Who owns Digimon? How Bandai Namco runs the franchise

Digimon is owned by Bandai Namco Holdings, the Japanese group formed when toymaker Bandai merged with arcade giant Namco in 2005. Bandai created the franchise in 1997 as a virtual pet, still controls the trademarks and the core copyright, and runs the games, toys and card game through its own subsidiaries, while Toei Animation produces the anime under licence. If you have ever wondered why the anime, the games and the card game tell slightly different stories, the answer starts with how that ownership is divided.

The short answer: Bandai created it, Bandai Namco owns it

Digimon began life inside Bandai in 1997, two years before the first anime aired, as the Digital Monster handheld virtual pet, a rugged little keychain pitched at boys as a battling counterpart to Tamagotchi. Bandai designed and sold it with its development partner WiZ, and that origin matters because the rights to the characters, the names and the Digimon trademark were registered by Bandai from day one rather than by an animation studio or a manga publisher. When Bandai and Namco completed their merger on 29 September 2005, every Bandai intellectual property, including Digimon, moved under the new holding company, which traded as Namco Bandai Holdings until the group reordered its brand to Bandai Namco in 2014. Today the parent is Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and Digimon appears in its investor materials as one of the group’s own IPs alongside Gundam, Tamagotchi and the licensed heavyweights such as Dragon Ball and One Piece.

The cleanest way to confirm this yourself is to read the copyright line on any official product. A Digimon video game carries the credit “Akiyoshi Hongo, Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.”, a Japanese anime episode is credited to “Akiyoshi Hongo, Toei Animation” (with Fuji TV added for series that aired on that network), and a Vital Bracelet or Digimon Card Game booster is credited to “Akiyoshi Hongo, Bandai”. The constant in every one of those lines is Akiyoshi Hongo. That is not a single auteur in the way Akira Toriyama was for Dragon Ball. Hongo is a pen name used by Bandai to credit the in-house creators of the original virtual pet, and because the name is controlled by Bandai, the character copyright it represents is controlled by Bandai too. Everyone else who touches Digimon, from Toei to Shueisha to the studios that build the games, does so under a licence from the owner.

From Bandai to Bandai Namco: a timeline

The corporate history explains almost every oddity in the franchise, including why older Western fans still say “Namco Bandai Digimon” out of habit. Bandai was founded in 1950 and spent the following decades becoming Japan’s dominant character-toy company, with Gundam model kits and Super Sentai merchandise paying for experiments like Tamagotchi in 1996. Digimon was one of those experiments, and its success across pets, cards and then anime made it one of Bandai’s most valuable homegrown properties by the turn of the millennium. Namco, meanwhile, was an arcade and console developer best known for Pac-Man and Tekken. The two companies announced their merger in 2005 and chose a holding structure, meaning both Bandai and Namco kept operating as separate subsidiaries under a shared parent rather than dissolving into each other.

Year	Event	Why it matters for Digimon
1997	Bandai and WiZ release the Digital Monster virtual pet in Japan	The franchise is born as a toy, with Bandai holding the rights
1999	Digimon Adventure premieres on Fuji TV, produced by Toei Animation	The anime licence model that still exists today begins
1999	Saban Entertainment licenses the English dub for Fox Kids	Western fans associate Digimon with Saban rather than Bandai
2005	Bandai and Namco merge to form Namco Bandai Holdings	Digimon becomes a group IP under the new parent
2006	Namco Bandai Games takes over as the video game publisher	Digimon games are now published under the Namco Bandai label in the West
2010	Saban Brands reacquires the Western Digimon licence	Digimon Fusion airs on Nickelodeon in the US
2014	The group reorders its brand name to Bandai Namco	“Bandai Namco Digimon” replaces “Namco Bandai Digimon” on boxes
2015	Namco Bandai Games is renamed Bandai Namco Entertainment	The current publisher name appears on Cyber Sleuth’s Western release
2018	Saban Brands winds down; Toei Animation takes over the Western anime rights directly	Streaming deals shift to Toei and later Crunchyroll
2020	The Digimon Card Game launches in Japan, English release follows in 2021	Bandai relaunches the card business as a global product
2025	Digimon Story Time Stranger releases worldwide; Digimon Beatbreak premieres on Fuji TV	The two biggest launches in years arrive from Bandai Namco and Toei respectively

Two details from that table trip people up. First, the publisher name on a Digimon game changed more than once between 2005 and 2015 without the owner ever changing, which is why game boxes from different years carry different publisher labels. Second, the Saban deals were distribution licences for the English-language anime and associated merchandise in specific territories, never a transfer of ownership, which is why the rights could revert so cleanly when Saban Brands closed.

