Which Naruto Movies Are Canon?

Canon here has a specific meaning in this franchise. The nine summer films from 2004 to 2012 were produced by Studio Pierrot as parallel stories: they borrow the cast and the current designs, avoid contradicting the manga's major events, and are never referenced by the manga or by later canon material. Characters introduced in them do not carry into the main story, and the Library documents them as anime-original works, enjoyable and collectible, but not load-bearing.

The Last broke the pattern by design. Released between the manga's final chapters and its epilogue's full context, supervised by Kishimoto and built from his story input, it supplies the canonical account of Naruto and Hinata's romance and the two-year gap after the war, material the manga itself gestures at but never tells. Its novelization and its place in official timelines treat it as chapter 699.5 in spirit, and later Boruto material assumes its events.

Boruto: Naruto the Movie is canon in a second way: not only consistent with the story, but retold inside it. The Boruto manga opens by adapting the film with expansions, and the anime adapts it again, so its events exist in three official versions. When versions differ, the Library treats the film as the first state and notes the retellings' changes rather than declaring a single winner.

The practical guidance for viewers and buyers: watch the nine for pleasure in release order, watch The Last after the war arc for story, and treat Boruto's film as required reading for the sequel in whichever of its three versions you choose. Listings that market the early films as lost manga chapters misdescribe them; their honest value is as annual event cinema of the magazine era.