For many, the Sword Art Online season 3 release date is the Holy Grail of anime, especially as it’s looking to adapt the Alicization arc in its entirety. We’re already some years out from Kirito and Asuna’s adventures and, while we’ve had a Gun Gale Online spin-off, that’s not done enough to fill the whole in our hearts for our waifu. And Kirito. So, when is the Sword Art Online season 3 air date?
Sword Art Online Season 3 Release Date
UPDATE: The Sword Art Online season 3 release date has been confirmed as October 6. The premiere will air on Crunchyroll.
We’ve actually had a release window announced already, though it might have passed you by. A teaser, which you can watch here, was released in March and ended with a tag featuring the month in which Sword Art Online season 3 would be released: October 2018.
That being said, the current release window and air date, slated for this month as of writing, shows no signs of narrowing. That’s worrying. But we can delve into the past and pick up some clues from previous seasons and piece it all together.
The original Sword Art Online run, for example, debuted on the first full weekend of the year in Japan on July 8. Its successor, Sword Art Online II, carried on with the tradition of premiering on weekends, this time choosing a Saturday as its destination on July 5, 2014. That also happened to be the first full weekend of the year. Noticing a theme?
If that pattern were to continue, we could expect Sword Art Online season 3 to drop on either October 6 or October 7. However, that may be too soon, even for an anime return as hotly anticipated as this. Despite that, we can still expect the show to stick to weekends, so be sure to mark October 13, October 14, October 20, October 21 and, finally, October 27-28 on your calendars. We’re almost guaranteed to get the show airing in Japan on one of those days, with those in the West having to wait up to a day later for the subbed show to go live on CrunchyRoll or any other preferred anime streaming service.