How Bandai Namco is organised, and where Digimon sits

Understanding the group structure tells you who actually makes the decisions you care about. Bandai Namco Holdings does not design toys or write games. It sets strategy, allocates budgets and holds the IP, and it describes its approach as an IP axis strategy: take a property such as Digimon and push it through every business unit at once so that a card game release, a toy and an anime arc reinforce each other. Below the holding company, the group has been organised since April 2022 into several business units, and Digimon touches almost all of them.

Business unit	Key companies	What they do with Digimon
Toys and Hobby	Bandai Co., Bandai Spirits, Bandai Namco Toys and Collectibles America	Virtual pets, Digivices, Vital Bracelet, Digimon Card Game, Figure-rise Standard kits, plush and capsule toys
Digital Business	Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bandai Namco Studios, Bandai Namco Online	Publishes every console and PC Digimon game and the Japanese mobile titles
IP Production	Bandai Namco Filmworks, Bandai Namco Pictures, Bandai Namco Music Live	Handles music and events; the anime itself is outsourced to Toei
Amusement	Bandai Namco Amusement	Arcade prizes and the occasional arcade cabinet tie-in

The split between Bandai Co. and Bandai Spirits is the one that confuses collectors most. Bandai Co. is the mass-market toy company that sells to children, so the kid-oriented Digivice recreations, the Vital Bracelet and the card game sit there. Bandai Spirits, spun out in 2018, is the collector arm behind Premium Bandai web exclusives, the Figure-rise Standard Amplified model kits of Omnimon (Omegamon) and WarGreymon, and the higher-end S.H.Figuarts and Precious G.E.M. statues. Bandai Namco Entertainment is a different company again, with its own American and European subsidiaries, and it has no say over what Bandai Spirits sculpts. That is why a Digimon introduced in Time Stranger is unlikely to get a figure in the same year, and why toy and game designs for the same creature can differ in small details. Everyone reports upward to the same parent, but the units plan on separate calendars.

One more point on the Japanese side: Digimon’s creator credit is corporate, which also means Bandai can commission new Digimon from whoever it likes. The original 1997 designs came from illustrator Kenji Watanabe, who remains the franchise’s signature artist and still designs new Digimon for games, toys and anime decades later. Watanabe works with Bandai’s Digimon team rather than owning the characters himself, and new designs are added to the official “Digimon Reference Book” catalogue maintained by Bandai, which functions as the canonical registry of which creatures exist and what their profile data says.

Toei Animation and the anime

Every Digimon television series and theatrical film has been produced by Toei Animation, the studio behind Dragon Ball, One Piece and Sailor Moon, and that relationship started when Bandai needed a show to turn its toy line into a phenomenon. Toei is a separate, publicly traded company controlled by the Toei Company film group. It does not belong to Bandai Namco, and it does not own Digimon. What Toei owns is the anime it produces: the scripts, the storyboards, the character art of the human Tamers and the animation itself, which is why the anime copyright line pairs Hongo with Toei Animation rather than with Bandai. This arrangement has held for over twenty-five years, and it is the reason the English dubbing and overseas streaming rights for the anime have passed through Toei’s hands rather than Bandai Namco’s.

