V Jump Confirms the Dragon Ball Super Manga Still Has No Return Date

The April 2026 issue of V Jump just dropped, and with it came a single, blunt line about the Dragon Ball Super manga: "The Dragon Ball Super manga will be on hiatus in this issue." No timeline. No hint at a return. No explanation. Just silence. This marks yet another month where V Jump confirms the manga's absence without any forward-looking language. Dragon Ball Super has been on hiatus since Chapter 104 arrived in February 2025. We're now staring down a full two years of nothing. The upcoming May 2026 issue, scheduled for release on March 19, shows no signs of including a new chapter either. For those keeping score, Dragon Ball Super launched in V Jump back in 2015. Co-written by Akira Toriyama and illustrated by Toyotaro, the manga produced 24 volumes and gave us some of the franchise's most beloved story arcs. The Moro saga. The Granolah saga. The Black Frieza cliffhanger that left every Dragon Ball fan on the edge of their seat. And then it just stopped. The last chapter arrived over a year ago as a surprise one-shot, and the series has been frozen since.

The V Jump Wording Matters

Pay attention to the language here. V Jump simply says the manga "will be on hiatus in this issue." That's it. There's no "returning soon" or "stay tuned for updates." Compare that to how other manga on hiatus handle their communications, usually with at least some vague reassurance that the series will be back. The silence from Shueisha is deafening, and it tells you everything you need to know about where things stand right now.

Here's what makes this situation so strange. While the manga sits in limbo, Dragon Ball's anime side is experiencing its biggest boom in nearly a decade. The Genkidamatsuri event in January 2026 delivered two massive announcements: Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, an "enhanced" remake of the first Super saga arriving Fall 2026, and Dragon Ball Super: The Galactic Patrol, an entirely new anime series adapting the Moro arc from the manga. The Beerus remake's official website explicitly promises "a more faithful and detailed reproduction of the original work." It aims to deliver "a more faithful representation of the original manga." They're literally building an anime around being true to Toyotaro's work. The very same work that currently has no active chapters and no confirmed future.

Toyotaro's Absence Speaks Volumes

And then there's the elephant in the room. Toyotaro, the artist who co-created Dragon Ball Super alongside Toriyama, was completely absent from the Genkidamatsuri event. The biggest Dragon Ball celebration in years. Two new anime projects being announced that are directly based on his work. And he wasn't on a single stage. Fan speculation has been running wild ever since. Some believe he's been quietly let go from the project. Others argue he's working behind the scenes on new chapters. A vocal portion of the community thinks the toxic reception from certain fans has made him reluctant to step back into the spotlight. One passionate commenter on CBR put it best: Toriyama "put a lot of heart and soul into teaching the person who was supposed to carry the torch, but fans are so hyper critical I can imagine the manga has paused simply because Toyotaro is afraid of the fans." Nobody outside of Shueisha actually knows the answer. And Shueisha isn't talking.

There's reason to be cautiously optimistic, even if V Jump isn't giving us much to work with. The official Dragon Ball website recently added a quiet, cryptic message: "'Super' new developments will continue to unfold well beyond the 40th anniversary of Dragon Ball, so stay tuned!" That deliberate use of quotation marks around "Super" is hard to ignore. Something is being planned. The most logical theory? Shueisha is waiting for the right moment. The Galactic Patrol anime won't air until late 2027 or early 2028 based on current production timelines. Aligning the manga's return with a major event like Battle Hour 2026 in April or AnimeJapan later this month would generate maximum buzz and give Toyotaro the kind of spotlight moment the franchise clearly wants to build toward.

The Waiting Game Continues

But none of that is confirmed. What IS confirmed is this: Dragon Ball Super is simultaneously in the healthiest and most uncertain position it's ever been in. The anime pipeline is stacked with two major projects. The manga is a question mark. And every month that V Jump runs that same hiatus notice without any additional context, the question gets harder to answer. For now, fans wait. The gap between Dragon Ball's booming anime future and its silent manga present has never been wider. If you're holding out hope for the manga's return, keep your eyes on Battle Hour in April. If there's going to be a big announcement about the manga, that's the stage for it.