Grand Blue Dreaming Season 4 Announced as Season 3 Ends

Grand Blue Dreaming gets Season 4 as its Palau-set Season 3 finale aired September 21.

The Grand Blue Dreaming TV anime is getting a fourth season, announced by the anime's official accounts on September 21, 2026, immediately after the 12th and final episode of the third season aired in Japan. Anime Trending reports the news came via the anime's official X/Twitter account alongside an announcement visual. Anime News Network confirms the third season debuted July 6 on Tokyo MX and BS11 and concluded with its finale on Monday, making the renewal effectively a same-day pickup. Notably, this continues a pattern for the franchise: Anime Corner notes Season 3 itself was announced immediately after the Season 2 finale, so fans now expect the Grand Blue pipeline to renew itself right at each curtain call.

What makes the third season's conclusion worth marking is where it went. According to Anime News Network, Season 3 is set in Palau, marking the first time the series has left Japan as its setting — a genuine first for a show that has mostly revolved around Iori Kitahara's college diving club and the PaB club's beer-fueled misadventures. The season ran twelve episodes from July 6 to September 21, 2026. That said, the finale, titled 'Okinawa Again (Back),' pulled the story back to a domestic vacation: Indiatimes' recap describes an episode that revisits Iori and Chisa's Okinawa trip from Aina and Kohei's perspective, with the pair secretly following them to sabotage the holiday before everything unravels into classic Grand Blue chaos.

Indiatimes' recap of episode 12 details the twist fans are now carrying into Season 4: Sakurako Busujima suddenly appears in the finale's closing moments and kisses Iori, leaving the season on a major romantic cliffhanger. The episode shows Aina's sabotage operation collapsing — Kohei is left practically nonfunctional after voice actress Kaya announces her marriage, and the duo's lack of lodging leads to the love-hotel sighting that opens the episode as a misunderstanding. Indiatimes notes the finale never gives Iori a romantic answer, instead deliberately leaving several relationships hanging. The kiss matters less for settling anything than for throwing a new complication into the increasingly crowded battle around Iori, with viewer reactions cited by the outlet focusing on how unexpected the move was after Sakurako sat outside the Okinawa story's center.

The Season 4 announcement visual is doing real narrative work. Anime Corner reports the new visual features Chisa Kotegawa, Aina Yoshiwara and Sakurako Busujima in swimsuits, with a photograph of Iori pierced by a knife — and, in Anime Corner's reading, it teases a new romantic rivalry mirroring the final episode's kiss. Indiatimes similarly notes the official announcement teases that the romantic battle around Iori will become even more heated, with Chisa, Aina and Sakurako all featured. For a series that has historically kept its romance dangling as comedy fuel, an announcement image that foregrounds three romantic rivals — one of whom just kissed the protagonist on-screen — signals the franchise intends to lean into the love-triangle-plus-one dynamic rather than reset it.

The returning creative team appears stable. Per Anime Corner, Shinji Takamatsu — who has directed, scripted and served as sound director across the series — returns, with Hideoki Kusama on character design alongside chief animation director Yoichi Ueda, Reiko Kasuga as art director, and Yukari Hashimoto composing. Anime Trending lists Season 3's animation production as Zero-g with Saber Works newly added, while Anime Corner credits studios ZERO-G and Liber, so the exact studio configuration for Season 4 has not been definitively pinned down across outlets.

The context that makes this renewal notable for devoted fans: Anime News Network notes the manga, by writer Kenji Inoue and illustrator Kimitake Yoshioka, launched in Kodansha's Good! Afternoon in April 2014 and has reached 26 volumes as of April 2026, per Anime Trending. Season 1 aired in 2018, Season 2 in 2025, and Season 3 just concluded — so the once-notoriously long gap between Seasons 1 and 2 has collapsed into a near-annual cadence. Season 3 is available internationally through Crunchyroll, per Indiatimes. The announcement itself, per the outlets, promises only that the romantic battle will escalate.