Series	Japanese broadcast	Episodes	Network	Studio
Digimon Adventure	1999 to 2000	54	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Adventure 02	2000 to 2001	50	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Tamers	2001 to 2002	51	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Frontier	2002 to 2003	50	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Data Squad (Savers)	2006 to 2007	48	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Fusion (Xros Wars)	2010 to 2012	79	TV Asahi	Toei Animation
Digimon Universe: App Monsters	2016 to 2017	52	TV Tokyo	Toei Animation
Digimon Adventure: (2020)	2020 to 2021	67	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Ghost Game	2021 to 2023	67	Fuji TV	Toei Animation
Digimon Beatbreak	2025 onward	Ongoing	Fuji TV	Toei Animation

The broadcaster matters more than you might expect. Fuji TV is a co-rights holder on the series it aired, which is why the Adventure copyright line reads “Akiyoshi Hongo, Fuji TV, Toei Animation”, while Fusion carries TV Asahi and App Monsters carries TV Tokyo. When Bandai, Toei and a network share a project this way, decisions about a reboot or a sequel require all three to agree, and that is one reason Digimon Adventure got a full reboot on Fuji TV in 2020 rather than a continuation on another channel. The six Digimon Adventure tri. films from 2015 to 2018, Last Evolution Kizuna in 2020 and Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning in 2023 were all Toei productions too, and they were marketed in Japan with simultaneous Bandai merchandise drops because the owner and the studio plan the big anniversaries together. Digimon Beatbreak, the newest series, follows the same template: Toei animates, Fuji TV broadcasts, and Bandai launches the tie-in toys and card sets in the same season.

If you want to know who decides what Agumon’s evolution line looks like on screen, the answer is Toei’s writers and series directors working inside guidelines from Bandai. The anime has considerable freedom, which is why Digimon Tamers could invent Biomerge evolution and Frontier could turn humans into Digimon through Spirit Evolution, neither of which existed in the virtual pets. Those anime-original concepts then flow back into Bandai’s products, and the card game has printed Frontier’s Spirit evolution and Tamers’ Biomerge as dedicated mechanics. That cycle, toy to anime to card to game, is the IP axis strategy working as intended.

Video games: Bandai Namco Entertainment and its studios

Every mainline Digimon video game since the original Digimon World in 1999 has been published by Bandai or its successor companies, and today that means Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc. in Japan with Bandai Namco Entertainment America and Europe handling Western releases. The publisher owns the games outright because they are built on the group’s own IP, which is a very different situation from Dragon Ball, where Bandai Namco licenses the rights from Shueisha and Toei. What surprises many players is that Bandai Namco rarely develops Digimon games in-house. The group’s internal studio, Bandai Namco Studios, is busy with Tekken and Ace Combat, so Digimon titles are contracted out to external developers who work under the publisher’s producers.

Game	Release (Japan / West)	Platforms	Developer	Publisher
Digimon World	1999 / 2000	PlayStation	External studio for Bandai	Bandai
Digimon World DS	2006 / 2006	Nintendo DS	BEC	Bandai (Namco Bandai in the West)
Digimon World Re:Digitize	2012 / not released	PSP	tri-Crescendo	Namco Bandai Games
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth	2015 / 2016	PS Vita, PS4	Media.Vision	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Digimon World: Next Order	2016 / 2017	PS Vita, PS4	B.B. Studio	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory	2017 / 2018	PS Vita, PS4	Media.Vision	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Digimon Survive	2022 / 2022	PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC	Hyde	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Digimon Story Time Stranger	2025 / 2025	PS5, Xbox Series X and S, PC	Media.Vision	Bandai Namco Entertainment

Media.Vision deserves singling out because it has effectively become the Digimon Story studio. The Tokyo developer built Cyber Sleuth, Hacker’s Memory and now Digimon Story Time Stranger, which launched worldwide on 3 October 2025 and is the first Digimon game released on the same day in every region in the series’ history. That simultaneous launch is itself a sign of how Bandai Namco Entertainment now treats the brand: Cyber Sleuth waited over a year to leave Japan and originally shipped only on Vita there, whereas Time Stranger was announced for current-generation consoles and PC from the outset. The game’s evolution requirements, stat thresholds and personality system are Media.Vision’s design choices approved by Bandai Namco, and they differ from both the anime and the virtual pets, which is the single most common reason newcomers get confused about which “digimon evolution” is correct. All of them are correct for their own medium.

