Cobra Kai Season 6: Trailer, Premiere Date, Story, Cast, and Everything Else to Know

It's been nearly two years since the original karate kid Daniel LaRusso took down Terry Silver once and for all at the end of Cobra Kai Season 5, but with the sixth and final season finally on the horizon, the wait for more Cobra Kai is nearly over — the Cobra Kai Season 6 release date is coming up — meaning it's almost time for the world championship of karate, the Sekai Taikai tournament.

The reason for the lengthy wait is the same reason for so many other delays in Hollywood lately: last year's tandem strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA. With the two guilds striking simultaneously, just about all US development and production in the TV and film industries were halted for months, and Cobra Kai Season 6 was one of those casualties. But at least the dual strikes prevented studios from simply forging ahead without writers like they did when the writers struck on their own in 2007 — this time, it was as if everything was simply paused for half a year, and so you don't have to worry about the shows you love suddenly becoming terrible in the wake of the strikes.

Cobra Kai Season 6 premiere date

Cobra Kai Season 6 is set to make its premiere on Netflix on July 18, 2024. But this is not going to be a normal season release for Netflix, where all the episodes drop at once. Instead, Season 6 of Cobra Kai is being split into three (!!!) parts, each of which contains five episodes. You'll get the first batch of five episodes on July 18, the second batch on Nov. 28, and the third batch in early 2025. While Netflix has done two-part seasons before, Cobra Kai Season 6 will be its first three-part season ever.

Cobra Kai Season 6 trailer

Netflix announced that release plan with a small, 30-second teaser for Cobra Kai Season 6, which you can see above. It's not going to give you much info about what Daniel (Ralph Macchio), Johnny (William Zabka), and the rest of the karate kickers are going to get up to in this new group of episodes, but it's clear that the villainous Cobra Kai founder John Kreese (Martin Krove) will be involved — as we expected after he escaped from prison at the end of Season 5.

Cobra Kai Season 6's story

Netflix is keeping the plot of Season 6 mostly under wraps, aside from this brief little blurb: "Picking up with Cobra Kai eliminated from the Valley, our senseis and students must decide if and how they will compete in the Sekai Taikai – the world championships of karate."

That's not much to go on, but after the way Season 5 ended, with Cobra Kai basically collapsing and Terry Silver in prison, it's not hard to see which way the wind is blowing. John Kreese has been the true baddie of the entire Karate Kid franchise, and now there's a good chance he's been tasked with being Cobra Kai's final boss battle.

As for the three-part structure, Cobra Kai creator and showrunner Jon Hurwitz has said that each group of five episodes is basically a "mini season," so it may be best to think of this as an ersatz trilogy.

Does Season 6 set up the next Karate Kid movie?

Making the situation slightly more complex is that we're getting a new Karate Kid movie next summer that will unite the original film with the 2010 remake starring Jackie Chan — and, yes, Ralph Macchio will play Daniel LaRusso in it. Hurwitz previously said that this movie wouldn't have any tie to Cobra Kai or focus on the show's characters, but with Macchio joining the film's cast, that clearly isn't the case anymore.

This new Karate Kid lands in theaters on May 30, 2025, and it's likely that the events of Cobra Kai will be part of its backstory, though it's doubtful that Sony will lean too heavily on that — studios don't usually want to require audiences to watch six seasons of television to prep for a new movie. But the finale of Cobra Kai could certainly tee the movie up. Why else schedule them like this?

Cobra Kai Season 6 cast

We can expect most of the main cast to return for Cobra Kai Season 6.

• Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso
• William Zabka as Johnny Lawrence
• Martin Kove as John Kreese
• Xolo Maridueña as Miguel Diaz
• Courtney Henggeler as Amanda LaRusso
• Mary Mouser as Samantha LaRusso
• Peyton List as Tory Nichols
• Tanner Buchanan as Robby Keene
• Jacob Bertrand as Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz
• Dallas Dupree Young as Kenny Payne
• Vanessa Rubio as Carmen Diaz

How to watch Cobra Kai

The first two seasons of Cobra Kai were produced for YouTube RED, a service which no longer exists, and then the series moved to Netflix starting with Season 3. Which means that these days you can find the entire series run of Cobra Kai on Netflix.