After nearly 25 years of building its story through video games, Kingdom Hearts is officially heading to television.
Disney announced during D23 2026 that the franchise is getting its first original animated television series, currently carrying the working title Kingdom Hearts. The project is being developed for Disney Channel and Disney+ in collaboration with franchise creator Tetsuya Nomura and the creative team at Square Enix. Rather than directly adapting one of the existing games, the series will tell a new story designed to expand the Kingdom Hearts universe.
For voice acting fans, however, one major part of the project remains unknown. Disney has not announced who will voice the television series.
That question carries unusual weight for Kingdom Hearts. Characters including Sora and Riku have been associated with the same English performers for much of the franchise’s history, while familiar Disney voices have helped connect the games to characters audiences already knew from animation. At D23, Disney celebrated that vocal history at almost the same moment it opened an entirely new chapter for the franchise.
Haley Joel Osment and David Gallagher Reunite at D23
The television announcement came during Disney’s Entertainment Showcase, but the following day’s Deep Dive into Kingdom Hearts panel provided a much closer look at the performers who helped establish the series.
The panel celebrated the franchise ahead of its 25th anniversary and brought together Nomura, Kingdom Hearts IV co-director Tai Yasue and Disney & Pixar Games product development director Nana Gadd. Renée Johnson, creative director for Disney Character Voices, later joined the presentation for a discussion specifically devoted to the voice work behind Kingdom Hearts.
Then came a surprise for longtime fans.
Haley Joel Osment, the English voice of Sora, and David Gallagher, the longtime English voice of Riku, appeared onstage and reenacted a scene from Kingdom Hearts. Japanese Sora voice actor Miyu Irino also participated through a recorded message.
Seeing Osment and Gallagher perform their characters together was particularly fitting during a weekend when Disney was preparing Kingdom Hearts for a new medium. Their connection to Sora and Riku stretches back to the franchise’s earliest days, meaning generations of players have grown up associating those voices with the characters.
That kind of continuity is unusual even in long-running entertainment franchises. Video game series frequently change casts as technology, production teams and platforms evolve. Kingdom Hearts, however, has maintained important vocal connections across games released over more than two decades.
Twenty-Five Years of Building Kingdom Hearts Through Voices
Voice performance has been fundamental to Kingdom Hearts from the beginning because of the unusual worlds the franchise attempts to bring together.
Sora, Riku and Kairi had to feel at home alongside characters from Disney films while still establishing an identity belonging to Square Enix’s original universe. Osment became Sora’s English voice, Gallagher established Riku, and Hayden Panettiere originated Kairi for English-speaking audiences.
Around them were characters who already had extensive performance histories of their own. Donald Duck, Goofy, Mickey Mouse and characters drawn from individual Disney films entered the games with vocal identities that audiences recognized from elsewhere.
The result was something unusual. Kingdom Hearts did not simply borrow the visual designs of Disney characters. Voice performance helped make encounters with those characters feel connected to the movies and television productions players remembered, while Sora and his companions gradually developed equally recognizable voices of their own.
As the series expanded, so did that performance challenge. New Disney and Pixar worlds brought additional characters into the games, while the original Kingdom Hearts cast had to portray characters growing older and experiencing an increasingly complicated story.
The D23 reunion between Osment and Gallagher therefore represented more than convention nostalgia. Their live performance demonstrated how strongly two actors remain connected to roles they first began playing when the franchise itself was new.
Remembering Hayden Panettiere’s Kairi
The celebration of Kingdom Hearts at D23 was followed by devastating news for the franchise and its fans. Hayden Panettiere died on August 16 at the age of 36. Tributes from colleagues and fans quickly included recognition of the contribution she made as Kairi, one of the three characters at the emotional center of the original Kingdom Hearts.
Panettiere voiced Kairi in the first two main games and later returned to the franchise, including additional work connected to Kairi and Xion. Alyson Stoner, who has also performed both characters at different points in the series, was among those who publicly remembered Panettiere following her death.
Her performance helped establish the original relationship between Kairi, Sora and Riku, giving the character a warmth that became an important part of the earliest games. For players who discovered Kingdom Hearts in the 2000s, Panettiere’s voice remains closely associated with those formative chapters of the story.
The timing has inevitably made the D23 celebration more poignant. Osment and Gallagher had reunited onstage to perform a scene tied to the friendship between the franchise’s central characters only shortly before news of Panettiere’s death reached fans.
With Disney’s animated series still at an early stage and its characters and cast unannounced, it would be premature to speculate about Kairi’s involvement or any future casting decisions. What is already clear is that Panettiere’s performance belongs to the history the franchise carries with it as Kingdom Hearts enters its next era.
Kingdom Hearts IV Keeps the Game Story Moving
Television will not replace the games as the franchise’s primary story continues.
D23 also brought a new look at Kingdom Hearts IV, now scheduled for release in late 2027. The new trailer revealed a world inspired by Pixar’s Coco, where Sora will encounter Miguel and Héctor. Disney says the franchise has now sold more than 39 million units worldwide.
The Deep Dive panel provided additional information, including confirmation that players will be able to control Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy as the trio searches for information about Sora’s whereabouts. Attendees were shown an extended version of the new trailer as Nomura and the development team discussed the next chapter.
That means Kingdom Hearts is not simply moving from games into animation. Its universe is expanding across both simultaneously.
For voice performers, those two branches could present very different opportunities. Kingdom Hearts IV continues an established game series with decades of performance history, while the television project has the freedom to tell a new story and potentially introduce characters and performances of its own.
How much the two casts will overlap remains unknown.
Who Will Voice the Kingdom Hearts Television Series?
That is now one of the most interesting unanswered questions surrounding Disney’s new project.
Disney has confirmed Nomura and Square Enix’s involvement and described the show as an original anime series that will celebrate familiar characters while expanding the universe. It has not identified which characters will appear or announced any voice actors.
For many franchises, a new animated adaptation arriving with a new cast would hardly be unusual. Kingdom Hearts comes with considerably more history.
Osment’s Sora and Gallagher’s Riku have accompanied players through much of the franchise. At the same time, the Disney side of Kingdom Hearts carries its own traditions of performers returning to characters across films, television, games and other productions.
Whether the television series preserves those connections, creates an entirely new vocal interpretation, or combines returning and new performers will help determine how closely the show feels connected to the games.
D23 made that question particularly compelling by putting the past and future of Kingdom Hearts side by side. One day, Disney announced that the franchise was entering television with a completely new story. The next, Osment and Gallagher stood before fans and slipped back into characters they have carried for almost a quarter of a century.
After 25 years, Kingdom Hearts has accumulated more than complicated lore and memorable worlds. It has built vocal performances that fans immediately associate with its characters. As Disney prepares to translate that universe into an original animated series, those voices are an important part of the legacy the new production inherits.