Mobile is where the ownership picture gets more interesting, because Bandai Namco licenses Digimon to outside publishers in specific regions. Digimon Masters Online, the long-running Korean MMO, was developed and operated by Move Games and published globally under licence rather than by Bandai Namco itself. Digimon New Century is a Chinese mobile RPG published by NetEase under a Bandai Namco licence, and Digimon Super Rumble is another Korean title from Move Games. Bandai Namco’s own mobile efforts, Digimon Linkz and Digimon ReArise, were published by Bandai Namco Entertainment directly, and both have since closed. The lesson for you as a player is that a Digimon game’s region, longevity and update cadence often depend on which company holds the licence, and the licensed titles live or die on their local publisher’s decisions rather than on Bandai Namco’s roadmap.

Toys, virtual pets and the card game

Toys are where the franchise started and where the owner’s hands-on control is most visible, because Bandai Co. runs this business without any intermediary studio. The 1997 Digital Monster pet spawned the Digimon Pendulum in 1998, which introduced the Jogress fusion mechanic, and then a long line of anime tie-in devices: the Digivice in 1999, the D-3 in 2000, the D-Ark (D-Power in the West) in 2001, the D-Scanner (D-Tector) in 2002, the Digivice iC for Data Squad and the Xros Loader for Fusion. The modern revival began with the Vital Bracelet in 2021, a wearable pet that counts your steps and heart rate to raise your partner, followed by the Digital Monster Color line from 2023, which rebuilds the 1997 originals with colour screens and restored evolution trees. All of these carry the “Akiyoshi Hongo, Bandai” credit, and the Japanese versions are typically sold through Premium Bandai first, with Bandai Namco Toys and Collectibles America, the renamed Bandai America, handling US distribution.

Agumon is the Digimon that most clearly shows how the owner’s own products and the licensed anime diverge, so it is worth looking at its file.

In the original 1997 Digital Monster virtual pet, Agumon’s evolution depended entirely on care: strong training pointed toward Greymon or Tyrannomon, while neglect produced Numemon. Toei’s Digimon Adventure then locked Agumon into the Greymon, MetalGreymon and WarGreymon line that most fans now treat as canon, with Omnimon (Omegamon) as the DNA fusion with MetalGarurumon in the films. The Digimon Card Game lists Agumon as a Level 3 Red card and lets it evolve into any Level 4 Red Digimon that meets the colour and cost requirements, and Digimon Story Time Stranger governs the same creature with its own stat and personality checks. Four media, four different rulesets, one owner. If you have ever tried to reconcile a “digimon evolution chart” across all of them, that is why it never quite lines up.

The card game is the fastest-growing piece of Bandai’s Digimon business, and its history is a neat miniature of the ownership story. Bandai ran the Hyper Colosseum card game in Japan from 1999, while in the United States the 2000 Digi-Battle game was produced by Upper Deck under licence, a parallel to how Saban handled the anime. When Bandai relaunched the brand as the Digimon Card Game in April 2020, it kept the English edition in-house and shipped it in January 2021 with the BT01 “New Evolution” booster set and the starter decks ST-1 Gaia Red, ST-2 Cocytus Blue and ST-3 Heaven’s Yellow. Bandai’s card division now runs organised play, regional championships and the Japanese and English release schedules together, with the English sets following Japan by a few months. Collectors who want to understand how the “digimon tcg” rules translate the anime’s evolution stages into Level 3 to Level 6 cards will find that the design team answers to Bandai directly, not to Toei.

Print media: Shueisha and the V Jump connection

Digimon manga has always been a licensing arrangement rather than something Bandai publishes itself. The franchise’s first manga, Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01, ran in Shueisha’s V Jump magazine from 1998 to 2003, and it was commissioned specifically to promote the Pendulum pets, which is why its hero Taichi is a different Taichi from the anime and why his partner Zeromaru is a V-dramon rather than an Agumon. Digimon Next followed in V Jump during the Data Squad era, and later tie-in manga for Xros Wars, App Monsters and Ghost Game appeared in Shueisha and Shogakukan magazines. In every case the publisher owns the specific manga pages and the artist retains credit for their art, while Bandai retains the Digimon themselves, so a manga-original Digimon can only appear in a game or on a card if Bandai chooses to adopt it into the official catalogue.

