Dragon Ball Super Is Getting Remade for Its 40th Anniversary — Here's Why

Dragon Ball turns 40 this year, and the franchise is marking it in an unusual way: not with a new story, but with a remake of one it already told. Dragon Ball Super: Beerus was announced in January 2026 at the Dragon Ball Genkidamatsuri event, and it's set to premiere this Fall — pitched as an 'ENHANCED' version of the original Dragon Ball Super TV anime rather than a continuation of it.

That distinction matters. This isn't picking up where the 2015–2018 Dragon Ball Super anime left off after 131 episodes. It's re-adapting the arc that opens that same story — Beerus, the God of Destruction, waking up years after the fight with Majin Buu, hearing that a Saiyan somewhere defeated Frieza, and coming to Earth to see for himself. Same starting point, same characters, new treatment.

The reason a remake makes sense here is less about nostalgia than about a long-standing complaint: the original Battle of Gods arc that opened Dragon Ball Super was notoriously stretched thin to fill a weekly broadcast schedule, widely considered one of the more sluggish stretches in the franchise's history. Beerus is being framed by its producers as a chance to fix that — new animation, a new dub pass, a rescored soundtrack, and pacing reconstructed to move the way the story was always meant to.

There's a more somber layer underneath the anniversary framing, too. Akira Toriyama, who created Dragon Ball and remained closely involved with its story and character designs, passed away in March 2024. Marketing around Beerus describes the goal as reflecting his original ideas more faithfully — which turns what could have been a routine cash-in remake into something closer to a tribute, whether or not it fully lands that way on screen.

For longtime viewers, Beerus is a chance to revisit the arc that kicked off Dragon Ball Super's modern era without the pacing baggage that made it hard to recommend to anyone new. For newer fans who've only known the franchise through Super Hero or the Daima era, it's arguably the cleanest on-ramp back into where the current timeline actually started.