Grand Admiral Thrawn has had one of the strangest journeys in Star Wars.

He began as a novel character, disappeared from official continuity after Disney reset the Expanded Universe, returned through animation, entered live action and is now heading into another format entirely.

Star Wars: Thrawn (The Manga), Vol. 1 will be published by Random House Worlds on 29 September 2026.

The book adapts Timothy Zahn’s 2017 canon novel Thrawn, with Man Tsang handling the manga adaptation.

Back to the beginning

The story explores Thrawn before he became one of the Empire’s most dangerous military minds.

It begins around the enigmatic Chiss Ascendancy and follows his journey through political manoeuvring, dangerous encounters and the circumstances that eventually bring his unusual strategic abilities to Imperial attention.

For fans who know the character primarily through Star Wars Rebels or Lars Mikkelsen’s live-action performance in Ahsoka, the manga offers another route into the canonical backstory Zahn constructed for him.

Thrawn has always belonged to books

There is something appropriately circular about this adaptation.

Thrawn first appeared in Zahn’s 1991 novel Heir to the Empire, becoming one of the most influential characters created outside the original films.

When the old Expanded Universe was reclassified as Legends, Lucasfilm later reintroduced Thrawn into canon through Star Wars Rebels. Zahn subsequently wrote a new series of canonical novels beginning with Thrawn in 2017.

Now that novel is being translated into manga.

From prose to animation to live action and back onto the printed page in a visual form, Thrawn has become an unusually format-fluid Star Wars character.

What exactly is being released?

Volume 1 will be available in paperback and digital formats on 29 September. Random House Worlds lists the paperback at 224 pages, while the ebook edition is listed at 192 pages.

It is officially described as the manga adaptation of Zahn’s bestselling novel.

So no, this is not a new Thrawn storyline.

It is a new way to experience one of his most important existing ones.

For a character who became famous by thinking several moves ahead of everyone else, somehow Thrawn finding his way into manga feels completely appropriate.