In a message displayed at Jump Festa 2018's Boruto: Naruto Next Generations stage panel on Sunday, Naruto manga creator Masashi Kishimoto teased his new work in 2018, the 50th anniversary of Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. The panel teased several layout art sequences that Kishimoto drew for the new work.

Kishimoto ended his main Naruto manga after 15 years of serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump in November 2014. He then wrote the one-volume sequel manga Naruto: The Seventh Hokage and the Scarlet Spring . Kishimoto also worked on the script and character designs, and served as the chief production supervisor on the Boruto -Naruto the Movie- film sequel. A series of novels continued the story after the manga's end.

Kishimoto attended the New York Comic Con event in October 2015. He confirmed then that he was working on plans for his next manga, a science-fiction story.

Afterward, in an interview in Shueisha's Jump GIGA magazine in August 2016, Kishimoto reiterated that he was already planning his next project, and that he had already done research for it. He said in the interview that he thought he could announce the project in 2016, but there was no definite date. He did not specify the project's format.