The third and final Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club film has a date. A teaser posted on the trilogy’s official website confirms that Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Dōkōkai Kanketsu-hen Saishūshō opens in Japan on February 5, 2027.
The teaser also carries the theme song. “Dreaming Free” is performed by the cast in character, which has been the pattern across this trilogy.
The end of a three-film run
This is the last piece of a story that has been running in theaters since 2024. The first film in the Kanketsu-hen trilogy opened in September 2024, and the second opened in November 2025. Splitting the finale into three theatrical releases was an unusual call for the franchise, and it means the ending has been stretched across roughly two and a half years of release windows.
How the trilogy is structured
The setup for the trilogy is a contest rather than a school festival. The story picks up after Isla returns to her home country. The club receives an invitation to something called the School Idol GPX, a competition where members compete as individuals instead of as a school, performing through an app. That structure breaks up the group by design, and it is the reason each film follows a different set of girls.
The first film sent six members to Okinawa: Ayumu, Kasumi, Shizuku, Kanata, Emma, and Lanzhu. Ayumu’s arc in that one was uncomfortable on purpose. Competing against her own clubmates pushed her into feelings she had not sorted out, and the film spent most of its runtime on that instead of on the contest itself.
The second film took the other half of the club, Karin, Ai, Setsuna, Rina, Shioriko, and Mia, through Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Kansai instead of a tropical island, and a different six personalities carrying the emotional weight.
So the third film has a structural problem to solve: bring twelve members back together after two films spent their time apart, and land an ending for a franchise that started in 2020.
Where Nijigasaki comes from
Nijigasaki’s history runs longer than the anime. The characters were introduced in 2017 as part of the Perfect Dream Project, a collaboration between KLab Games and Bushiroad for the School Idol Festival smartphone game. The first TV season premiered in October 2020, and the second followed in April 2023. Crunchyroll streamed both as they aired and later produced an English dub.
There was also a theatrical OVA, Next Sky, which opened in June 2023, and a short anime based on Miyakohito’s four-panel spinoff, Nijiyon Animation, whose second season aired in April 2024.
Why it matters
February 5 puts the film in a busy stretch of the Japanese release calendar, though the Love Live! audience is steady enough that competition matters less than usual. These films do not need a broad opening weekend. They need the core fanbase to show up repeatedly, which is exactly what the franchise has trained its audience to do.
What the final film actually contains is still mostly unknown. The teaser confirms the date and the theme song and not much else. Whether the story resolves the GPX contest, or steps away from it for a proper send-off, has not been revealed.
For anyone outside Japan, the wait will be longer. Crunchyroll has handled the franchise’s streaming for years, and the previous films eventually reached international audiences, but no overseas date has been announced for this one.
The title translates roughly to “final chapter,” so there is no ambiguity about what this is. One more film, then the Nijigasaki story is finished. For more idol and theatrical news, see our report on i☆Ris disbanding at the end of 2027 and the U.S. theatrical run for Madoka Magica: Walpurgisnacht Rising.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Dōkōkai Kanketsu-hen films’ official website and Comic Natalie
Featured image: Teaser frame from the final Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club film, via Anime News Network.
