WARNING: SPOILERS FOR EGGHEAD ISLAND ARC

One Piece's Great Pirate Era began when the former Pirate King tasked the world with seeking out his treasure, prompting countless pirates like Luffy to pursue it and a life of adventure, and author Eiichiro Oda has revealed exactly how to find the One Piece. The incredibly treacherous and unpredictable waters of the New World's oceans require world-class navigators and an incredibly capable crew to sail. But it takes much more than that to find the island of Laugh Tale, the location of the One Piece.

While the story of begins with the light-hearted adventures of Monkey D. Luffy setting sail to start his quest to become the Pirate King, One Piece adds several fascinating mysteries along with its top-tier worldbuilding. One of the series' biggest enigmas includes the events of the Void Century and the giant Poneglyphs that hold information directly linked to the location of the late Pirate King's ultimate treasure.

The end of the Alabasta arc and Crocodile's overarching plot led to the reveal of the Poneglyphs, ancient cubes clade in the writing of a dead language. The Warlord of the Sea hoped Alabasta's secret cube would reveal the location of the ancient weapon Pluton, and while his goal was met with disappointment, the plot development opened the door to a significant clue in finding the One Piece.

How To Find The Location Of The One Piece

The Journey To Laugh Tale Is A Complex One

The Alabasta Poneglyph was a rare archeological treasure to encounter, but the far more rare red Road Poneglyphs are an even greater challenge to find. Big Mom's henchman Tamago revealed in chapter #846 that there are thirty Poneglyphs, but only four Road Poneglyphs are said to exist in One Piece's world. While the forbidden information on the cubes likely contains answers to century-long questions, they also include the coordinates of four locations that can be used to triangulate the exact location of Laugh Tale.

No average sailor could ever hope to find all four red Poneglyphs because they are hidden in locations that would typically be impossible to reach, but that did not stop Gol D. Roger and the rest of his crew. Throughout Luffy's adventures through the Grand Line and the New World, hints about Pirate King Gol D. Roger's legendary adventure have helped prove that the Straw Hats are on the right path. The journey also effectively builds up the peril and fierce competition from others seeking the information needed to find the series' fabled treasure.

Where Each Red Road Poneglyph Can Be Found

All Four Road Poneglyphs Must Be Discovered By The Next Pirate King

Although Luffy's quest through the East Blue and the Grand Line explored treacherous paths and locations like Skypiea that defied imagination, the Straw Hats did not encounter their first Road Poneglyph until One Piece's twenty-eighth story arc on the moving island of Zou. The crew uncovered it after playing a huge part in helping Wano's samurai refugees and their anthropomorphic Mink tribe allies. However, it would not be the most difficult Poneglyph to find.

In the following arcs, The Straw Hat crew discovered two more of the Road Poneglyphs. The daring attempt to rescue Sanji from Pirate Emperor Big Mom's home and headquarters, Whole Cake Island, earned Luffy's team their second vital clue towards Laugh Tale's location. The notoriously powerful leader of the Big Mom Pirates had gotten her hands on one of the fabled red cubes and kept it safe in her vault, but it wasn't enough to stop One Piece's best musical skeleton, Brook, from stealing its vital information.

While infiltrating and escaping Big Mom's territory was an overwhelming and risky endeavor, it would prove only to be an appetizer for the amount of trouble the Straw Hats would encounter on Wano. It took alliances with several of Luffy's fellow Worst Generation Pirates, but the decades of Wano's oppression at the hands of Pirate Emperor Kaido were finally put to an end. The massive win also gave the heroes access to the Red Poneglyph hidden deep under Wano in a secret space which also houses the Ancient Weapon of Mass Destruction known as Pluton.

A flashback of Oden's time on Roger's crew revealed that one of the fabled red cubes resided on Fish-Men island, but it had been removed by the time the Straw Hats' arrived and saved the island from a brutal civil war. Big Mom claimed that territory after Whitebeard's death, so it's possible that the Road Poneglyph on Whole Cake Island was the same one previously on Fish-Men Island. If that's the case, the location of the fourth red cube is still unknown, but leading theories suggest it's hiding on Elbaf, an island One Piece fans have waited a long time to see.

