The best Studio Ghibli films are Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, with Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya close behind. Studio Ghibli’s own list of its work holds 25 feature-length films, from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind in 1984 to The Boy and the Heron in 2023, and this ranking covers every one of them.
Each entry gives the year, the director, the running time from Studio Ghibli’s official film pages, and where to watch it in the UK. Most of the catalogue is on Netflix UK: on 30 October 2026, 23 of the 25 films were streaming there.
- Founded: 1985, by the publisher Tokuma Shoten, after the success of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
- Feature films: 25, from 1984 to 2023
- Directors: Hayao Miyazaki (11 films), Isao Takahata (5), Gorō Miyazaki (3), Hiromasa Yonebayashi (2), plus one each from Yoshifumi Kondō, Hiroyuki Morita, Tomomi Mochizuki and Michaël Dudok de Wit
- Newest film: The Boy and the Heron (2023), winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
- Where to stream in the UK: Netflix carries 23 films; Grave of the Fireflies is not streaming, and The Red Turtle is on StudioCanal Presents through Prime Video
Studio Ghibli Films Ranked, From Spirited Away to Earwig
Every Studio Ghibli Film Ranked, at a Glance
The full studio ghibli film list in our order, best first. Running times are Studio Ghibli’s own, rounded to the minute.
| Rank | Film | Year | Director | Running time | Where to watch in the UK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spirited Away | 2001 | Hayao Miyazaki | 125 min | Netflix |
| 2 | My Neighbor Totoro | 1988 | Hayao Miyazaki | 86 min | Netflix |
| 3 | Princess Mononoke | 1997 | Hayao Miyazaki | 133 min | Netflix |
| 4 | The Tale of the Princess Kaguya | 2013 | Isao Takahata | 137 min | Netflix |
| 5 | Grave of the Fireflies | 1988 | Isao Takahata | 88 min | Not streaming in the UK |
| 6 | Kiki’s Delivery Service | 1989 | Hayao Miyazaki | 102 min | Netflix |
| 7 | Howl’s Moving Castle | 2004 | Hayao Miyazaki | 119 min | Netflix |
| 8 | Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind | 1984 | Hayao Miyazaki | 116 min | Netflix |
| 9 | Castle in the Sky | 1986 | Hayao Miyazaki | 124 min | Netflix |
| 10 | Porco Rosso | 1992 | Hayao Miyazaki | 93 min | Netflix |
| 11 | The Boy and the Heron | 2023 | Hayao Miyazaki | 124 min | Netflix |
| 12 | Whisper of the Heart | 1995 | Yoshifumi Kondō | 111 min | Netflix |
| 13 | Only Yesterday | 1991 | Isao Takahata | 119 min | Netflix |
| 14 | The Wind Rises | 2013 | Hayao Miyazaki | 126 min | Netflix |
| 15 | Ponyo | 2008 | Hayao Miyazaki | 101 min | Netflix |
| 16 | When Marnie Was There | 2014 | Hiromasa Yonebayashi | 103 min | Netflix |
| 17 | Pom Poko | 1994 | Isao Takahata | 119 min | Netflix |
| 18 | The Red Turtle | 2016 | Michaël Dudok de Wit | 81 min | StudioCanal Presents (Prime Video); rent or buy |
| 19 | Arrietty | 2010 | Hiromasa Yonebayashi | 94 min | Netflix |
| 20 | From Up on Poppy Hill | 2011 | Gorō Miyazaki | 91 min | Netflix |
| 21 | My Neighbors the Yamadas | 1999 | Isao Takahata | 104 min | Netflix |
| 22 | The Cat Returns | 2002 | Hiroyuki Morita | 75 min | Netflix |
| 23 | Ocean Waves | 1993 | Tomomi Mochizuki | 72 min | Netflix |
| 24 | Tales from Earthsea | 2006 | Gorō Miyazaki | 115 min | Netflix |
| 25 | Earwig and the Witch | 2020 | Gorō Miyazaki | 82 min | Netflix; rent or buy |
Streaming checked on JustWatch UK on 30 October 2026. Netflix titles come and go, so check the app before you settle in.
The Best Studio Ghibli Films: 1 to 10
1. Spirited Away (2001)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 125 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Ten-year-old Chihiro takes a job in a bathhouse for spirits after her parents are turned into pigs, and the film never loses its grip on her. The moment most people carry away is the quiet train journey, when Chihiro, No-Face and the shrunken baby Boh ride out across the water to visit the witch Zeniba. Spirited Away shared the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was also the highest-grossing film ever released in Japan for 19 years, until Demon Slayer: Mugen Train overtook it in 2020.
2. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 86 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Sisters Satsuki and Mei move to the countryside while their mother is in hospital, and find a forest spirit living in the camphor tree behind the house. Nothing much happens, and that is the point. At a rainy bus stop, Satsuki lends Totoro her father’s umbrella and he gives her a bundle of nuts and seeds in return, then climbs aboard the Catbus. Totoro went on to become Studio Ghibli’s logo. The film first opened on a double bill with Grave of the Fireflies on 16 April 1988, the gentlest and the saddest Ghibli films on one ticket.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage version is in its final London run: My Neighbour Totoro plays the Gillian Lynne Theatre until 3 January 2027, with the forest spirits built as full-size puppets.
3. Princess Mononoke (1997)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 133 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Set in the Muromachi period, Princess Mononoke follows Ashitaka, the last prince of the Emishi, who kills a boar god turned demon to save his village and is left with a curse spreading up his arm. He travels west and walks into a war between an ironworks town and the gods of the forest, with San, the girl raised by wolves, fighting for the forest. It became the highest-grossing film in Japan on its release, and its English script was written by the novelist Neil Gaiman. Our reading of how Princess Mononoke treats people and nature goes further into the Emishi, the Forest Spirit and the film’s Shinto roots.
4. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
Director: Isao Takahata. Running time: 137 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Takahata took The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a Japanese story from the 10th century, and drew it in loose, sketchy lines over watercolour backgrounds. A bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl inside a glowing shoot and raises her as a princess in the capital. When she flees her own coming-of-age banquet, the drawing breaks into furious black strokes as she runs back towards the hills. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was Takahata’s final film; he died in April 2018.
5. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Director: Isao Takahata. Running time: 88 minutes. Watch: not streaming in the UK on 30 October 2026.
Based on Akiyuki Nosaka’s semi-autobiographical short story from 1967, Grave of the Fireflies follows 14-year-old Seita and his four-year-old sister Setsuko after American bombers destroy most of Kobe in 1945. The small tin of Sakuma fruit drops that Seita saves for his sister is the object that breaks audiences, because the opening scene has already shown you where it ends up. Takahata opens with the ending, which our piece on how Ghibli plays with time looks at scene by scene. It ranks fifth only because few people can face watching it twice.
6. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 102 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Adapted from Eiko Kadono’s 1985 novel, the film sends 13-year-old Kiki away from home with her black cat Jiji, as every young witch must do at 13, and she settles in a seaside town and starts a flying courier service. On one delivery the wind drags her into a forest full of crows, and later she loses her ability to fly and has to shut the business. It is the Ghibli film most people recommend to anyone starting a new job or moving to a new city, and Kiki has a place among Studio Ghibli’s most memorable heroines.
7. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 119 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Miyazaki built this one from Diana Wynne Jones’s 1986 novel. Sophie, a young hatter, is cursed into an old woman by the Witch of the Waste and takes refuge as a cleaner in the wizard Howl’s walking castle, which runs on a fire demon called Calcifer. The breakfast scene, with Howl cooking over Calcifer’s flames while Sophie looks on, is the film at its warmest. Howl’s Moving Castle was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and lost to a British film, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Studio Ghibli first announced Mamoru Hosoda as its director in 2001, before the project stalled and Miyazaki took it on himself.
8. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 116 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Nausicaä was made at the studio Topcraft, a year before Studio Ghibli existed. Studio Ghibli’s own history says the film’s success is the reason the publisher Tokuma Shoten founded the studio in 1985, and Ghibli lists it first among its works. A princess flies a glider over a world swallowed by a poisonous fungal forest, the Toxic Jungle, and tries to stop a war. It was also Joe Hisaishi’s first score for Miyazaki. A heavily cut American version, Warriors of the Wind, so angered Miyazaki that Ghibli stopped letting foreign distributors edit its films.
9. Castle in the Sky (1986)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 124 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
The first film animated by Studio Ghibli opens with an air pirate raid on an airship. Sheeta falls overboard and her crystal necklace lowers her gently to the ground, where Pazu, a young mechanic in a mining town, catches her. Together they go looking for Laputa, a flying island the government and the pirates both want. It is Miyazaki’s purest adventure film, and a statue of the robot soldier that guards Laputa now stands at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka.
