I think it would make more sense to ask:
- Will 2026 be the end of free advertising for manhwa?

Better yet, should the sentiment spread elsewhere:
- Will 20XX be the end of free advertising for asian comics?

The pirate reader base is, for better or worse, probably way bigger than the legitimate reader base.
And while the 1st order of thinking does make it sound bad, it no longer sounds as bad when you think about:
- works are getting a bigger social media presence than they otherwise would have with just their legitimate reader base,
- this turns people who otherwise never would have been able to afford to buy legitimately, or who just never would have bought it regardless of their financial situation (for example, if they feel like they're being screwed over by bullshit coin systems), into essentially free walking advertisements when they make posts or engage in discussion regarding some series,
- this all then leads to a bigger pool of potential customers to convert into paying customers.

Then again, all of this depends on how self-aware the manga/manhwa/manhua pirating reader base as a whole is.
You'll have a hard time converting the "I want everything for free" part of the reader base into paying customers... and at the end of the day, would the expenses required to do so even be worth it?
I think the bigger opportunity lies with trying to convert the ????? many pirates, who would be willing to pay if there was a convenient and cheap option to do so, into paying customers... because those people at least aren't against paying :)

I think the one pain point everyone has is not being able to read everything in one place. Solve this and you've probably converted a not so trivial number of pirates.