📺 In India, Doraemon has been speaking Hindi on television since 2005. On October 2, 2026, his latest movie opened in cinemas across the country, dubbed into Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, with no subtitled version at all. Five weeks later, box office trackers estimate it is the second-highest-grossing Japanese anime film ever released in India, behind only Demon Slayer. One detail got lost in the celebrations, though: this wasn't quite Doraemon's first trip to an Indian cinema.

The audience sang before the film started

On September 26, fans filled a premiere screening at Inorbit Mall in Malad, Mumbai. According to TV Asahi, the Japanese broadcaster behind the anime, the crowd broke into a group sing-along of the series' theme song, "Doraemon no Uta," before the screening began.

Families waiting in a Mumbai cinema before the Doraemon premiere screening

Source: TV Asahi (PR TIMES)

The film is Doraemon the Movie: New Nobita and the Castle of the Undersea Devil, the 45th film in the series and a remake of a 1983 classic, directed by Tetsuo Yajima. It opened in Japan on February 27, 2026.

PVR INOX Pictures handled the Indian release. A TV Asahi representative told the Japanese site Otaku Soken that it was showing in more than 700 cinemas nationwide as of October 13, though the company hasn't published a detailed count. The campaign went beyond the multiplex, with mall events, a program run with schools, and Doraemon-themed rickshaws and buses planned for city streets.

Kamal Gianchandani, CEO of PVR INOX Pictures, said the aim was to "create a shared big-screen experience for families, children, and longtime fans alike." Maiko Sumida of TV Asahi's international business department said the company was "honored to finally bring Doraemon to the big screen in India after 20 years."

Not quite the first time

TV Asahi's press materials describe this as the first theatrical release of a Doraemon film in India, and much of the coverage in both countries repeated the line. On Hatena Bookmark, a Japanese social bookmarking site, one user was surprised it took 21 years of TV to get a first movie.

Indian film records tell a slightly longer story. The Indian distributor UTV Motion Pictures, known as Disney UTV from 2012, put a Hindi-dubbed Doraemon in Nobita and the Steel Troops: The New Age into Indian cinemas in October 2011, followed by Doraemon the Movie: Nobita Aur Jadooi Tapu in May 2013. A Navi Mumbai newspaper column on that week's new releases listed the second one alongside Fast & Furious 6. Even the Indian entertainment site Pinkvilla, in an October 4, 2026 box office report, noted that earlier Doraemon films in India had typically grossed around ₹5 crore.

What changed in 2026 is the scale and who is running the show. This time the Japanese rights holder, TV Asahi, is leading the release with PVR INOX, three language versions opened on the same day, and the company says it wants Indian kids to be able to watch a Doraemon film in cinemas every year, the way Japanese kids do.

Second only to Demon Slayer

India doesn't publish official box office figures, so the numbers here are estimates from the tracking site Sacnilk. Through November 6, 2026 (day 36), the film had grossed ₹28.36 crore (Rs 283.6 million, about $3.0 million). After taxes, the net figure is ₹24.33 crore.

By Sacnilk's count, it opened with ₹1.95 crore net and reached ₹7.1 crore in three days. By the end of the first week, with ₹12.15 crore net, the Indian box office site Koimoi had it at No. 2 among anime films released in India by net collections. It passed Shinchan: Our Dinosaur Diary (₹8.83 crore), Suzume (about ₹8.45 crore) and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (₹4.85 crore). Koimoi called the run a pleasant surprise, and users on the ticketing app BookMyShow rated the film 9.1 out of 10.

First place isn't close. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, released in 2025, took ₹74.71 crore net, about three times Doraemon's current total.

Demon Slayer opened in five languages, including the original Japanese and English. Doraemon came only as dubs, and the Hindi version brought in 81.7 percent of its net (₹19.87 crore), with Telugu (₹2.27 crore) and Tamil (₹2.19 crore) splitting the rest. Most of that audience, it's fair to guess, came for a voice they already knew from TV.

A childhood voice, and a few objections

Doraemon arrived on Indian TV in May 2005 on Hungama TV, a kids' channel, and Disney Channel India started rerunning it in November 2010. A TV Asahi representative told Otaku Soken that the launch happened as television was spreading through Indian homes, and the show caught on quickly.

Not everyone was charmed. In 2016, Indian activist Ashish Chaturvedi called for broadcasts of Doraemon and Crayon Shin-chan to be banned, saying the Hindi- and English-dubbed shows were bad for children. That same year, lawmakers from Pakistan's PTI party submitted a resolution in the Punjab provincial assembly seeking a ban. Neighboring Bangladesh had already pulled the Hindi-dubbed Doraemon off its TV screens in February 2013, amid concerns that children were picking up Hindi instead of their native Bengali.

In India, though, the show stayed on the air. Its newest episodes run on Disney Channel, and older seasons stream on JioHotstar in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

Meanwhile, Nobita goes to Delhi

Back in Japan, TV Asahi aired a special episode on November 7, 2026, called "Namaste! Nobita Studies Abroad in India." Nobita uses a gadget called the Anywhere Study-Abroad Name Tag to spend a day at an elementary school in Delhi. He writes on his profile that he's a once-in-a-century genius, which works out fine until the class gets to two-digit multiplication. It's a regular episode for Japanese viewers, not a co-production, timed to the Indian release.

TV Asahi's India ties go beyond Doraemon. Sumida says that when the 1989 gag anime Obocchama-kun aired in India in 2021, it became a big hit while the country was struggling through the pandemic. Indian viewers wanted more, so TV Asahi made a new series with Sony Pictures Networks India, animated in India by Green Gold Animation. Now that India-made show is heading the other way: Obocchama-kun REBORN is scheduled to air on TV Asahi in Japan in 2027, according to an announcement made in October 2026.

Outside Japan, anime is also a common way into learning Japanese.

Which language did Doraemon speak where you grew up? And did you ever get to see him on a big screen, or only on TV?

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