Western print has been just as fragmented. TOKYOPOP published a cine-manga adaptation of the original dub in the early 2000s, and the V-Tamer 01 manga has never received a complete official English release, which tells you something about how low a priority print has been for the overseas licensors compared with the anime and games. The Digimon Reference Book, the art books released around each anniversary and the Japanese Digimon Dictionary volumes are the closest thing to an authoritative print record, and all of them are produced under Bandai’s supervision because they document the owner’s character data.

The Saban years: why Western fans get the owner wrong

Ask an American who grew up in 1999 who owns Digimon and there is a decent chance they say Saban, and the confusion is understandable because Saban’s name was on every episode they watched. Saban Entertainment, then part of Fox Family Worldwide, licensed the English rights to Digimon Adventure from Toei in 1999 and produced the dub that aired on Fox Kids, complete with the “Digimon: Digital Monsters” theme and the rewritten scripts that gave Tai and company their quips. Saban never owned the property. It owned its dub, its scripts and its English music, and it held a territorial licence for the anime and related merchandise. When Disney bought Fox Family Worldwide in 2001, that licence moved with it, which is why Digimon Frontier aired on ABC Family and UPN and why Digimon Data Squad was dubbed by Studiopolis for Toon Disney and Disney XD in 2007 with no Saban involvement.

Haim Saban’s new company, Saban Brands, then licensed Digimon again in 2010, which produced the 2013 Digimon Fusion dub on Nickelodeon and a short-lived Bandai America toy push. That second Saban era ended in 2018, when Saban Brands sold Power Rangers to Hasbro and wound down its remaining operations. The Digimon anime licence did not go to Hasbro. It reverted to Toei Animation, which began handling North American distribution through its own US office, and the practical result for you is that Digimon’s Western streaming presence is now negotiated by Toei with platforms such as Crunchyroll and Hulu, while the English dubs of the 2020 reboot and Ghost Game were commissioned under Toei’s watch. The chain of custody for the anime in the West, Saban to Disney to Saban Brands to Toei, is the single biggest source of ownership confusion in the fandom, and none of those four companies ever owned the Digimon characters. Anyone searching for “digimon hulu” or Crunchyroll availability is really looking at the output of Toei’s current deals.

A smaller but telling detail: Discotek Media, an independent American label, released the original Digimon Adventure seasons on Blu-ray in North America by licensing them from Toei, with both the Japanese audio and the Saban-era dub included. Discotek had to clear the dub separately because Saban’s scripts and music were Saban’s property, which is exactly the layered rights situation that an owned-IP franchise with a licensed anime produces.

Licensing around the world

Bandai Namco’s licensing of Digimon beyond Japan follows a pattern you can predict once you know the structure. The owner keeps the core products in-house wherever it has its own subsidiary, so console games ship from Bandai Namco Entertainment’s regional offices and the card game ships from Bandai’s own card division, while categories where the group lacks local reach are licensed to specialists. Apparel, stationery and food tie-ins in Japan run through Bandai’s licensing arm. Mobile games in China and Korea go to NetEase and Move Games. Anime distribution outside Japan is Toei’s to license, and Toei in turn works with Crunchyroll, which is owned by Sony and has become the primary home for new Digimon series in English-speaking territories. Home video goes to labels such as Discotek in North America and various regional licensees in Europe and Latin America.

The most important consequence of this layered system is that Bandai Namco Holdings can plan a global Digimon push and still rely on partners it does not control to deliver parts of it. When Time Stranger launched in October 2025, Bandai Namco Entertainment handled the game worldwide, Bandai handled the tie-in card set and figures, and Toei handled the Beatbreak premiere that arrived two days later on Fuji TV, with Crunchyroll picking up the simulcast. Three companies, one coordinated calendar, and a holding company at the top whose job is to make the calendar line up. Compared with the early 2000s, when Saban’s dub schedule and Bandai America’s toy releases often fell out of sync with Japan by a year or more, the current setup is dramatically tighter.

