Autumn Leaves Forecast 2026: Japan's Fall Foliage by Region

Two forecasters issue Japan's kōyō forecasts. Weathernews, a private forecaster that also runs the country's day-to-day weather reporting, tracks close to 1,200 mapped viewing spots and issued its first 2026 forecast on 3 September, refining it through autumn as leaf-turn reports arrive from the ground. The Japan Meteorological Corporation, a separate commercial forecaster, calculates modelled dates for roughly 700 locations from tree phenology and temperature records, and issued its own first release a day earlier, on 2 September. Both revise several times a season: a second forecast from each is due in early October, with further tightening through November as station readings and ground photographs accumulate.

Both track the same three points. First colour, irozuki, is the earliest visible change on a tree. Best viewing, migoro, is the run of days at fullest colour. Leaf fall, rakuyō, is when the display is over. Every date below is for best viewing.

Both forecasters opened with the same headline this year, and the weather record backs them up. Japan's summer of 2026 finished 1.02 degrees Celsius above the 1991 to 2020 average nationwide, the fifth-warmest June to August since records began in 1898. The Japan Meteorological Corporation's own press release, issued alongside its 2 September forecast, attributed the late timing directly to that lingering summer heat, zansho. Weathernews, releasing its first forecast on 3 September, used almost identical language: warmer than normal conditions across most of the country pushing the turn back three days to a week and a half depending on the region. Both expect the colour itself to be as vivid as usual once it arrives, because the sunlit days and cool nights that deepen the reds are still forecast to follow.

Colour moves down the country from Hokkaido in the north to Kyushu in the south, falling from the mountains to the plains as it goes, and the forecasts below follow it place by place.

Colour has already reached the earliest point in the country. Above the treeline at Asahidake, the highest peak in Daisetsuzan National Park, the alpine plants and dwarf pine began turning from around 14 September, weeks ahead of anywhere else in Japan.

• Daisetsuzan, Asahidake (Hokkaido): first colour from around 14 September in the alpine zone (Weathernews, 3 September).
• Sapporo: expected best viewing around 7 November for maple and around 6 November for ginkgo, roughly ten days later than the long-run average (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Zao, Yamagata (Tohoku): expected around 17 October (Weathernews, 3 September).
• Sendai: expected around 25 November (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Oirase Gorge, Aomori: expected best viewing from around 1 November onward (Weathernews spot forecast, current to 3 September).
• Naruko Gorge, Miyagi, and Hirosaki Park, Aomori: neither forecaster had issued a 2026 figure for either spot as of 18 September. Both are normally covered in the forecasters' second releases, due in early October.

South of Tōhoku, the colour reaches the high valleys of Nikko and the Japanese Alps weeks before it comes down to the capital.

• Nikko, Iroha-zaka (Tochigi): expected around 31 October (Weathernews, 3 September).
• Kamikochi (Nagano): expected around 21 October (Weathernews, 3 September), consistent with the Japan Meteorological Corporation's own window of 18 to 31 October issued the day before.
• Mount Takao (Tokyo): expected around 22 November (Weathernews, 3 September).
• Tokyo, citywide: expected around 29 November for maple and around 26 November for ginkgo, each a day or two later than average (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Hakone and the Fuji Five Lakes: neither forecaster had issued a spot figure for either place as of 18 September. The momiji corridor festival at Mount Fuji is fixed for 7 to 29 November 2026 by the local tourism federation, a date set independently of the colour forecast itself.

Kyoto closes the season later than almost anywhere else in Honshu, and this year later still. Why a basin ringed by hills should be among the last places in the country to turn is a question of geography answered at length in The Foliage Front. This year the two forecasters differ on the date by more than a fortnight: Weathernews reads Arashiyama's own maples at around 24 November, while the Japan Meteorological Corporation's citywide figure, which takes in the temple gardens across the city, lands around 11 December. The two figures bracket the season, and each garden falls somewhere within it.

• Kyoto, citywide reading covering Arashiyama, Tofuku-ji and Eikan-do: expected best viewing around 11 December for maple, six days later than the long-run average, and around 27 November for ginkgo (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Kyoto, Arashiyama, standalone spot forecast: expected around 24 November (Weathernews, 3 September).
• Nara: no separate 2026 figure has been issued by either forecaster. Its temples typically track within a few days of Kyoto's own average, given below.
• Kanazawa, Kenroku-en: expected around 30 November (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Osaka: expected around 4 December (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Nagoya: expected around 2 December (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).

The colour reaches the Inland Sea and Kyushu last, weeks after the trees of the north have lost their leaves.

• Miyajima, Hiroshima: expected around 19 November (Weathernews, 3 September).
• Hiroshima, citywide: expected around 28 November (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).
• Fukuoka and northern Kyushu: expected around 7 December (Japan Meteorological Corporation, 2 September).

These are the long-run averages the forecasters measure each year against, published beside every dated forecast. For a place above with no 2026 figure yet, and for any autumn further ahead, they are the surest guide.

• Daisetsuzan: typically mid-September.
• Sapporo: typically around 28 October for maple and 4 November for ginkgo.
• Naruko Gorge and Hirosaki Park: typically late October to mid-November.
• Oirase Gorge: typically late October to early November.
• Nikko and Kamikochi: typically mid to late October.
• Tokyo: typically around 28 November for maple and 23 November for ginkgo.
• Hakone and the Fuji Five Lakes: typically early to mid-November.
• Kyoto, Arashiyama, Tofuku-ji and Eikan-do: typically around 5 December for maple and 24 November for ginkgo.
• Nara and Kanazawa: typically mid-November to early December.
• Osaka and Nagoya: typically early December.
• Miyajima: typically mid to late November.
• Fukuoka and northern Kyushu: typically early to mid-December.

When do the autumn leaves peak in Japan in 2026?

Later than the long-run average this year: around 29 November for Tokyo's maples and around 11 December for Kyoto's, by the two forecasters' first releases of 2 and 3 September 2026. Hokkaido's Daisetsuzan had already turned by mid-September. Both forecasters revise their dates through November.

Which forecaster is more accurate, JMC or Weathernews?

Neither has a consistent edge. Where they differ, as they do for Kyoto this year, the best of the colour usually falls within the range the two give.

Read why Kyoto turns last: The Foliage Front →

More of the Japan Edition on Japan's seasons →

Japan fall foliage tours, 2027 →

The north turns first, and it is the north that The Autumn Leaves Tour of Northern Japan follows, from 2 to 13 November 2027, down the spine of the country from the mountains above Sapporo to the valleys of Yamagata. Its days are spent where the forecasts above begin: walking the fourteen kilometres of the Oirase Stream, waterfall by waterfall, under beech and maple, with the car waiting along the way; two nights at Nyuto Onsen, where a milky sulphur spring has received travellers for more than three centuries in a beech forest; a private wooden boat down the Mogami River, through the canyon Basho descended in 1689; and two nights in the gas-lit wooden street of Ginzan Onsen.

It is limited to 8 guests, with first-class seats on the shinkansen between the regions and its Tour Directors beside them every mile, through the Japan most visitors to the autumn never reach.