The second season of the series, which last year set a record at the Emmys with 18 wins, will begin production in Vancouver in January 2026. The announcement serves as official confirmation that a second season will indeed happen (although that was never really in doubt) after FX announced in May 2024 that it was developing two additional installments.
Co-creators and showrunners Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks recently finalized a writers' room for the upcoming season, which will build on the James Clavell novel that served as the source material for the first season.
With the conclusion of the writers room, FX has also released the first sketch of what Shogun season two will look like. Per FX, the show will pick up “10 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 last year’s Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, will reprise his role as Lord Yoshii Toranaga. Cosmo Jarvis will also return as English sailor John Blackthorne, whose arrival in Japan after a shipwreck sets the story in motion. They are the first confirmed returning actors for season two; FX has not yet announced any other casting.
Sanada will also serve as executive producer on the second season of Shogun , alongside Kondo, Marks, Michaela Clavell, Edward L. McDonnell and Michael De Luca. Jarvis will serve as co-executive producer. FX Productions is the studio.
In addition to its record-breaking Emmy haul, Shogun is also the most-watched series in FX history, according to the Disney network. The series, which aired on FX’s cable channel and streamed on Hulu, spent 10 weeks on the Nielsen streaming charts last year, amassing 4.27 billion minutes of viewing time during that period (plus an undisclosed number of minutes after it dropped out of the top 10 original series).
The season one cast also included Anna Sawai, Tadanobu Asano, Takehiro Hira, Tommy Bastow and Fumi Nikaido.
So I wonder if this will please the fans.
Maybe you have a point, Rob, but you don't necessarily have to see this sequel as a "complete" continuation of the first season. You can also just see it as a new, standalone story within the same world.