Japan’s anime industry has crossed a milestone it had never reached before. Spending on anime worldwide hit a record JPY 4.45 trillion (about $28.2 billion) in 2025, growing 15.8% from the previous year, according to preliminary figures from the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA). The number marks the first time the market has passed the 4-trillion-yen line and the strongest annual growth the industry has recorded.
Masahiro Hasegawa, editor-in-chief of the AJA’s annual Anime Industry Report, shared the numbers on Friday, October 30, 2026, at TIFFCOM, the content market held alongside the Tokyo International Film Festival. The final figures will appear in the full Anime Industry Report 2026, scheduled for release in December.
Japan’s Home Market Wakes Up After a Slow Year
The biggest story inside the record total is what happened inside Japan. Domestic spending rose 14.1% to JPY 1.91 trillion (about $12.1 billion) in 2025. That is a sharp turnaround from 2024, when local growth was just 4.6%, based on revised figures for 2023.
For years, the anime business leaned on overseas fans for growth while the home market moved slowly. Hasegawa said 2025 broke that pattern, with both sides growing strongly at the same time. Japanese audiences are spending across films, television, streaming services, music, and merchandise, giving the industry a second engine behind its global success.
Overseas Sales Stay on Top With $16.1 Billion
International revenue still makes up the larger share of the pie. Overseas sales climbed 17.2% to JPY 2.54 trillion (about $16.1 billion) in 2025. Foreign markets accounted for 57.1% of total industry spending, up slightly from 56.5% a year earlier.
The overseas market first overtook Japan’s domestic market in 2023, and the gap has widened every year since. Hasegawa cautioned that exchange rates and global conditions affect the comparison, and the overseas figure reflects many market factors beyond how well individual titles travel.
Studio Revenue Reaches a Record $3.2 Billion
The headline $28.2 billion number measures what consumers spend on everything connected to anime, from TV and film to merchandise, music, and live events. The money that actually flows back to the animation studios themselves is smaller but still growing.
Revenue earned directly by animation studios rose 8.4% to a record JPY 505.5 billion (about $3.2 billion) in 2025. Overseas business made up 27.9% of studio revenue, up from 25.5% in 2024. Hasegawa noted that studios do not always deal directly with international partners, which keeps that share lower than the overall overseas total.
“The idea of studios holding the rights to their own works and managing them to generate revenue is growing year by year,” Hasegawa said.
Demon Slayer and Streaming Push the Numbers Higher
A major driver behind the 2025 surge was the global performance of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle, which took in more than $800 million worldwide and became Japan’s highest-grossing film of all time. The film earned around JPY 39.14 billion (about $254 million) inside Japan alone, making it the country’s top film of 2025.
Streaming has also changed how audiences find anime. Japan’s domestic subscription video-on-demand market reached JPY 601.7 billion (about $4.02 billion) in 2025 after 14.3% growth, and anime was the most-watched genre among Japanese subscribers. The rise of platforms like Netflix after the COVID-19 pandemic brought anime to wider audiences at home and abroad, a factor the AJA points to when explaining the market’s expansion.
Hasegawa pointed to Japanese titles placing high on box office charts and global streaming rankings as proof that anime has crossed a threshold.
“Just last week, I saw a report that a Japanese anime was No. 2 globally,” he said. “I believe the breakthrough has truly been achieved”.
Anime’s Global Footprint Shows Up in Audience Data
The reach of Japanese animation is visible in how audiences rate and discuss it. Japanese anime make up 100 of the 300 TV series with the most user votes on IMDb, including nine of the top 20. Attack on Titan leads the ranking with 726,000 votes, ahead of Rick and Morty. Death Note sits at No. 3 and One Piece at No. 9. Other Japanese titles in the top 20 include Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Demon Slayer, One-Punch Man, Naruto Shippuden, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Hunter x Hunter.
The Japanese government has set a target of JPY 20 trillion ($126.9 billion) in overseas content sales by 2033, with anime expected to contribute JPY 6 trillion ($38.1 billion) of that total. Japanese content earned JPY 6.1 trillion ($38.7 billion) abroad in 2024, and anime accounted for roughly one-third of it. The 2025 figures put the industry further along that path.
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Report Timing and What the Full Data Will Cover
The numbers shared at TIFFCOM are preliminary. The AJA will publish the complete Anime Industry Report 2026 in December, which will include final figures and a deeper breakdown across the report’s market categories. The AJA has been collecting detailed data on the anime business for more than two decades, and the report tracks everything from television and film to streaming, merchandise, music, and live events.
The preliminary data already makes one point clear: Japan’s anime industry is no longer running on overseas demand alone. In 2025, both the home market and the international market grew at double-digit rates, a combination the industry had not seen in recent years. The final report in December will show whether that balance held across every category.
Also Read: My Loong 2026 Release Schedule: All 24 Episodes, Global Timings and Where to Watch
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