The best anime and animation coming to streaming in July 2026 are led by X-Men ’97 Season 2 on Disney+, Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2 on Prime Video, and Mushoku Tensei Season 3 on Crunchyroll. Here is the July 2026 shortlist
July is a huge month for animation across every platform. The most anticipated animated return of the year leads it, a benchmark isekai franchise comes back, and a Fullmetal Alchemist creator’s series jumps to two more platforms
1. X-Men ’97 Season 2 (Disney+, July 1). The animation event of the year. The Season 1 finale devastated people and the three-episode premiere lets you sink straight in. Season 1 earned this anticipation the hard way, with writing that treated a ’90s revival as serious drama and animation that honored the original show’s look while moving like a modern production. Nothing else on the 2026 animation calendar carries this much weight. Watch it first
2. Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2 (Prime Video, July 31). Season 1 was one of the best animated releases of 2024, hard-boiled noir in an early Gotham. All 10 episodes drop July 31. This is Bruce Timm returning to the aesthetic he defined with Batman: The Animated Series and stripping it down further. A 1940s Gotham, a colder Bruce Wayne, and rogues reimagined from scratch. Hamish Linklater’s Batman is the closest anyone has come to Kevin Conroy, and GOC does not hand that comparison out lightly.
3. Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation Season 3 (Crunchyroll, July 5). The isekai genre’s benchmark returns with an eight-language dub on day one. Studio Bind exists essentially to make this series, and the production has set the visual standard for the genre since 2021. Whatever you think of isekai as a category, this is the one that takes the craft seriously. Day one, no debate
4. BLACK TORCH (Crunchyroll, July 4). One of the season’s flagship new action titles, landing with dubs in nine languages at once. It adapts Tsuyoshi Takaki’s manga about a teenager raised in a ninja household who bonds with a foul-mouthed spirit cat, and the premise plays exactly as fun as it sounds. Launching a brand-new action series with nine day-one dubs is Crunchyroll telling you it is a priority. Treat it like one
5. Daemons of the Shadow Realm (Netflix and Hulu, July 4). The Hiromu Arakawa series, from the creator of Fullmetal Alchemist, expands from Crunchyroll to two more platforms. Arakawa built Fullmetal Alchemist into one of the most complete stories in the medium, and this one carries her signatures: twin protagonists tied to a village conspiracy, clean readable action, and jokes that land between the heavy beats. Wider availability means the audience this one deserves can finally find it
6. Grand Blue Dreaming Season 3 (Crunchyroll, July 6). A seven-year wait ends, and the comedy moves its setting outside Japan to Palau for the first time. The diving-club comedy built a devoted audience on chaos: college freshmen, terrible decisions, and the ocean as the only calm thing in frame. Seven years between seasons kills most shows. The fact that this one still has an audience waiting tells you how hard the first two seasons hit
7. Snoopy Presents: There’s No Place Like Home, Snoopy (Apple TV+, July 31). The month’s family-animation close, and Apple’s Peanuts specials keep clearing a high bar. These specials have quietly become some of the most carefully made family animation on any service, faithful to Charles Schulz’s line work and unafraid of the melancholy that made Peanuts matter in the first place. Put it on with the family and let July end on a soft note
One access note: a huge share of this Crunchyroll season ships with same-day dubs in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, and Latin American Spanish. Global fans get these day one, in their language
