Grand Blue Dreaming is getting a fourth TV anime season. The official website and X account for the adaptation of Kenji Inoue and Kimitake Yoshioka’s college comedy made the announcement on Tuesday, one day after the third season’s final episode aired in Japan, and released a teaser visual that picks up right where that finale left off [3].
Production Greenlit Following the Season 3 Finale
The third season ended on Monday with its 12th episode [2]. The confirmation followed almost immediately on the anime’s X account, @gb_anime [1], which is exactly how the third season was revealed a year earlier: announced straight after the Season 2 finale [3].
The third season debuted on Tokyo MX and BS11 on July 6, taking the collegiate cast on an overseas expedition. Setting the narrative in Palau marked the very first time the franchise moved outside Japan, which traded the usual seaside town for open ocean and coral reefs [2]. Anime Corner dates the full run from July 6 to September 21, 2026 [3].
That pace is new for the series. After the first season aired in 2018, fans waited more than six years for the second [3]. When Season 2 finally came in 2025, it had an odd run-up: the entire season leaked online in July 2025, two months before its 12th episode aired in September, and the leaked final episode already listed a third season [2]. Since then, Grand Blue Dreaming has gone from one season to the next without a gap.
Returning Cast Members and Character Dynamics
The announcement did not include a Season 4 cast list. The third season’s ensemble was led by Yuma Uchida as Iori Kitahara, with Chika Anzai as his cousin Chisa Kotegawa, Ryohei Kimura as the anime-obsessed Kohei Imamura and Maaya Uchida as Chisa’s older sister Nanaka [1]. Uchida and Kimura have voiced the pair since 2018 [3].
The chaotic energy of the Peek a Boo diving club relies heavily on its imposing senior members and eccentric female peers. Hiroki Yasumoto returns as club president Shinji Tokita, while Katsuyuki Konishi voices the boisterous Ryujiro Kotobuki. Their drinking rituals are the reason Iori’s hoped-for romantic college debut never happens. Toa Yukinari (Azusa Hamaoka), Kana Asumi (Aina Yoshiwara) and Aya Yamane (Sakurako Busujima) round out the Season 3 cast [1].
The teaser visual shows Chisa, Aina and Sakurako in swimsuits next to a photograph of Iori with a knife through it [3]. Subtle it is not.
Anime Corner reads the image as a setup for the romantic rivalry teased in the last episode of Season 3, which would push a show built on drinking games and diving slapstick a little further toward romantic comedy [3].
Animation Studios and Creative Direction Team
Behind the camera, Anime Corner reports that Shinji Takamatsu returns to direct, with ZERO-G and Liber again handling animation [3]. On Season 3 Takamatsu was director, scriptwriter and sound director at once, and a third studio, Saber Works, joined the animation production for the first time [1].
The rest of the Season 4 staff has not been named. The team behind the recent seasons included character designer Hideoki Kusama, chief animation director Yoichi Ueda and art director Reiko Kasuga [3]. Their designs carry the show’s best-known visual gag, the sudden switch from clean character designs to grotesquely detailed faces whenever someone is handed another drink.
Yukari Hashimoto composed the music for those seasons [3]. The anime is produced by the Grand Blue Production Committee with Kodansha, the manga’s publisher [3].
Manga Origins and Previous Screen Adaptations
The Grand Blue Dreaming anime adapts the manga written by Kenji Inoue and drawn by Kimitake Yoshioka [1], which began in Kodansha’s monthly Good! Afternoon in April 2014 [3]. It had reached 26 tankōbon volumes in Japan as of April 2026. Kodansha USA publishes it in English and has clearly enjoyed writing the blurb, which bills Inoue as an “idiot-expert” and Yoshioka as an “au naturel authority” and promises “shenanigans with a gaggle of lovable bastards” [1]. It is an accurate summary.
The story follows Iori Kitahara, who moves to a coastal town for university and lives above his uncle’s diving shop, Grand Blue [3]. He expects a normal college life and a girlfriend. Instead he is pulled into the Peek a Boo diving club, whose muscular and frequently naked upperclassmen care far more about drinking than studying [1]. Somewhere between the hangovers, Iori actually falls for diving [3].
Zero-G produced the first anime, which premiered in July 2018 and streamed worldwide on Amazon Prime Video as it aired. A live-action film followed in Japanese theaters in August 2020 [2].
Grand Blue Dreaming Across Modern Broadcast Schedules
With Season 2 in summer 2025 and Season 3 in summer 2026, the anime has settled into a yearly rhythm, and both of those seasons ran for 12 episodes on late-night Japanese television [2]. A summer 2027 premiere would fit that pattern, but no broadcast date has been announced, and nothing yet says whether Season 4 will follow the same 12-episode format [3].
Announcing a sequel in the hours after a finale has become routine in anime marketing: the news lands while viewers are still talking about the last episode, and a single visual carries it for months. It is the same logic behind SynergySP streaming the Chihara-san teaser trailer long before that show’s TV debut.
There is no shortage of material. With 26 volumes in print, the manga is well ahead of the anime [1], and the Palau season showed the story can leave its home town without losing its sense of humor [2]. For now, fans of Grand Blue Dreaming have a teaser image, a stabbed photograph and the promise of more Peek a Boo, but no date or streaming partner for the fourth season [3].
- ONLINE NEWS Tan, M. (2026, September 21). Grand Blue Dreaming Season 4 Announced. Anime Trending. [Article Link]
- ONLINE NEWS Anime News Network. (2026, September 21). Grand Blue Dreaming Anime Gets 4th Season. Anime News Network. [Article Link]
- ONLINE NEWS Jovanovic, M. (2026, September 21). Grand Blue Season 4 Announced With Teaser Visual. Anime Corner. [Article Link]
- PRESS RELEASE Grand Blue Production Committee. (2026, September 22). TV Anime Grand Blue Season 4 Production Announcement [Press release]. Grand Blue Dreaming Official Website. [Article Link]
