Shōgun Season 2: Premiere Date, Cast, and Everything Else to Know

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When Shōgun premiered in February 2024, most viewers believed it to be a show that would end after one season. That was largely because Season 1's 10 episodes adapted the entirety of James Clavell's 1975's novel of the same name, which the FX historical drama is based on. But shortly after Shōgun's first season ended, FX announced that it would be developing not one but two more seasons of the show.

Saying that Shōgun Season 1 has dominated awards season would be an understatement. At the 2025 Golden Globes, the series won all four awards it was nominated for including Best Drama Series, Best Female Actor in a Drama Series for Anna Sawai, Best Male Actor in a Drama Series for Hiroyuki Sanada, and Best Supporting Male Actor in a Drama Series for Tadanobu Asano. 

Shōgun also had an impressive showing at the 2024 Emmys, winning a record-breaking 18 awards — the most by any series in a single year. Its critical acclaim, combined with the show being FX's most-watched series ever based on global hours streamed, makes the renewal announcement hardly surprising. 

FX has said that Shōgun's co-creators Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo are both returning to develop the additional seasons. They will be joined by Michaela Clavell, James Clavell's daughter who was an executive producer on Season 1, and Sanada. 

At this point, we don't know what Shōgun Seasons 2 will be about. But TV Guide will share everything we learn about the upcoming chapter here.

ALSO READ: Shōgun review: FX's historical limited series is a complex, breathtaking spectacle

Shōgun Season 2 latest news

Shōgun co-creators Marks and Kondo are working on Season 2. At the 2025 Golden Globes, the pair shared with TV Guide about how they're particularly excited about the costume design for the upcoming season. "There are so many cases of just the fantastic armor that these characters wear into battle in Season 2," Marks said. "We should just have a red carpet for the armor," Kondo responded.

Marks agreed, saying the show could host its own Met Gala. "Some of the stuff that Toranaga wears in a single day is just awesome — multiple costume changes."

Backstage at the Globes, Marks also shared with reporters that "we're about six weeks from the end of the writers room," Variety reported. Earlier in the evening, the co-creator had shared with TV Guide that after the writers room ends, the next step will be "figuring out how and where we're going to shoot certain parts of this season."

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Shōgun Season 2 premiere date prediction

Shōgun Season 2 won't be coming anytime soon. Since filming likely begins later in 2025 after the writers room ends, it's hard to imagine a premiere date earlier than 2026. 

ALSO READ: Did Toranaga always want to become shōgun? Series creators break down ending

Shōgun Season 2 cast

In addition to returning as producer for Shōgun Season 2, Sanada is set to reprise his role as Lord Yoshii Toranaga, according to Deadline. 

Asked about whether his character John Blackthorne will appear in Shōgun Season 2, Cosmo Jarvis told TV Guide at the 2025 Golden Globes that he does not know. "All I know is that the people who are responsible for its creation are busy creating [Season 2]," the actor said. Considering that Season 1's last episode featured Blackthorne in his old age, however, we'd be shocked if the Anjin does not return.

Shōgun Season 1 ending

Shōgun Season 1 Episode 10, "A Dream of a Dream," showed that most of the events that had transpired were exactly as Toranaga had planned. Even some of his closest allies didn't know what he had intended by sending Sawai's Lady Mariko to Osaka. But in his final conversation with Asano's Lord Yabushige, Toranaga explained that because of Mariko's actions before the Council of Regents — which, devastatingly, led to the translator's death — a battle was avoided. 

"A Dream of a Dream" also revealed Toranaga's true feelings toward becoming shōgun. "It's what you've always wanted, isn't it?" Yabushige asked. To which Toranaga responded, "Why tell a dead man the future?" 

"In the book, the answer is a little clearer," Justin Marks told TV Guide about whether the character wanted to become shōgun since the beginning. "We decided to play it with a look, because how do you really articulate what's inside a person's secret heart?" Rachel Kondo added that for Toranaga, being shōgun meant something different. "I think he wants to be shōgun but not in the way that his ancestors had claimed the shogunate," she said. "It's a more complex, living thing for him — he wants to use the office of shōgun as a means of manifesting this great vision that he has for his country." 

Where to watch Season 1 of Shōgun

The first season of FX's Shōgun is available to watch on Hulu.