Twelve new character posters for the Jujutsu Kaisen anime’s Culling Game arc went up on the official site on October 31. The set follows the series’ usual pre-season playbook. Flood social media with individual character art, let each one get passed around, and stay visible without announcing anything as concrete as a date.
That last part matters, because the set arrived with no premiere date attached, and Jujutsu Kaisen season 4 still does not have one.
Where the anime actually is
The numbering is worth getting straight, because it trips people up. Season 3 covered Culling Game Arc Part 1. Season 4 covers Part 2. The October 31 posters belong to the Part 1 character set, which is a little odd given that attention has already moved forward.
Forward is where the announcements have been pointing. A super teaser visual for season 4 was unveiled at Juju Fes 2026 in Japan back in August, carrying Sukuna’s line about showing us “something interesting,” and a first teaser trailer followed it. MAPPA is animating.
A staff change worth tracking
Takeru Sato directs season 4. He was assistant director on season 3, so this is a promotion from inside the team rather than a new hire. Shota Goshozono, who directed the previous season, is credited as chief director, which reads as a handover with the old hand still in the room.
Sato’s comment, as reported with the announcement: “I feel the weight of the responsibility of being entrusted with such an important title every day. I am drawing great strength from the passion and accumulated efforts of the staff and cast who have supported Jujutsu Kaisen up to this point.”
Whether that arrangement helps or muddies the production is an open question. MAPPA has been running several of the industry’s biggest action series at once. The Culling Game is the most fight-dense stretch of Gege Akutami’s manga. Part 1 already asked a lot of the animation team. Part 2 asks for more.
The manga the anime is chasing
Akutami’s manga ended on September 30, 2024, at chapter 271. It ran for six and a half years, starting in March 2018, and closed at 30 volumes. Volumes 29 and 30 both came out on December 25, 2024. Viz Media publishes it in English, and Crunchyroll streams the anime.
That ending changes the calculation for the anime. There is no longer a question of catching up or of original material filling a gap. Everything from here is adaptation of a finished story, which means the only real variables are pacing, episode count and how much the production can carry.
The spin-off nobody expected to matter
Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo ran in Weekly Shonen Jump as a short-term serialization starting with issue 41 on September 8, 2025. It finished at three volumes. The second volume landed on March 4 and the third and final one on May 1. MAPPA produced an animated trailer for that final volume, which is the sort of thing that usually means somebody upstairs is paying attention. Shonen Jump has other anime in motion too, including Kagurabachi’s world tour finale in March 2027.
A poster drop is not news in the way a date announcement is. But it is a signal, and the signal here is that the marketing machine for season 4 has started running on a schedule. Character art first, then a teaser, then a trailer, then a date. Jujutsu Kaisen is somewhere around step one and a half.
Sources
Jujutsu Kaisen official site · Anime Corner — 12 new Culling Game character posters · Anime Corner — season 4 teaser visual
Featured image: Character poster visual for the Jujutsu Kaisen Culling Game arc, via Anime Corner.