10. Porco Rosso (1992)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 93 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Porco Rosso began as a short in-flight film for Japan Airlines and grew into a feature. Marco Pagot, an Italian fighter ace from the First World War, has been turned into a pig and hunts air pirates over the Adriatic in a red seaplane. It suits the studio, whose name comes from an Italian aircraft: Studio Ghibli says Miyazaki, an aviation fan, took “Ghibli”, the name of a hot Saharan wind, from an Italian reconnaissance plane of the Second World War.
Studio Ghibli Films Ranked 11 to 20
11. The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 124 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Miyazaki’s most recent film opened in Japan on 14 July 2023 with no trailer and no traditional marketing at all. Mahito loses his mother in a Tokyo air raid, moves to the country and is drawn into another world by a talking grey heron. It won Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes, and Kenshi Yonezu wrote and sang its theme song, Spinning Globe. Our piece on grief in The Boy and the Heron traces the novel the film borrows its Japanese title from.
12. Whisper of the Heart (1995)
Director: Yoshifumi Kondō. Running time: 111 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Whisper of the Heart was the only film Yoshifumi Kondō directed before he died in 1998, and it is the Ghibli film most loved by people who write. Shizuku, a teenager in Tokyo‘s Tama New Town, follows a cat to an antique shop and meets a boy who wants to make violins. The scene everyone remembers is the impromptu session in the antique shop, when she sings Take Me Home, Country Roads to the boy’s violin and the old shop owner’s friends join in. The shop’s cat figurine, the Baron, later got a film of his own: The Cat Returns.
13. Only Yesterday (1991)
Director: Isao Takahata. Running time: 119 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
In 1982, 27-year-old Tokyo office worker Taeko Okajima takes the night train to Yamagata to help her sister’s in-laws with the safflower harvest, and keeps remembering herself at ten. It is a film for adults about choosing a life, and it waited 25 years for an English-language release, when GKIDS dubbed it in 2016 with Daisy Ridley and Dev Patel.
14. The Wind Rises (2013)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 126 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
A fictionalised life of Jiro Horikoshi, who designed fighter planes for Mitsubishi, mixed with Tatsuo Hori’s novel The Wind Has Risen. Miyazaki meant it to be his final feature. It is his most grown-up film and his most uncomfortable, because the beautiful aircraft Jiro dreams of become warplanes. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
15. Ponyo (2008)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. Running time: 101 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
A goldfish-like girl escapes the sea, is rescued by five-year-old Sōsuke and decides to become human. Miyazaki has said the idea goes back to reading Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid as a nine-year-old. It is the best Ghibli film for very young children, and the sequence of Ponyo running along the tops of the storm waves is pure joy.
16. When Marnie Was There (2014)
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Running time: 103 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Joan G. Robinson set her 1967 novel on the Norfolk coast; Ghibli moved it to the marshes of Hokkaido. Anna, a lonely 12-year-old, is sent to stay with relatives in a seaside town between Kushiro and Nemuro and befriends Marnie, the blonde girl from the mansion on the marsh. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
17. Pom Poko (1994)
Director: Isao Takahata. Running time: 119 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Shape-shifting tanuki fight the developers building New Tama, a giant suburb in the Tama Hills on the edge of Tokyo, with every transformation they can manage. It is the strangest film on the list and the most openly angry, a comedy about losing a forest that slowly stops being funny.
18. The Red Turtle (2016)
Director: Michaël Dudok de Wit. Running time: 81 minutes. Watch: StudioCanal Presents on Prime Video, or rent and buy on Apple TV, Prime Video, Rakuten TV and Sky Store.
The only Ghibli film directed by a European, the Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit, made with French partners including Wild Bunch. A shipwrecked man tries again and again to leave a desert island, and a red turtle keeps stopping him. There is no dialogue at all. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in May 2016 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
19. Arrietty (2010)
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Running time: 94 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Ghibli’s version of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, the 1952 English novel about tiny people living under the floorboards. British viewers have their own version: the UK dub, released in July 2011, has Saoirse Ronan as Arrietty, Mark Strong, Olivia Colman and Tom Holland in his first film role. In North America it is called The Secret World of Arrietty and has a different cast.
20. From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)
Director: Gorō Miyazaki. Running time: 91 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Yokohama in 1963. Umi raises signal flags over the harbour every morning from her family’s boarding house, and joins a campaign to save the Latin Quarter, her school’s ramshackle clubhouse. A small, sweet film from Hayao Miyazaki’s son; Yokohama’s Yamate district, where it is set, is one of the Ghibli locations you can visit.
Studio Ghibli Films Ranked 21 to 25
21. My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)
Director: Isao Takahata. Running time: 104 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Takahata adapted Hisaichi Ishii’s comic strip Nono-chan about a very ordinary family, and kept the look of the comic strip, telling the story in short episodes that each have their own title. It looks like no other Ghibli film, and it is very funny about family life.
