The forecast ledger
Every ending estimate that survived inspection.
Oda's forecasts are milestones, not promises. This ledger includes numeric estimates traceable to his published interviews or Q&As. Percentages are preserved as percentages; editor predictions and unattributed fandom claims are excluded.
Last source review: 28 August 2026
August 2026 · Unverified
The viral “four more years” claim
Several outlets repeated a claim that Oda announced at least four more years during One Piece Day 2026. We found no primary interview, official statement, or event footage supporting it. Shonen Jump News independently stated that Oda did not confirm the claim, so it is treated here as unverified—not as a real Oda forecast.
ScreenRant's article, One Piece May Have Just Set a New Grand Finale Deadline, presented the rumor as a creator update and helped circulate the four-year claim. It is linked here as a record of how the announcement spread—not as evidence that it was real.
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Eiichiro Oda × Gosho Aoyama interview
A personal goal of about three more years
As the Final Saga approached, Oda said he would personally like to aim for another three years. He immediately acknowledged that his previous estimates had been unreliable, making this a target rather than a firm deadline.
Open source: English translation of the published interview ↗ - ↗
Arashi Tsubo television interview
Four to five years remaining
A year later, Oda repeated essentially the same forecast, saying that the manga had roughly four or five years left. This would have suggested an ending around 2024 or 2025, which did not occur.
Open source: Crunchyroll's contemporary report ↗ - ↗
Fischer's visit to Oda's studio
He wanted to finish within five years
When directly asked how many years the whole story had left, Oda said his personal aim was to finish in five years. It was phrased as a goal rather than a fixed publication date.
Open source: Full English interview transcription ↗ - ↗
Fuji TV's Honma Dekka!? special
A little over 100 volumes
Asked whether the manga would end at Volume 100, Oda answered that it would go somewhat beyond it. The deliberately loose wording was a scope estimate, not a promised final volume.
Open source: Contemporary report on the television appearance ↗ - ↗
Yomiuri Shimbun interview
About 80% complete
At the series' twenty-first anniversary, Oda described the story as approximately eighty percent complete. The same interview also showed why the voyage kept expanding: the characters and crew-building process had grown beyond his original outline.
Open source: English translation of the Yomiuri interview ↗ - ↗
Official One Piece Newspaper interview
About 65% complete
Four years after the sixty-percent estimate, Oda moved the figure to roughly sixty-five percent. He said finishing required cutting down the constant stream of new ideas.
Open source: Interview coverage and translation ↗ - ↗
Mid-Dressrosa progress estimate
Roughly 60–70% complete, with about ten years possible
Oda kept the manga in the sixty-to-seventy-percent range and suggested that another decade of serialization was plausible. As with his other percentage estimates, the number described story progress rather than a schedule.
Open source: Sourced history of Oda's ending estimates ↗ - ↗
One Piece Newspaper, Volume 4
About 60% complete
Oda estimated that the story was around sixty percent complete, while admitting that including every idea he wanted to draw would keep the series going indefinitely.
Open source: Crunchyroll retrospective ↗ - ↗
One Piece Volume 42 SBS
The original five-year plan had already slipped
Oda looked back on his initial plan for a five-year serialization and acknowledged that building the story had taken far longer. The ending remained clear in his mind, but he gave no replacement deadline.
Open source: Volume 42 coverage and transcription ↗ - ↗
Early-series interview
Enough ideas for roughly twenty years
Oda said that drawing everything he had in mind could take about twenty years. It described the amount of material he imagined—not a guaranteed final date—but it remarkably pointed toward 2022.
Open source: Retrospective citing Oda's 2002 estimate ↗