Madoka Magica is closing on its own record and the thirteen-year line erases three seasons

Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie – Walpurgisnacht: Rising opened in Japan on 28 August and did ¥1,018,375,620 with 583,638 admissions in four days. By 13 September it had passed a million admissions and ¥1.8 billion. Dolby Cinema screenings were added from 18 September.

Rebellion, the last film in the main continuity, finished its 2013 run on ¥2.08 billion.

So the new film is close, and on its current curve it will get there. It has not got there yet — no Japanese trade has reported the crossover, and the most recent institutionally sourced figure is the ¥1.8 billion from mid-September. Anyone telling you this weekend that it is already the franchise's biggest film is running ahead of the reporting.

The "first in thirteen years" line is doing a lot of quiet work

Japanese coverage used the phrase 「シリーズ約13年ぶりの最新作」 — roughly, the newest work in the series in about thirteen years. English aggregation flattened that into "the first new Madoka Magica anime in thirteen years."

That version is false. Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story ran as television anime across three seasons from 2020. A recompiled television edit of the 2012 films began airing in October 2025, ten months before this film opened.

The accurate claim is narrower and still impressive: the first film in the main continuity since Rebellion premiered on 26 October 2013. One qualifier, and the sentence stops erasing three seasons of a spin-off that a lot of people worked on.

It was delayed three times, which is the other number nobody prints

The sequel was announced on 25 April 2021, with SHAFT returning and Gen Urobuchi writing. Oricon's coverage of the opening weekend noted it arrived after three postponements, which is the detail that explains why a thirteen-year gap exists at all.

A film announced in 2021 and released in 2026 is not a franchise that went quiet. It is a franchise that kept saying it was coming.

The numbers, in order

• 28 August 2026 — opens on a reported 292 screens.
• Three days — ¥930 million and around 530,000 admissions; some outlets rounded to ¥9.3 hundred million.
• Four days — ¥1,018,375,620 and 583,638 admissions.
• 13 September, day 17 — one million admissions, ¥1.8 billion.
• Rebellion, 2013 — ¥2.08 billion final, on 129 screens, with over 1.45 million admissions by the end of that year.
• The 2012 compilation films — ¥590 million and ¥560 million, about ¥1.15 billion combined from roughly 800,000 admissions on 43 screens each.

Two of those lines are worth setting against each other. Rebellion reached 1.45 million admissions across a full run on 129 screens. This film hit one million in seventeen days on more than twice as many. The screen counts are not comparable and the pace is not either, which is why "biggest ever" needs the final number rather than the current one.

A credit worth checking before you repeat it

At least one Japanese entertainment outlet describes the film as directed by Akiyuki Shinbo. On the previous three films Shinbo was credited as chief director, with Yukihiro Miyamoto as director. That split is standard at SHAFT and it is routinely collapsed in English-language coverage into a single name.

What is still unknown

The exact date it passes ¥2.08 billion, which no wire has reported. Where the final gross lands, since a seventeen-day million-admission pace says nothing certain about week six. And whether the screen count of 292 is the studio's figure or an enthusiast tally — it comes from a box-office tracking blog rather than from a distributor release.

A franchise built entirely on the idea that the story has already happened several times before is having its comeback described as though nothing happened in between. There were three seasons in between.