22. The Cat Returns (2002)
Director: Hiroyuki Morita. Running time: 75 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Haru, a shy schoolgirl, saves a cat from a lorry and finds it was Lune, Prince of the Cat Kingdom, whose grateful family decide she should marry him. The Baron, the cat figurine from Whisper of the Heart, comes to her rescue. Short, light and good for children.
23. Ocean Waves (1993)
Director: Tomomi Mochizuki. Running time: 72 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Made for Nippon TV and first broadcast on 5 May 1993, Ocean Waves was Ghibli’s chance to let its younger staff make a film. Set in the city of Kōchi, it follows two friends and the transfer student from Tokyo who comes between them. A gentle teenage drama with no magic in it.
24. Tales from Earthsea (2006)
Director: Gorō Miyazaki. Running time: 115 minutes. Watch: Netflix.
Gorō Miyazaki’s first film mixes the first four of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books with his father’s illustrated story Shuna’s Journey. Le Guin said the plot was entirely different from her books, and told the director: “It is not my book. It is your movie. It is a good movie.”
25. Earwig and the Witch (2020)
Director: Gorō Miyazaki. Running time: 82 minutes. Watch: Netflix, or rent and buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and Sky Store.
Studio Ghibli’s first fully 3D computer-animated film was made for NHK television and adapted from another Diana Wynne Jones book. A ten-year-old orphan, Earwig, is adopted by a witch who only wants an extra pair of hands, and sets about getting her own way. It is the one Ghibli film that feels unfinished, and it comes last for that reason.
Studio Ghibli Films in Order of Release
If you would rather watch the studio ghibli films in order, this is the sequence, with the original Japanese release year: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Castle in the Sky (1986), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Grave of the Fireflies (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Only Yesterday (1991), Porco Rosso (1992), Ocean Waves (1993), Pom Poko (1994), Whisper of the Heart (1995), Princess Mononoke (1997), My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999), Spirited Away (2001), The Cat Returns (2002), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Tales from Earthsea (2006), Ponyo (2008), Arrietty (2010), From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), The Wind Rises (2013), The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), When Marnie Was There (2014), The Red Turtle (2016), Earwig and the Witch (2020), The Boy and the Heron (2023).
Joe Hisaishi scored every Miyazaki film from Nausicaä onwards, and our guide to the best songs from Studio Ghibli films pairs ten of his pieces with the scenes they belong to.
Studio Ghibli on Netflix UK and in London This Winter
Netflix UK streams 23 of the 25 films, so a Ghibli marathon costs nothing beyond a subscription. Grave of the Fireflies is the gap: it was not available to stream anywhere in the UK when we checked on 30 October 2026.
Two Ghibli events run in central London over Christmas. The stage play of My Neighbour Totoro has its last performance at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on 3 January 2027. Maison Ghibli, the studio’s official European shop, opens a pop-up at 36 Eastcastle Street, near Oxford Circus, from 7 November 2026 to 10 January 2027; our guide to the Maison Ghibli pop-up shop has the opening hours and what is on the shelves.
Studio Ghibli Questions and Answers
Spirited Away is the most decorated: it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, shared the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2002 and was Japan’s highest-grossing film for 19 years. My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke are its closest rivals, and Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is the critics’ favourite outside Miyazaki’s films.
Studio Ghibli’s official list holds 25 feature-length films, from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) to The Boy and the Heron (2023). The same list also includes two shorts, On Your Mark (1995) and the Ghiblies Episode 2 (2002), which are not counted here.
Yes. On 30 October 2026, 23 of the 25 films were streaming on Netflix UK, including Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and The Boy and the Heron. Grave of the Fireflies was not streaming in the UK, and The Red Turtle was on StudioCanal Presents through Prime Video.
It was made in 1984 at the studio Topcraft, a year before Studio Ghibli was founded. Studio Ghibli says the film’s success led Tokuma Shoten to set the studio up in 1985, and Ghibli counts Nausicaä as the first film on its own list of works.
My Neighbor Totoro suits young children and anyone who wants something gentle at 86 minutes. For older children and adults, Spirited Away is the best introduction, because it shows the studio at full strength. Save Grave of the Fireflies until you know what you are in for.
The Boy and the Heron, released in Japan on 14 July 2023, is the newest film on Studio Ghibli’s list. It won the Academy Award, the BAFTA and the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, and it streams on Netflix UK.
