Studio Ghibli will premiere "Majo no Tani no Yoru" at Ghibli Park on July 8, 2026, co-directed by Goro Miyazaki and Akihiko Yamashita
Studio Ghibli is releasing a new short titled Majo no Tani no Yoru (A Night in the Valley of Witches) with an exclusive debut at Ghibli Park on July 8, 2026. The piece is co-directed by Goro Miyazaki and Akihiko Yamashita, and the studio has confirmed that production is complete and the directors will attend a special screening. The short was created specifically for the park’s attractions and will be shown at the park’s screening space, Cinema Orion, inside the Grand Warehouse. This release is the studio’s first new short of this kind since 2018 and is positioned as a purpose-made experience that ties animation directly to physical park environments.
The announcement arrives at a significant moment for Goro Miyazaki, who has navigated both high expectations and scrutiny throughout his career. His earlier feature work, including the 2006 adaptation of Tales from Earthsea, 2011’s From Up on Poppy Hill, and 2026’s Earwig and the Witch, showed a director experimenting with scale, tone, and technique. Critics and fans often weighed these films against the standards set by Hayao Miyazaki, but Goro’s trajectory also reveals an evolution toward quieter, character-driven storytelling and a growing interest in immersive design beyond traditional cinema.
Stepping into feature direction exposed Goro Miyazaki to intense comparisons and public debate, especially after the release of Tales from Earthsea. That experience pushed him to reconsider narrative focus, pacing, and collaboration. Later projects emphasized domestic detail, nostalgic atmospheres, and a different emotional register, showcasing a director finding his own voice. Alongside feature work, Goro applied his background in landscape and design to shape the physical spaces of Ghibli Park, a shift that reshaped how his sense of place and storytelling could interact. The result has been a slow redefinition of his role within the studio, moving from pure filmmaker to designer-director who thinks in terms of both filmic sequence and built environment.
Designing parts of Ghibli Park allowed Goro to translate cinematic motifs into walkable environments. The Valley of Witches area—opened in 2026—recreates settings from titles like Kiki’s Delivery Service, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Earwig and the Witch, giving visitors a tactile way to experience Ghibli’s worlds. By embedding a new short into that same terrain, the studio creates a feedback loop: the park informs the animation and the animation deepens the park’s atmosphere. This interplay lets audiences move from strolling through cobbled streets to watching those streets come alive on screen, blurring lines between attraction and narrative.
Majo no Tani no Yoru is a compact, focused work that benefits from being unburdened by the demands of a full-length theatrical release. Co-directing with Akihiko Yamashita—a veteran who served as character designer and animation director on projects such as Howl’s Moving Castle and The Secret World of Arrietty—brings institutional experience to the production while preserving Goro’s creative imprint. The short is set inside the park’s Valley of Witches, meaning its imagery and sequences are meant to echo the physical structures visitors already see by day, then reinterpret them through animation at night. Studio statements emphasize that the work is an original story conceived to enhance the park visit rather than to be a conventional theatrical product.
The film will screen at Cinema Orion within the Grand Warehouse, an area of the park that hosts exclusive shorts. Admission to Ghibli Park requires advance reservations, and the studio has noted that tickets for July visits go on sale at 2 p.m. on May 10. Because the short is tied to the Grand Warehouse, visitors need the appropriate ticket category to see it—access to the Valley of Witches alone is not sufficient. The studio has not yet confirmed whether the short will later play at the Ghibli Museum or elsewhere, so for now the premiere and initial run remain park-exclusive, with a director-led screening planned for the opening date.
This short marks both a creative and strategic moment for Studio Ghibli and for Goro Miyazaki. It demonstrates how the studio is expanding storytelling formats—using a short film to build stronger links between animation and place—while allowing Goro to work within an environment he helped design. Freed from some of the pressures of feature-length expectations and international box-office demands, the project gives him room to refine a personal style and deepen the studio’s experiential offerings. For fans and visitors, the piece promises a new way to engage with Ghibli: not just to watch, but to inhabit and return to with fresh eyes.