Which JoJo Part Is the Longest? All 9 Parts Ranked by Chapters, Volumes and Years

The short answer

Both answers are right because the series changed magazines. Parts 1 to 6 ran in the weekly Weekly Shōnen Jump, with short chapters. Steel Ball Run moved to the monthly Ultra Jump in 2005, and every chapter since then has been far longer. A Part with fewer chapters can still fill more books.

Three ways to measure a Part

• Chapters count installments. They are the fairest way to compare Parts from the same magazine, but they undercount the monthly Parts.
• Volumes count collected books. They are the best guide to how much there is to read, whatever the magazine.
• Time in print counts the months from the first chapter to the last. It shows how long fans followed a Part as it came out.

This guide ranks all nine Parts on each measure, then explains why they disagree.

All nine Parts at a glance

Here is every Part with its run in print, its chapter and volume counts, and the magazine it appeared in.

Ranked by chapters

Chapters are the most direct way to measure a Part, because each one was a single installment in the magazine. Ranked that way, the finished Parts line up like this:

Diamond is Unbreakable comes first

Part 4 has 174 chapters, Chapters 266 to 439. It stays in one small town for the whole story, and much of it is made up of short, self-contained encounters with Morioh's Stand users before the hunt for Yoshikage Kira takes over.

A close race behind it

The next three are within a few chapters of each other: Stone Ocean (158), Golden Wind (155) and Stardust Crusaders (152). Only 6 chapters separate second place from fourth.

All four ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump for three to four years, at roughly one chapter a week. Their similar lengths reflect that steady schedule.

A note on chapter numbers

Printed chapter numbers restart at 1 from Stone Ocean onward, so Stone Ocean's last chapter is Chapter 158 in the book but Chapter 752 in the series-wide count. We use the series-wide numbers throughout, which is also how JoJodle's debut-chapter column works.

Why the monthly Parts rank low

Steel Ball Run (95) and JoJolion (110) sit near the bottom of this list, below every weekly Part except the first two. That is not because they are short stories. Each of their chapters is far longer, as the next section shows.

Ranked by volumes

Count the collected books instead, and the order flips. JoJolion has the most volumes of any Part, and Steel Ball Run is second.

Weekly chapters vs monthly chapters

The reason is the size of a chapter. Divide each Part's chapters by its volumes and two groups appear. The weekly Parts fit about 9.4 chapters into a volume. JoJolion, published monthly from start to finish, fits about 4.1.

Two very different magazines

Weekly Shōnen Jump comes out every week, and a series in it usually gets a short chapter in nearly every issue. JoJo ran there from 1987 to 2004. Ultra Jump is a monthly magazine, so each chapter has to carry a month's worth of story and runs much longer.

What that means for readers

A monthly chapter covers roughly as much story as 2.3 weekly chapters. So JoJolion's 110 chapters make a longer read than Diamond is Unbreakable's 174: 27 volumes against 18.

Steel Ball Run sits in between

Steel Ball Run began in Weekly Shōnen Jump in January 2004 and ran there until October. After a break, it restarted in Ultra Jump in March 2005 and stayed until April 2011. Most of its 95 chapters are monthly ones, which is why its ratio is close to JoJolion's.

Ranked by years in print

A third way to measure a Part is how long readers waited for it to finish. Here the monthly Parts come out on top: fewer chapters a year, spread over a much longer run.

JoJolion: more than a decade

JoJolion ran from May 2011 to Aug 2021, 124 months in all. No other Part comes close. Steel Ball Run is second at 88 months, counting its break between magazines.

The weekly Parts finished fast

No weekly Part took longer than 44 months. Phantom Blood ran for 10 months, and Battle Tendency started the month after it ended.

Chapters per year

Dividing chapters by time in print shows the two speeds of the series. The weekly Parts came out at 45 to 53 chapters a year; JoJolion at about 11.

How much of JoJo each Part is

Together, the eight finished Parts run to 957 chapters. This is how that total splits:

Diamond is Unbreakable alone is 18.2% of the series. The first three Parts together make up 27.7%, and the four Parts from Stardust Crusaders to Stone Ocean account for 66.8%.

The two finished Parts of the second timeline, Steel Ball Run and JoJolion, are only 21.4% of the chapters, but 51 of the 131 volumes. Measured in books, they are a much bigger slice than this chart suggests.

Every Part in order

Here is each Part in publication order, with its length, where and when the story takes place, and its JoJo.

The shortest Parts

Phantom Blood is the shortest Part on every measure: 44 chapters, 5 volumes and 10 months in print. Battle Tendency is second shortest by chapters and volumes, at 69 chapters in 7 volumes.

The first two Parts together

Combined, Parts 1 and 2 have 113 chapters. That is fewer than any single Part from Stardust Crusaders to Stone Ocean. The anime reflects this: both Parts were adapted in one 26-episode season.

A short start, if you are new

If you want to try JoJo before committing, those first 12 volumes are the lightest way in. They introduce the Joestar family and Dio, which the rest of the first timeline builds on.

Two timelines and a reading order

Length matters most when you are deciding where to start, and JoJo has two starting points. The nine Parts form two separate timelines, and the second one begins from scratch.

The first timeline: Parts 1 to 6

Phantom Blood to Stone Ocean tell one continuous family story, from Victorian England to 2011. Together they fill 80 volumes and 752 chapters. Each Part follows a new JoJo, usually a descendant of the last, so they read best in order.

The second timeline: Parts 7 to 9

Steel Ball Run restarts the story in a new universe that reuses familiar names: there is a Joestar, a Zeppeli and a Dio-like Diego Brando, but they are new characters. Parts 7 to 9 fill 60 volumes so far, all of them in the longer monthly format apart from Steel Ball Run's first year.

Where to start

• From the beginning: Part 1 is the shortest Part and sets up everything in the first timeline.
• From the second timeline: Part 7 needs no earlier reading, though the reused names are more fun if you know Parts 1 to 6.
• For the biggest single read: JoJolion, at 27 volumes, is the longest stretch of one story.

The longest Parts on screen

David Production's TV anime has adapted Parts 1 to 6. Here the ranking changes again: Stardust Crusaders gets the most episodes, even though it has fewer chapters than three other Parts.

Stardust Crusaders covers about 3.2 chapters per episode across its 48 episodes, the most room any Part has been given. Phantom Blood had the least: about 4.9 chapters per episode.

Is The JOJOLands still running?

Yes. Part 9 began in Ultra Jump in February 2023 and continues the chapter count from Chapter 958. By September 2026 it had 9 collected volumes, and the next is listed for December 2026.

How it compares so far

• Volumes: its 9 volumes already outnumber Phantom Blood (5) and Battle Tendency (7).
• Time in print: 45 months as of Oct 2026, already longer than any of the weekly Parts.
• Chapters: it is a monthly series like JoJolion, so its chapter count grows slowly. It stays out of the chapter ranking until it ends.

We will update this page as new volumes come out and when the Part ends.

Characters per Part in JoJodle

Length and cast size do not track each other closely. Our daily game uses a curated roster of the most notable characters, and Stardust Crusaders, a mid-length Part, supplies the most of them.

Stardust Crusaders' road-trip structure brings a new enemy almost every stop, which is why it leads with 38 characters. Diamond is Unbreakable, the longest Part, has 30.

Want to test how well you know them? Every character in the table can be the answer to today's JoJodle, and the best first guess guide shows which Part to open with.

Frequently asked questions