Anime Seasons: How to Read the Premiere Calendar and What a Cour Is

If you’ve ever opened the page “anime this season,” you have probably noticed words like “Fall 2026,” “cour” or “TV (New).” For a newcomer it looks like a code. In fact the system is simple: it is tied to how Japanese television works, and the sites just repeat it in their calendars. Below we explain the main terms with examples from Wikipedia pages and calendar sites, checked on October 14, 2026.

Four seasons of three months

Japanese broadcasting runs in four quarters, and new anime start at the beginning of each one. Calendar sites show this: LiveChart’s seasonal tables name the months on each page (“January–March,” “April–June,” “July–September” and “October–December,” respectively). Likewise, the English Wikipedia describes Japanese TV series as airing in three-month seasons (winter, spring, summer and fall).

Season	Months	How sites label it
Winter	January–March	Winter
Spring	April–June	Spring
Summer	July–September	Summer
Fall	October–December	Fall

Not every show starts on the first day of a season: for example, “86” began on April 11, 2021. So “fall season” doesn’t mean “everything came out on October 1,” but “new series that started airing in October–December.”

What a cour is

Cour (in Japan the word is written as “クール”) means a broadcast quarter, that is, about three months. According to the Japanese Wikipedia, one cour usually corresponds to a period in which about 13 episodes air. There is a nuance too: prime-time dramas often have 9 to 11 episodes, because several weeks are taken up by special broadcasts at the changeover between seasons.

For anime, this means simple arithmetic:

• 1 cour — about 13 episodes, one “quarter” of airtime (in the examples below, some parts have 11–12 episodes);
• 2 cour — roughly twice as many episodes, half a year on air;
• 4 cour — roughly a year on air. According to the Japanese Wikipedia, this is often done for anime aimed at younger viewers, while anime for older audiences usually run for 1–2 cour.

Split-cour: a series with a break

Sometimes a series is split into two blocks with a pause between them. This is called a split-cour. According to the English Wikipedia, the anime “86” aired as two split-cours from April 11, 2021 to March 19, 2022: the first part (episodes 1–11) ended in June, and the second (episodes 12–23) started in October 2021. For viewers this is one season, interrupted by a long pause.

Dates can also shift. Wikipedia notes that the second season of “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime” has 24 episodes in two halves of 12: the first half was moved from October 2020 to January 2021, and the second from April to July 2021 because of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

Format labels in the calendar

On MyAnimeList’s seasonal pages there is a filter by type: TV, ONA, OVA, Movie, Special; new series are grouped under the heading “TV (New).” LiveChart divides its table into the tabs “Television,” “Movies,” “OVAs” and “All.” Here is what these mean:

Label	What it means
TV	anime that airs on television
ONA	original net animation: anime created for distribution on the internet
OVA	original video animation: a release straight to video, usually without a prior broadcast on cinema screens or television
Movie	a feature-length film
Special	a standalone special episode

The definitions of OVA and ONA are taken from the Wikipedia page on anime.

How to read the premiere calendar: four steps

1. Choose the season and year. On LiveChart these are the tabs Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall; on MyAnimeList there is a season switcher at the top of the page.
2. Look at the format. If you only want series, keep the TV type; if you want films, choose Movies or Movie.
3. Find the start date and the number of episodes. The MyAnimeList card shows the start date, the end date, the number of episodes and the duration. The episode count shows at a glance whether it is one cour or two.
4. Check the airtime. On LiveChart, next to each title there is a countdown to the next episode, and the airtime is shown with a time zone label. Note that late-night times in Japanese schedules can be written as “24:00” rather than “00:00.” For example, in a Wikipedia note on “86” the premiere is given as April 10, 2021 at 24:00, which in fact means April 11 at 00:00 Japan time.

Example: reading the entry for “86”

Let’s take the data from the Wikipedia page. The series has 23 episodes. The first 11 aired from April 11 to June 20, 2021, and the remaining 12 from October 3, 2021 to March 19, 2022. What follows from this? First, it is more than one cour, but not “exactly two of 13.” Second, there was a pause of several months between the parts, so the first part belongs to the spring 2021 season, while the second begins in the fall season. Third, for viewers it is still one season of the series, not two separate ones. If you only saw “23 episodes” in a list, you wouldn’t have guessed about the pause, but the dates make it obvious at once.

When to start watching

The calendar helps you decide when to start. Some people like to watch every week along with everyone else, while others wait until the whole cour is over and watch it in one evening. Wikipedia notes that legal streaming services often show new episodes almost at the same time as Japan, sometimes within hours of broadcast: this is called “simulcast.” So a weekly rhythm is available outside Japan too.

If you’re just starting, read our selection “Where to Start with Anime”, and genres such as shōnen or isekai are explained in our article on anime genres.

Frequently asked questions

How many episodes are there in one anime season?

In Japanese terminology a cour covers a broadcast quarter, and one “quarter” is usually about 13 episodes. So a short series that runs for one cour has about 13 episodes, while one that runs for half a year has roughly twice as many. But this is only a typical pattern: some parts have fewer episodes (the first part of “86” had 11).

What is a split-cour?

It is a series that airs in two blocks with a pause between them. An example from Wikipedia is the anime “86,” whose first part aired in spring 2021 and the second in the fall of the same year.

How is an OVA different from an ONA?

OVAs are released straight to video, while ONAs are created for distribution on the internet. Both formats usually have no prior television broadcast, and calendars list them separately from TV.

Where can I watch new episodes?

They air on different streaming services, and the set of services depends on the country. We described the general picture for Ukraine in a separate article about streaming.