The Only People Who Can Read The Poneglyphs

Without A Way To Decipher The Cubes, The Poneglyphs Would Be Useless

The World Government has accomplished horrific feats over hundreds of years to hide the actual events of the Void Century and any clues of the advanced civilization that once populated the world. The dead language scrawled across the Poneglyphs has been censored and erased from history. However, the scholars who once lived on Robin's home of Ohara island were able to decipher it before the World Government destroyed the island with its people. Robin's the only survivor who has the ability to read the Poneglyphs, but there are other methods of extracting the needed information from the ancient cubes.

Gol D. Roger had no accomplished archeologist with Robin's talents on his crew. However, One Piece's yet-to-be-explained "Voice of All Things" is a seemingly universal form of communication that allows specific individuals, animals, and even items like the Road Poneglyphs to communicate in some fashion. Luffy and Kozuki Momonosuke can hear the Voice of All Things, but Roger's ability to do so has been shown to far surpass what other characters have been capable of.

Momonosuke's father, Kozuki Oden, was also shown to be capable of hearing the Voice of All Things.

Despite her proclivity for mindless, violent rampages, Big Mom had clever plans in motion to claim the One Piece. One such plan involved her seventy-sixth child, Charlotte Pudding, who was part of a nearly extinct people called the Three-Eye Tribe. Once Pudding's powers grew enough, her third eye should awaken and allow her to read and communicate effectively with the Voice of All Things. While she has yet to unlock the ability, in a brilliant move, the Blackbeard Pirates kidnapped Pudding, a vital tactic that puts Blackbeard in the running as one of the closest to finding Roger's treasure.

Who Is Closest To Finding The One Piece After The Egghead Arc

A Few Pirates Are Closer Than Ever To Finding Laugh Tale

So far, the exciting and perilous adventures of Monkey D. Luffy gained access to three of the four Road Poneglyphs needed to find the One Piece. Luffy's Straw Hat crew is undoubtedly one of the closest groups to finding the exact location of Laugh Tale, but they did not reach that accomplishment alone. Information from the red cubes that Luffy's crew have attained was shared with fellow Worst Generation pirates Trafalgar Law and Eustass Kid, but that vital information did not stay with those pirates long.

During the Egghead Island arc, several surprising battles take place that include major characters fans did not expect to see in action. Blackbeard's shocking display of power overwhelmed Law's crew and claimed their Poneglyph information in a shocking scene that the One Piece anime made Luffy's greatest threat even scarier. Kid's crew handed theirs over to arguably Luffy's greatest inspiration, Red Hair Shanks, on Elbaf after he single-handedly made an example of their captain.

Luffy, Blackbeard, and Shanks have all made dramatic moves towards the very active race to claim the One Piece. However, the unpredictable World Government leader Imu and Pirate Emperor Buggy the Clown will likely play a significant role in the series' final saga, but only one will come out on top by the time One Piece comes to an end.

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  One Piece

  Created by Eiichiro Oda, One Piece is a multimedia franchise that began as a manga series and follows the adventures of the Straw Hat Pirates as led by Monkey D. Luffy. Luffy, an enthusiastic pirate with a thirst for adventure, is afflicted by a mysterious curse that gives him various powers he uses to protect himself and his friends. The manga eventually gave way to the anime series, with the two being some of history's longest-running anime and manga series. Along with over fifty video games made over the years, the series entered the live-action world with Netflix's 2023 adaptation.

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  One Piece (1999)

  One Piece chronicles the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, an easy-going young pirate with the power to stretch like rubber, gained from eating a Devil Fruit. Luffy and his diverse crew sail across the Grand Line in search of the ultimate treasure, the One Piece, to become the Pirate King.