Yoshihiro Togashiโs Hunter x Hunter started in the Weekly Shonen Jump issue that went on sale March 3, 1998. Gon Freecss goes looking for the father who abandoned him, sits the Hunter Exam, and picks up Killua Zoldyck, Kurapika, and Leorio along the way. What people actually argue about, decades later, is Nen, the system that governs how fighters use their life energy. It sorts everyone into one of six aptitudes, and it says that the tighter a restriction you place on your own ability, the stronger that ability gets. Fights end up reading less like a contest of power and more like a negotiation where both sides are trying to work out the otherโs terms.
The series had been sitting still for a long time. Chapter 410 ran in the issue dated December 9, 2024, and then the next publication date simply was not set. Chapter 411 appeared in issue 31 of 2026, on sale June 29, a gap of 567 days. The comeback chapter ran with a color spread, and the run has continued weekly since, reaching chapter 417 in the combined 37-38 issue that went on sale August 10, 2026. Togashi has said on his own X account that he has finished the artwork through chapter 421.
Volume 39 came out July 3, 2026, one year and ten months after volume 38 on September 4, 2024. It collects chapters 401 through 410, which ran in the magazine between the October 7, 2024 issue and the December 9, 2024 issue. That volume pushed the series past 100 million copies in print, digital editions included, twenty-eight years after it began. To mark the number, chapters 1 through 340 were released free in staggered blocks on Shonen Jump+ and on Shueishaโs manga app Zebrack between June 29 and July 19, 2026.
The current story is the Succession Contest, set on a liner headed for the Dark Continent. Fourteen princes of the Kakin Empire are locked into a rule that leaves only one alive, each attached to a guardian spirit beast whose ability nobody has identified yet, and all of it plays out inside the ship. The cast runs to dozens of named characters, so most readers keep a chart open. None of this has ever been animated. Madhouseโs 2011 television series ended on September 23, 2014 at episode 148, covering the manga through chapter 339 and the Chairman Election arc, and as of August 2026 no sequel anime has been announced.
MANGA Plus and VIZ carry the English edition, and Shonen Jump+ has the Japanese. If you are starting fresh, the stretch from the Hunter Exam through Yorknew City and the Chimera Ant arc is what built the seriesโ reputation, so you do not need all 39 volumes to see what the fuss is about. One warning before you commit. This run will stop again whenever the finished chapters run out, and the last gap lasted a year and a half. If you can live with that rhythm, the Succession Contest is some of the most tightly plotted work in the series. (As of August 21, 2026)
