The Karate Kid in release order

About this order

What is on this list

All six films: the four with Pat Morita, the 2010 remake with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, and Karate Kid: Legends in 2025.

All 65 episodes of Cobra Kai, from its two YouTube seasons through its four on Netflix. And all thirteen episodes of the 1989 NBC cartoon, in which Daniel and Miyagi chase a stolen shrine around the world with a girl called Taki.

There is no seventh film. Nothing is announced and nothing has a date.

Three of the films came out abroad first, and one of them by a month

This site dates an entry by its first release wherever that happened, and three of these six opened outside America first.

The Next Karate Kid is the interesting one. It opened on 12 August 1994 in thirty-two French-language cinemas in Quebec, four weeks before its American release on 9 September, and took $95,260 doing it. Every guide prints September. Daily Variety reported both dates at the time, and Box Office Mojo's own weekend charts still carry the evidence: the film appears in the 9–11 September weekend at number seven, flagged as not a new release, because "domestic" means the United States and Canada and its domestic release had already happened.

The 2010 remake opened in South Korea on 10 June, the day before America. Karate Kid: Legends opened across Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Peru on 8 May 2025, three weeks before the American release, and took about $5.7 million before America saw it at all.

Two dates that are not used, and one database that cannot be trusted here

Parts II and III use their American dates. Letterboxd lists earlier foreign dates for both and is wrong on every date on this franchise that could be checked. Its French date for Part III is a Friday; French films open on Wednesdays, and the French trade press gives a date five weeks later. Its British date for The Next Karate Kid is exactly the day the BBFC classified the film, which is not a release and never was. Treat its country data on these six films as certification data, because demonstrably some of it is.

Cobra Kai never went out weekly, and its first two episodes played in cinemas

Every season of Cobra Kai arrived complete on one day — ten at a time for the first five seasons, and season six in three parts of five. The two YouTube seasons were not weekly either; what was staggered there was the paywall, not the schedule. Episodes one and two were free to everybody on the first day and the rest needed a subscription, but all ten went up together.

Season six's second part is worth knowing about if you check this against anything written in 2024: it was announced for 28 November and moved forward to 15 November, and the announcement came on the day the first part dropped. A good deal of the internet still says the 28th.

Seven days before the first season went up, on 25 April 2018, episodes one and two played in about seven hundred American cinemas for one night, double-billed with the 1984 film. It was a paid ticket and a real audience. This list still dates them to 2 May, on the same grounds it uses everywhere: a paid showing a few days ahead of the real thing is a preview. The Tribeca premiere the night before that is a festival, which was never a candidate.

IMDb, and the two episodes nobody agrees about

The cartoon ran on NBC from 9 September to 16 December 1989, but it is thirteen episodes across fifteen Saturdays — NBC skipped 7 October and skipped Thanksgiving weekend. Any guide showing thirteen Saturdays in a row is wrong.

Two of those thirteen are dated differently depending on where you look. TheTVDB, epguides and episodate have The Paper Hero on 14 October and All the World His Stage on the 21st; Wikipedia, IMDb and one research blog working from period listings have it the other way round. This list uses the second, because IMDb is genuinely independent of the first group — episodate takes its data from TVmaze and TVmaze from TheTVDB, so three sources against three is closer to three against one. It is one week and one position either way.

The two continuities, and the film that joined them

The 2010 film is a remake, not a sequel: a different boy, a different city, a different martial art, and no connection to anything Pat Morita was ever in. It sat on its own for fifteen years.

Karate Kid: Legends is what joined them, and it did it by inventing a shared ancestry rather than by continuing anybody's plot. It opens on a flashback establishing that Miyagi-family karate and the Han family's kung fu come from one man, and it puts Mr Han and Daniel LaRusso in the same room teaching the same boy. A scene after the credits has Johnny Lawrence in Miyagi's old house.

What it does not do is mention Dre Parker, the boy from the 2010 film, even once. So the two halves are joined at the root and nowhere else, which is why this is one list rather than two — and why, if you are watching in this order, the 2010 film will feel like a detour until the last entry explains itself.

Eighteen rows carry a cross-over mark, all of them Cobra Kai

The films carry none, here as everywhere on this site. And the cartoon carries none either, which is a finding rather than an oversight: it drops the films' continuity entirely. No tournament, no Kreese, no Cobra Kai dojo, no Okinawa from Part II. Daniel and Miyagi are the same people and nothing that happened to them is.

What the marks on Cobra Kai are for is the moment somebody walks in from a film. Ali Mills after thirty-six years. Kumiko and Chozen, in two episodes that are really a continuation of Part II — Tomi Village is a shopping centre now, and Chozen honks Daniel's nose to hand back the mercy he was shown. Terry Silver, Mike Barnes and Jessica Andrews, who between them turn Part III from the film everybody skips into the load-bearing one. Bobby Brown, Tommy and Jimmy from the 1984 dojo. And in the very last episode, Darryl Vidal, who lost the 1984 semi-final to Johnny and was played by a real karate champion.

Where a character stops being a visitor and becomes part of the cast, the marks stop. Chozen from season five and Silver through seasons four and five are the show's own regulars by then, and marking every episode they are in would say nothing.

Two things are deliberately unmarked. Mr Miyagi's death is Cobra Kai's own invention — he is alive at the end of The Next Karate Kid — so Daniel at his grave is not a reference to any film. And Miyagi's own tournament past, which season six is largely about, was invented for the series.

What is not here

Cobra Kai: Inside the Dojo, the behind-the-scenes companion Netflix put out alongside each part of season six. The Way of the Karate Kid, a documentary made for a DVD. More Than Miyagi, the 2021 biography of Pat Morita, which is about him rather than part of this.

The video games, the stage musical, and a 2024 fan short that IMDb carries as though it were official.

Where the links go

Every entry links to IMDb and to Wikipedia. No episode of either series has a Wikipedia article of its own, so every episode's link is its own row on the relevant list.

Cobra Kai's episodes link to the Karate Kid Wiki as well. The cartoon's do not, and that is the finished state rather than a gap — the wiki has no page for any of its thirteen episodes.