A Brand-New Story Instead of a Game Retelling
The most important detail sits right in the announcement: this is not an adaptation of the games. According to a report from Japanese gaming news site 4Gamer, the series (working title: Kingdom Hearts) will tell a completely new story built specifically for animation. Disney's own description promises "a brand-new story that will expand on the universe of Kingdom Hearts."
Series creator Tetsuya Nomura and the creative team at Square Enix are developing the show in partnership with Disney, per Anime News Network. Whether Nomura is directing or serving in a supervisory role has not been specified. A first-look image shown at the D23 panel appears to feature series protagonist Sora holding his Keyblade, though no footage has been released and the animation studio has not been announced.
Ayo Davis, the Disney Kids and Family president, said the series will let fans experience the world they love in an entirely new way, per 4Gamer.
Two Decades of Disney and Square Enix Crossover
Kingdom Hearts launched on PlayStation 2 in 2002 as an unlikely mashup: an action RPG dropping Square Enix heroes into Donald Duck and Goofy's world, with Sora fighting the Heartless across Disney film settings. The franchise has since grown to 13 mainline titles and more than 39 million copies sold worldwide, per 4Gamer.
Kingdom Hearts has always lived on game consoles, so a TV series marks its first major move into serialized animation. ANN notes that Disney Games counts Kingdom Hearts among the company's nine billion-dollar game franchises, which goes a long way toward explaining why Disney is putting it on both Disney Channel and Disney+ rather than treating it as a streaming-only experiment.
Kingdom Hearts IV Lands in Late 2027
The anime was not the only franchise news out of D23. Square Enix also confirmed that Kingdom Hearts IV launches in late 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via the Microsoft Store, Steam, and the Epic Games Store.
The game adds a world based on Pixar's Coco, with Benjamin Bratt reprising his film role as Ernesto de la Cruz. That gives the franchise two major releases in the pipeline at once, a new mainline game and a TV series, after years of fans waiting on any concrete Kingdom Hearts IV date.
What's Next
The anime has no premiere window yet, and the big open questions are the ones fans care about most: which animation studio is handling production, whether the game cast returns, and how the new story connects to the existing lore. None of that was addressed at D23.
Distribution, at least, is settled. The series will air on Disney Channel and stream on Disney+, which means international fans should be covered wherever Disney+ operates, though Disney has not detailed the rollout by region. The next firm date on the franchise calendar is Kingdom Hearts IV in late 2027, and any studio or casting reveals for the anime seem likely to surface through Disney and Square Enix's official channels before then.