Ghibli Park has extended the run of its newest short film, A Night in the Valley of Witches, through June 2027. That is a long stay for a studio that normally swaps its shorts out every month.
The film debuted at Cinema Orion inside the Grand Warehouse in July and has been popular enough that the park decided to keep it on. It is exclusive to Ghibli Park, which makes the extension more than a scheduling note.
Why this short is different
Ghibli's short films are the part of the studio most fans have never seen. They screen at only two places on earth, the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo and Ghibli Park in Aichi Prefecture, and both venues show them one at a time with the lineup usually changing monthly. Some of them are famous in reputation only, like Mei and the Kittenbus, the My Neighbour Totoro follow-up that has never been released commercially.
A Night in the Valley of Witches sits inside a real area of the park. The Valley of the Witches is built around Ghibli's witch characters, and the film is set there, which means watching it in the room next door is part of the experience rather than a detail in a press release.
The story follows a new park recruit who gets an unusual number of repair requests across the grounds. While working through them, things start behaving strangely. A fireplace lights itself. Water pours from taps on its own. A senior colleague named Kikue tells him not to worry about it, and then one night after closing he finds her in the Valley of the Witches wearing a cape. She is a witch. She casts a spell.
That is the whole pitch: a maintenance job that turns into a small piece of magic.
The Halloween screening
There is a special after-dark outdoor screening of the film in the Valley of the Witches area during Halloween. It is a children-only event, so adult fans who want to see the film outdoors will not get that option. Everyone else sees it at Cinema Orion, which is close enough to the area that the setting still carries.
If you are planning a trip
This is the practical part, and it is the part that trips people up.
Ghibli Park requires advance reservations. Tickets generally open at 2 p.m. on the 10th of each month for visits two months later, so an October 10 booking window covers December visits. The June 2027 extension means the film is on the schedule for a long stretch, but the ticket supply has not changed, and demand for Ghibli Park has stayed high since it opened.
The extension is genuinely useful for anyone planning a Japan trip in 2027 who could not fit Aichi into an earlier itinerary. It removes a deadline. It does not make tickets easier to get, and it does not mean the park will be quiet.
There is also a quiet argument for going outside the peak seasons. The park's outdoor areas are the attraction, and summer in Aichi is unforgiving. Late autumn and early winter are the better bet, and the new film will be running then.
What this says about Ghibli's short film strategy
Ghibli has never treated its shorts as a commercial product in the usual sense. No streaming, no home video, no international distribution. The only way to see them is to physically show up at one of two locations in Japan.
Keeping a popular short in rotation for nearly two years fits that logic. The films exist to give people a reason to visit, and a short that draws crowds is worth more running continuously than cycling out to make room for something else.
Ghibli's other non-film projects have travelled much further. The Spirited Away stage play is touring internationally with dates into 2027, which is the opposite approach: take the work to the audience instead of asking the audience to come to Aichi. Whether the park's short-film run holds past June 2027 is unclear. The park has not said what replaces it, and Ghibli does not announce this kind of thing far ahead.
Source: Source: SoraNews24, citing Ghibli Park
Featured image: Still from A Night in the Valley of Witches, via SoraNews24.
