When you ask most people to picture “The Karate Kid,” they’ll think of a teen on the beach with one leg up and arms spread out wide. That well-known crane kick. Ralph Macchio. 1984. Most of the time, they don’t realize that the story that starts at that moment is much longer and stranger than a single movie moment could hold.
As of 2025, there are six Karate Kid movies. Not two. Not three. Six. People are still shocked by that number.
Beginning in the late 1980s, the first trilogy moved quickly through the years. The Karate Kid came out in June 1984. It was directed by John G. Avildsen, who also made Rocky. The underdog, the wise teacher, and the bullies with a dojo and too much confidence worked every time. To a lot of people, Daniel LaRusso and Mr. Miyagi became a cultural shorthand for good mentoring. Part II came out in 1986 and took Daniel and Miyagi to Okinawa. Part III came out in 1989, and even fans at the time thought it felt like the series was running out of ideas. They did finish a chapter, though.
Then there was The Next Karate Kid, which came out in 1994 and is often forgotten. Only Pat Morita from the original cast came back as Miyagi. This time, she was a mentor to a young woman named Julie, who was played by Hilary Swank at the time. The tone of this story is different from the others in the trilogy, and it didn’t work out the way everyone had hoped. But it’s real and important.
The remake from 2010 is where things really get interesting and a little tricky. The movie was made by Will Smith for his son Jaden. It took place in Beijing and the martial art being practiced was kung fu, not karate. Even though it kept the original title, the movie was pretty much its own thing. It did okay at the box office, got good reviews, and a new generation learned about the main plot of the story. For years, it looked like it was in a separate lane, like a parallel version that didn’t go anywhere.
That changed when Karate Kid: Legends came out in 2025. The sixth movie, which was directed by Jonathan Entwistle, was the first time Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio appeared together on screen. It combined their two stories into one world. Li Fong, who is new, is Mr. Han’s great-nephew from the 2010 movie. He comes to New York, gets caught up in a tournament, and ends up being trained by both mentors. It’s the kind of franchise move that seems both natural and a little risky. If it succeeds or fails is a different matter, but the goal is hard to brush off.
Besides the movies, there’s also the animated series from 1989, which isn’t talked about much and is mostly just interesting. And then there’s Cobra Kai, the Netflix show that ran from 2018 to 2025 and may have done more to revive and grow the franchise than anything else since the first movie. There were seven seasons, a huge audience, and a real effort to make the moral world of the original movies more complicated.
It’s possible that the series is still not over. The movie 2025 left a lot of loose ends. People in Hollywood think that tried-and-true intellectual property, especially ones that make people feel nostalgic, doesn’t get thrown out as long as people keep coming back.
The honest answer to the question of how many Karate Kid movies there are is six. More seems like more of a question of when than of if.
