Naruto season 1

The first season of the Naruto anime television series is directed by Hayato Date, and produced by Pierrot and TV Tokyo. Based on Masashi Kishimoto's manga series, the season follows Naruto Uzumaki living in the Hidden Leaf Village, determined to become the next Hokage and gain the respect of the villagers. The first season ran from October 3, 2002, to May 28, 2003, on TV Tokyo and its affiliates.

The English dub ran from September 10, 2005, to May 27, 2006, on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block in the United States and YTV's Bionix programming block in Canada. The season's episodes ran on Adult Swim's relaunched Toonami block in a completely uncut format from December 1, 2012 to November 30, 2013. After the 52nd episode, it was removed from the schedule rotation to make room for its successor series, Naruto: Shippuden. The series returned to Adult Swim on May 31, 2024 as part of its Toonami Rewind block.

In Japan, the season released in both VHS and DVD format. A total of twelve volumes were released by Sony Pictures Entertainment between January 1 and December 3, 2003. Episodes from this season were later released on nine DVD compilations by Viz Media between March 28, 2006 and February 20, 2007, with two compilations of thirteen and twelve episodes released for the first season. The first of these compilations was nominated at the American Anime Awards for best package design. In 2009, Viz released another two DVD boxes containing episodes 1–25 and 26–52, respectively.

Four pieces of theme music are used for the episodes; two opening themes and two closing themes in the Japanese episodes and a single theme for the openings and endings in the English-dubbed version. The two Japanese opening themes are "Rocks" (R★O★C★K★S) by Hound Dog (used for episodes 1 to 25) and "Haruka Kanata" (遥か彼方) by Asian Kung-Fu Generation, used for episodes 26 to 35). The two closing themes are "Wind" by Akeboshi (used for episodes 1 to 25) and "Harmonia" by Rythem (used for episodes 26 to 35).  The opening and ending theme for the English airing is "Rise" by Jeremy Sweet and Ian Nickus, with an instrumental version played as the closing theme.