The global anime market hit 4.45 trillion yen in 2025, about US$28.2 billion, a record figure for the Association of Japanese Animations. AJA presented the summary during the TIFFCOM trade event in Tokyo on Thursday, ahead of the full Anime Industry Report in December.
The split is the interesting part. Domestic business brought in 1.91 trillion yen, roughly US$12.1 billion. Overseas business brought in 2.54 trillion yen, roughly US$16.1 billion. Overall growth was 15.8%, with the domestic side up 14.1% and the overseas side up 17.2%.
Overseas revenue beat domestic for the fourth time
That makes 2025 the fourth year in which overseas revenue beat domestic revenue. The three earlier years were 2020, when the pandemic hollowed out Japanese theatrical and events, then 2023 and 2024. An anomaly, then, has become the pattern.
One caveat before anyone quotes these numbers as “the anime industry is worth $28 billion.” AJA’s figure is a broad one. It counts television, film, home video and streaming, and then adds merchandising, music releases, events, concerts, overseas licensing and other related income. AJA also publishes a narrower number for the production companies that actually make animation, and that number is much smaller. Both are useful; they answer different questions.
Studios got 8% while overseas revenue grew 25%
The narrow side has its own story. Overseas business accounted for 27.9% of studio revenue, up 25.5% from 2024, and money flowing back to production outfits rose 8%. That gap between 25.5% and 8% is where the industry’s structural complaint lives: overseas revenue can grow fast while the studios that generate it capture only a slice.
Masahiro Hasegawa, editor-in-chief of the report, pointed at one reason. More production companies are taking equity positions in the works they make instead of working purely for a production fee. Holding a share of the intellectual property means holding a share of overseas revenue, and that only pays off if the studio stays on the project’s committee long enough to collect.
That is a slow change, and it runs against decades of how anime was financed. Committees were built to spread risk across publishers, broadcasters, music labels and distributors. Studios that want a bigger cut have to put money in, which means fewer shows, or more debt, or both.
The government wants overseas sales doubled
There is a policy backdrop too. The Japanese government’s five-year action plan wants to double annual overseas entertainment sales, from an estimated 10 trillion yen in 2028 to 20 trillion yen in 2033. For scale, 2024 sales were 6.044 trillion yen, so the 2033 target is 3.7 times that. Anime is the most exportable piece of that plan, and the 2025 numbers are the evidence the plan’s authors will point to.
What the report summary does not include is anything about margins, staff pay or the number of productions. Those are the numbers that decide whether a growing market is a healthy industry. AJA’s full report lands in early December and usually carries at least some of them.
AJA is also one of the main sponsors of AnimeJapan, the annual convention where a good chunk of the announcements covered on this site originate.
Read it next to the licensing news
Read the growth figures alongside the licensing and investment news of the past few months and the direction is consistent. AniBiz raised $6 million from TBS, Toei Animation and TV Tokyo to build a licensing platform. Dentsu and Kodansha teamed up to sell manga IP to brand marketers in the Americas. Anime and manga are being treated as exportable intellectual property by companies that used to treat them as content.
The market number is the headline. The 8% return to studios is the part worth arguing about.
Source: Anime News Network, citing Variety and Deadline. The full Anime Industry Report 2026 is scheduled for early December.
Featured image: AnimeJapan 2025 key art, via the Association of Japanese Animations.
