I have been thinking about this for at least a year. I don't think there will be a true Elbaf arc.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the strawhats won't go to Elbaf -- they might. I'm saying there won't be an arc about Elbaf.

So lets first describe what I believe an Arc is:

It is a mostly self-contained sub-story where the protagonists encounter and defeat a new antagonist, with its own story line that builds up to a climax and then ends. There are short arcs -- though almost all of those are from the east blue, and several medium sized ones (like Drum Island) and several big or huge ones.

The most I can see in an Elbaf portion of the story is something like Zou: not a true arc, but a connector between major events and locations. Some brief tension and build up, but no real antagonist, lots of lore dump info, and some key info that launches the next true arc(s).

Justification:

1. There is not enough time for another true arc that is not critical for wrapping up the story. Even if there are 5 years left, that would mean about 200 chapters remaining. There is simply not enough time to deal with Laugh Tale / One Piece Marines/ WG Blackbeard / Mihawk /Shanks / Vivi / Sabo / Revos / ex-warlords and _also_ have some new major antagonist arc in Elbaf before its all over.
2. Elbaf is not a critical location. It is not God Valley, Lodestar, or Laugh Tale. At best, it could be where the last poneglyph is. But if so then I would expect it to be much more like Zou than Dressrosa or FI. If the last poneglyph was elsewhere, and the crew never makes it to Elbaf, it would not create any plot holes or inconsistencies. The plot so far doesn't need Elbaf, though many of us want Elbaf to happen.

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Of course, I could be wrong. If Oda manages to fit in what I believe to be a true 'arc' in 25 chapters or so, then its possible. Oda hasn't managed to write that compactly in two decades, however.

Another way I could be wrong is if Elbaf just happens to be the location where other things we know must happen, happens. For example, perhaps the crew goes there for the last Road poneglyph and BB shows up -- so it is where BB's crew faces off with the SH crew. That is possible, but I suspect the confrontation with BB will come later in the story, much closer to the end. We don't yet know what BB's plans are, but the confrontation with BB would seem to need to happen very close to the end of the story, if not the final arc, given how that has been built up. Elbaf being the final location in the story doesn't seem right.

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Perhaps Elbaf ends up being the location that the crew meets Shanks Mihawk, and resolves those plot lines. But in that case, Is it really an Elbaf arc? Or a Shanks/Mihawk one? That is, how much of the plot would really have to do with Elbaf, other than being a convenient location to dump some lore and finally meet Shanks again?

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TL;DR

There just isn't enough time left to have a big plot line centered around Elbaf that includes a new antagonist, Island/country to save, etc. If the crew goes to Elbaf, its going to be much more like Zou than any other post-TS story line. If they don't go to Elbaf, it would make many fans upset, but wouldn't leave any plot holes -- there isn't anything that _needs_ to happen there. Maybe its just where Usopp retires at the end of the story?