Blue Lock Arcs in Order: The Complete List (2026)

If you want every Blue Lock arc in order, here’s the complete, up-to-date list. Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura’s smash-hit soccer manga is built as one long, escalating tournament, so reading the arcs in sequence is the best way to follow Yoichi Isagi’s rise from an average striker to a genuine contender. Below you’ll find each arc in reading order with a quick summary.

For the full story, characters and where to start, see our complete Blue Lock series guide.

All Blue Lock arcs in order

1. Blue Lock Program: First Selection

The arc that starts it all. Three hundred of Japan’s best high-school strikers are locked inside the Blue Lock facility under the radical coach Jinpachi Ego, whose goal is to forge the world’s greatest egoist striker. Yoichi Isagi is assigned to the lowest-ranked group, Team Z, and must survive a brutal elimination tournament while discovering his own unique weapon: spatial awareness.

2. Second Selection

The survivors of the First Selection face a new threat — the players who were eliminated now get a chance to return by stealing the winners’ spots in intense one-on-one battles. Isagi and his peers form new teams and face more complex tactical scenarios, sharpening their egos and their skills against rising rivals like Seishiro Nagi and Reo Mikage.

3. U-20 Japan Match

The stakes go national. The selected Blue Lock Eleven face Japan’s official U-20 national team in a single exhibition match — and if Blue Lock loses, the entire program is shut down. It’s the first real test of Blue Lock’s philosophy against established, world-class talent.

4. Neo Egoist League

Blue Lock’s top players are scouted by professional clubs and partnered with pro athletes, competing in a semi-professional league of higher-stakes matches. This arc introduces major international rivals like Michael Kaiser and forces Isagi to evolve his game by absorbing the strengths of stronger players around him.

5. World Stage Arc

Blue Lock’s project goes global. The strongest strikers represent Japan on the international stage, testing themselves against the world’s best young forwards. This is the current frontier of the series, raising the competition to a worldwide level.

Why Blue Lock’s structure works

Blue Lock is essentially one continuous escalation: every arc raises the level of competition, and the player rankings established early carry real weight later. Each selection strips away weaker players and pushes the survivors — and Isagi above all — to develop sharper, more selfish, more dangerous skills. That relentless build is exactly why reading the arcs in order matters so much.

Explore the full cast and story on the Blue Lock series page, or browse more titles in our manga catalog.

Key players to follow across the arcs

Blue Lock’s arcs are ultimately a story about its strikers, and a handful stand out from one selection to the next:

• Yoichi Isagi — the protagonist, whose spatial-awareness “weapon” sharpens in every arc as he steals and absorbs the strengths of stronger rivals.
• Seishiro Nagi — the lazy genius with an unreal first touch, whose rivalry with Isagi defines the early selections.
• Rin Itoshi — widely rated the most complete striker in the program, driven by his fractured bond with his brother Sae.
• Michael Kaiser — the arrogant German superstar introduced in the Neo Egoist League, and Isagi’s main foil at club level.
• Shoei Barou — “the King,” whose pure egoism makes him a recurring obstacle and benchmark.

Following how these players rise, clash and adapt is the clearest way to track the escalating stakes of each arc — every new selection forces them to evolve or be eliminated.

How the Blue Lock selections build on each other

What makes Blue Lock’s structure satisfying is that nothing resets between arcs. The skills, rankings and rivalries established in the First Selection carry directly into the Second Selection and beyond, so an early underdog like Isagi has to keep proving himself against opponents who also keep improving. Each arc raises the bar in a specific way: the First Selection is about discovering your weapon, the Second Selection about defending your place, the U-20 match about testing the program against real national-team talent, and the Neo Egoist League about surviving among professionals. By the World Stage arc, the competition is global — the natural endpoint of a project built to forge the world’s number-one striker.

Blue Lock anime vs. manga

If you’re following the Blue Lock anime rather than the manga, the first season adapts the First and Second Selections, with later seasons continuing into the U-20 Japan match and the Neo Egoist League. The spin-off film Blue Lock: Episode Nagi retells the early arcs from Seishiro Nagi’s point of view, making it a fun companion piece once you’ve read the opening selections.

The creators behind Blue Lock

Blue Lock is written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura — a writer-artist team rather than a single creator, which is a little different from the classic mangaka model where one author does both. You can read more about the writer on our Muneyuki Kaneshiro biography page.