  The bright blazar OJ~287 routinely parades high brightness bremsstrahlung
flares which are explained as being a result of a secondary supermassive black
hole (SMBH) impacting the accretion disk of a primary SMBH in a binary system.
We begin by showing that these flares occur at times predicted by a simple
analytical formula, based on the Kepler equation, which explains flares since
1888. The next impact flare, namely the flare number 26, is rather peculiar as
it breaks the typical pattern of two impact flares per 12 year cycle. This will
be the third bremsstrahlung flare of the current cycle that follows the already
observed 2015 and 2019 impact flares from OJ~287. Unfortunately, astrophysical
considerations make it difficult to predict the exact arrival epoch of the
flare number 26. In the second part of the paper, we describe our recent OJ~287
observations. They show that the pre-flare light curve of flare number 22,
observed in 2005, exhibits similar activity as the pre-flare light curve in
2022, preceding the expected flare number 26 in our model. We argue that the
pre-flare activity most likely arises in the primary jet whose activity is
modulated by the transit of the secondary SMBH through the accretion disk of
the primary. Observing the next impact flare of OJ~287 in October 2022 will
substantiate the theory of disk impacts in binary black hole systems.
