Katsuhiro Harada’s sudden departure announcement certainly took the FGC by surprise. Although he intends to attend the Tekken World Tour 2026 Finals at the end of January 2026 as a guest at the request of Bandai Namco, he will no longer be directly associated with the company after 2025.
Previously, Harada claimed he’d retire after Tekken 9. Though he’s leaving during the post-launch development cycle for Tekken 8, Bandai Namco has reaffirmed their commitment to supporting Tekken 8 for the foreseeable future without Harada.
Harada made a surprise appearance during the livestream of Fuzuki Miki, a popular V-Tuber. During this event, an animation that had Fuzuki Miki calling upon the the guy in the sunglasses within a crowd when it came time for her to start taking questions.
For those of us in the FGC, it’s been well established that sunglasses are a big part of Harada’s image ever since he was asked to wear them by Capcom. Funnily enough, the intention was to portray Harada as a “villainous” individual during the Street Fighter X Tekken promotional campaign.
Suddenly, Harada appeared in the stream in person. He apparently had two questions for Fuzuki Miki, the first of which asked her about the origin of her name.
It was the second question that was especially interesting. He was asking Fuzuki Miki what she thought he should do once he leaves Bandai Namco at the end of the year.
“As many of you already know, I’ll be leaving my company at the end of 2025,” begun Harada. “My question is this: What do you think I should do next?”
It felt like Harada wasn’t just asking Fuzuki Miki, but was also polling the fighting game community as well.
“What do you think would be a good thing for me to do starting in 2026?” continued Harada.
From there, Harada stated that he was looking forward to the answers to these questions.
To be honest, it’s a little difficult to think that Harada doesn’t already have a plan for what’s next for him after his departure from Bandai Namco has been finalized. Still, it sounds like he’s interested in hearing some ideas.
Harada Really Graduated from Tekken and First thing he did was Ask Fuzuki Miki for some Counseling on what to do next lol (He’s a fan for the ones wondering) #FuzukiMiki #TEKKEN8 pic.twitter.com/8gfoUbvQ5w
— SmolMouse (@SmolMouseDesu) December 21, 2025