Since March 2023, Studio Pierrot has been promising fans that it will produce four Naruto special episodes for its 20th anniversary. Fast forward to September of 2023, and we have nothing. In 2024, still no word. And now we're at the end of 2025 with only silence and confusion surrounding this supposed project.Some new news is coming from fans that it'll actually drop late 2026, saying it's already finished filming and ready to air. There's been nothing released on the trailer, key visuals, or any promo for it, either from Studio Pierrot (who has been more focused on stuff like Bleach and Black Clover) at this time.The troubled history of the Naruto special episodesNaruto 20th anniversary (Image Source: Naruto Official Website)In March of 2023, Studio Pierrot said they were making four new episodes celebrating the 20th anniversary of the anime. They were originally slated to be released in September 2023, but then they were delayed due to quality issues, so there is still no release date set yet. They stated that they needed to delay indefinitely.When they originally released this announcement, there wasn't much detail provided about either the timeline of the series or any of the storylines. All that was confirmed was that there would be new episodes with some of the characters that the fans already know and love. Now, with how vague the announcement was, the fans are becoming more frustrated with the creators.The other release dates kept getting moved back after they were announced. The publisher keeps moving release dates into the future, and that has made the Naruto special a bit of a laughingstock in the anime world. Many fans have compared it to other projects that have also been delayed over and over again.What the latest leak suggestsNaruto's main visual at Jump Festa 2015 (Image Source: Naruto Official Website)The latest rumor about Naruto special comes from anime industry folks posting on Twitter and Facebook. Word is that production wrapped up in 2025, and it looks like it won’t be available until sometime around late 2026. That would make it almost four years since its launch announcement.It looks like people are guessing that Pierrot is going to time the Naruto special to coincide with Boruto's anime returning after having stopped making new episodes back in 2023. Seems to me like a way for Pierrot to capitalize on all this excitement about their franchise. But other folks think these episodes won't see the light of day.Setting and storyline expectationsNaruto's main visual of Summer 2014 (Image Source: Naruto Official Website)The upcoming Naruto special will show Team 7's adventures when they were kids before Shippuden, and fans will be excited to see Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, and Kakashi again as they explore more of their childhood years (and how they developed into the characters we know them to be during the time skip).Series creator Masashi Kishimoto is overseeing the creation of these episodes, which means they will have significantly more weight in terms of canon. This means that fans shouldn't expect these episodes to be average filler episodes.Based on how anime episodes are typically formatted, each episode is likely going to be about 24-30 minutes long, which would give an overall total of around 90-120 minutes of full content to watch. However, there’s still a lot of debate among fans as to whether spending years making these episodes is worth it or not.The franchise's current stateThe Boruto anime was put on hold in 2023 due to production issues. While its hiatus creates a gap in the content available for the franchise fans, if a Naruto special does happen, it will mean that much more. If new episodes were released during this lull, it may help rekindle some excitement for the series. The upcoming Naruto special will be the first time an original series has been made since Shippuden ended back in 2017. It's been almost 10 years since we've seen anything brand new featuring Naruto, and the nostalgia for the earlier years of the series is through the roof.It would really make a lot of fans happy to get a full remake done like WIT Studio did with One Piece instead of as we're getting just these 4 episodes, and all the filler in the original anime is way too much for modern audiences to handle. Fans hope that when these episodes do come out, they will be more focused on quality rather than quantity.