated by other outlets the same day. According to that leak, Dragon Ball Super will not have a dedicated panel on the main Jump Super Stage, in contrast to panels reportedly expected for One Piece, Chainsaw Man, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Sakamoto Days, My Hero Academia, and Spy x Family.

It's important to be clear about what this is and isn't. This is a leak, not an official announcement from Shueisha or V-Jump. Multiple outlets running the same story on the same day reflects the same underlying leaked lineup circulating, not independent confirmations from separate sources. Leaks around convention programming have been wrong before, and Jump Festa lineups have historically shifted between early leaks and the actual event. But it's also not nothing — a leak specific enough to name which franchises are and aren't getting panels, and specific enough that it's being taken seriously by outlets that have covered this hiatus accurately up to this point, is a reasonable signal that Dragon Ball Super's manga side isn't expected to have news ready by December.

What a leaker is actually saying

Prominent Dragon Ball leaker Supa Chronicles offered a more direct read on the situation, and it's worth treating this the way it should be treated: as a fan-facing insider's speculation, not a statement from Shueisha, Toyotarou, or anyone officially attached to the manga. According to that commentary, "I'm not expecting [the Dragon Ball Super manga] to return in 2026," with the suggestion that Chapter 105 and the rumored next arc likely won't arrive until 2027 instead.

That next arc, referred to in circulating coverage as the "Black Frieza Saga," has not been officially announced by Shueisha under that name or any other — it's an anticipated, rumored title based on story threads and leaker chatter, not confirmed canon. Treat any specifics attached to it accordingly until Shueisha or V-Jump actually puts a name on it themselves.

Supa Chronicles also pushed back against reading any of this as a sign the manga is finished, saying: "Manga is not over, obviously... they don't always need to have big events to announce something." That's a useful corrective to keep in mind alongside the Jump Festa leak — a missing convention panel is a scheduling signal, not a cancellation signal, and even the leaker delivering the more pessimistic "not in 2026" read is explicitly not predicting the series is done.

The anime side, by contrast, is thriving

Set all of that against what's happening on the anime side of the franchise, and the contrast is stark. Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, a remake covering the Battle of Gods story, is expected to premiere around October 2026. That's expected to eventually lead into new content via the Galactic Patrol Prisoner arc — the same arc the Shonen Jump Plus re-release chapters were tied to promotionally back in May. Where the manga has spent well over a year without a single new page, the anime is actively ramping up toward a theatrical-adjacent comeback, with a clear pipeline of announced projects stretching out in front of it.

This isn't a contradiction so much as a reflection of how differently the two sides of the franchise are produced. An anime remake of already-published material like Battle of Gods doesn't require new manga chapters to move forward — it's adapting a story that's been finished and available for years. The manga's hiatus and the anime's momentum can coexist because they're not actually dependent on each other in the way casual observers sometimes assume.

Sorting out what's confirmed from what's speculation

Given how much has circulated around this story across different outlets over the past year and a half, it's worth laying out plainly what's actually established versus what's still speculative:

• Confirmed: Chapter 104, a Toriyama-written prequel-style chapter, was the last new chapter, released February 2025.
• Confirmed: as of February 2026 reporting, the manga was still on indefinite hiatus with no return date given.
• Confirmed: the May 2026 Shonen Jump Plus release was a re-release of 23 existing "Moro Saga"/Galactic Patrol chapters, not new material, and it was time-limited through May 14.
• Confirmed: Toyotarou publicly stated in June 2026 that the end of Dragon Ball is "nowhere in sight," and the official Dragon Ball website lists the series as ongoing.
• Reported but leak-sourced, not officially confirmed: Dragon Ball Super will not get a dedicated Jump Festa 2027 panel, per a leaked programming lineup.
• Speculative, from a fan leaker rather than an official source: Chapter 105 and the "Black Frieza Saga" likely won't arrive until 2027.
• Rumored, not officially named: "Black Frieza Saga" as the title of the next arc.

Where that leaves things

Nothing here points to Dragon Ball Super's manga being cancelled — every official-adjacent signal, from the "ongoing" status on Dragon Ball's own website to Toyotarou's direct public comments, argues against that reading. What it does point to is a hiatus that's likely to extend through the rest of 2026 without a dedicated Jump Festa panel to hang any hope of a near-term announcement on. The most grounded expectation right now, based on what's actually been reported rather than what fans might want, is a manga that's quietly being worked toward a return by its illustrator, with no concrete date, likely landing sometime in 2027 alongside whatever the next arc turns out to actually be called. Until Shueisha or V-Jump says otherwise, that's the honest state of things — not cancelled, not imminent, just still paused.