FX is plotting its return to feudal Japan, setting a production start date for season two of its Emmy-winning drama Shōgun.
Season two of the series — which set a record at last year’s Emmys with 18 wins — is set to begin production in Vancouver in January 2026. The announcement serves as official confirmation that a second season will indeed happen (though it was never really in doubt) after FX announced it was developing two additional installments in May 2024.
Co-creators and showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks recently wrapped a writers room for the coming season, which will jump off from the James Clavell novel that formed the source material for season one.
With the conclusion of the writers room, FX has also released the first sketch of what Shōgun season two will look like. Per FX, the show will pick up “ten years after the events of the first season and continue the historically-inspired saga of these two men from different worlds whose fates are inextricably entwined.”
Hiroyuki Sanada, who won the Emmy for best lead actor in a drama last year, will reprise his role as Lord Yoshii Toranaga. Cosmo Jarvis is also set to return as English sailor John Blackthorne, whose arrival in Japan after a shipwreck sets the story in motion. They’re the first confirmed returning actors for season two; FX isn’t announcing any other casting yet.
Sanada will also be an executive producer on Shōgun’s second season, joining Kondo, Marks, Michaela Clavell, Edward L. McDonnell and Michael De Luca. Jarvis will be a co-EP. FX Productions is the studio.
In addition to its record-shattering Emmy haul, Shōgun is also the most watched show in FX’s history, the Disney-owned outlet says. The series, which aired on FX’s cable channel and streamed on Hulu, spent 10 weeks on Nielsen’s streaming charts last year, amassing 4.27 billion minutes of viewing time over that span (plus an unpublicized amount after falling out of the top 10 original series). The season one cast also featured Anna Sawai, Tadanobu Asano, Takehiro Hira, Tommy Bastow and Fumi Nikaido, among others.