What ownership means for you as a fan

The ownership structure has direct effects on the things you actually care about, starting with canon. Because Bandai owns the Digimon and Toei owns the anime, there is no single canon in the way a single-author manga might provide. Bandai’s Digimon Reference Book is authoritative for a Digimon’s level, attribute, type and attack names, which is why reference entries are the safest source when you are checking a profile. The anime is authoritative only for its own continuity, and each game is authoritative only for itself. When Gatomon (Tailmon) is listed as a Champion in the reference data but behaves like a Rookie-tier partner in the Adventure anime’s early arc, that is not an error in either source; it is two licensees of the same creature making different choices, both approved by the owner.

Ownership also shapes release patterns. Games arrive first in Japan or now simultaneously worldwide because Bandai Namco Entertainment controls both. Toys arrive in Japan first and reach the West months later, sometimes only through Premium Bandai import channels, because Bandai Co.’s overseas footprint for Digimon is thinner than its Gundam operation. Anime arrives in English only as quickly as Toei can close a streaming deal and commission a dub, which is why the 2020 reboot’s English dub lagged the Japanese broadcast considerably. If you are tracking a “digimon toy” or a new card set, follow Bandai’s Japanese announcements; if you are tracking a new series, follow Toei and Crunchyroll; if you are tracking a game, follow Bandai Namco Entertainment. Three different newsfeeds, because three different companies hold the pen.

Finally, ownership determines the franchise’s future. Digimon has never been Bandai Namco’s biggest earner, sitting well behind Dragon Ball, Gundam and One Piece in the group’s IP rankings, but it is one of the few major properties the group owns outright rather than licenses, and outright ownership is what the holding company’s IP axis strategy was built to exploit. Every yen Digimon earns stays inside the group instead of being split with a manga publisher, which gives Bandai Namco a structural reason to keep investing in new Digimon games, new pets and new anime even when the brand is not at the peak of its popularity. That is the real answer to the question behind the question. Digimon survives slumps that have killed other late-1990s brands because the company that created it still owns every piece of it, and has every incentive to keep the Digital World open.

FAQ

Who owns Digimon in 2025?

Bandai Namco Holdings owns Digimon. The property was created by Bandai in 1997 and became a group IP when Bandai merged with Namco in 2005. Bandai Co. handles toys and the card game, Bandai Namco Entertainment publishes the video games, and Toei Animation produces the anime under licence.

Does Toei Animation own Digimon?

No. Toei Animation produces every Digimon anime series and film and owns the animation it creates, which is why the anime copyright line credits Toei alongside Akiyoshi Hongo. The Digimon characters themselves, the trademarks and the franchise as a whole belong to Bandai Namco.

Who is Akiyoshi Hongo?

Akiyoshi Hongo is the pen name Bandai uses to credit the creators of the original Digital Monster virtual pet. It is a corporate creator credit rather than one individual, and because the name is controlled by Bandai, it appears on every official Digimon product regardless of which company made that product.

Did Saban ever own Digimon?

Saban never owned Digimon. Saban Entertainment licensed the English anime rights from Toei in 1999 for Fox Kids, that licence passed to Disney in 2001, and Saban Brands reacquired the property from Disney in 2010 and held it until 2018. When Saban Brands closed, the Western anime rights reverted to Toei Animation.

Is Bandai Namco the same as Namco Bandai?

Yes. The merged company was called Namco Bandai Holdings from 2005 until the group reordered its brand to Bandai Namco in 2014, and the game publisher was renamed Bandai Namco Entertainment in 2015. Older Digimon games such as Digimon World Dawn and Dusk carry the Namco Bandai label purely because of that naming period.

Who develops Digimon video games?

Bandai Namco Entertainment publishes them but usually contracts external studios. Media.Vision developed Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, Hacker’s Memory and Digimon Story Time Stranger, B.B. Studio developed Digimon World: Next Order, and Hyde developed Digimon Survive.

Who makes the Digimon Card Game?

Bandai makes the Digimon Card Game directly, in both its Japanese and English editions. The modern game launched in Japan in April 2020 and in English in January 2021 with the BT01 “New Evolution” booster set and three starter decks.