Japan’s Anime Industry Hits a Record High of $28 Billion in 2025

Japan’s animation industry set another record in 2025, hitting $28.5 billion (4.5 trillion yen) in overall sales up 15.8 percent in yen terms on 2024, with revenue from overseas hitting around $16 billion and the domestic market logging around $12 billion. The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) announced the figures, along with highlights from its Anime Industry Report 2026, at their annual session on the last day of TIFFCOM, the content market of the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The figures represent total revenue for the industry, including box office, streaming and TV rights, licensing agreements, merchandising and anime-related events. Overseas sales overtook the domestic market for the first time in 2020.

Both the domestic and international figures were boosted by the enormous success of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba–The Movie: Infinity Castle, which took around $800 million globally, though some of that came in 2026. It took around $250 million (40 billion yen) in Japan, helping it become the highest grossing anime and Japanese film of all time. The previous film in the franchise also grossed 40 billion yen in Japan but was not such a huge smash overseas.

“More than anything else, it is vital that we build a good ecosystem for the creators who develop the productions, and all the people around them, so they can concentrate on creating stories,” said Kazuko Ishikawa, president of The Association of Japanese Animations and Nippon Animation, in her opening remarks.

Ishikawa noted the government’s target of $130 billion (20 trillion yen) for overseas sales of Japanese content by 2033 as part of its IP360 strategy, with anime to account for 6 trillion of that.

Revenue at anime studios also grew, up 8.4 percent to $3.2 billion (506 billion), with overseas studios accounting for a record $880 million (140 billion yen). The weak yen reduces the size of all the figures when reported in dollars but boosts the overseas earnings of Japanese animation companies when they repatriate cash.

Masahiro Hasegawa, chief editor of the report, noted that the many of the highest-ranked TV series by votes on IMDb were anime, with the Attack on Titan series topping the chart, and Death Note in third, sandwiched between Rick and Morty and The Simpsons.

The latest market figures follow growth of almost 15 percent the previous year to a record $25 billion (3.8 trillion yen), driven in large part by the continuing expansion of anime’s international fanbase. The market has almost tripled since the association began reporting industry figures in 2002.