Autumn Leaves Forecast 2026

Two bodies issue Japan's authoritative kōyō forecasts, and both are named throughout by the date of the release drawn on. 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. This page follows that same rhythm, drawing on the newest release available each Monday rather than holding to the September figures once better ones exist.

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 a trip should be built around. Leaf fall, rakuyō, is when the display is over. This page reports best viewing throughout, since that is the date a guest actually needs.

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 add the same reassurance: once the colour does arrive, the sunlit days and cool nights that intensify pigment are still expected to follow, so the display itself should be as vivid as usual, only later.

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. The lowland season it announces is the one the Autumn Leaves Tour of Northern Japan follows from 2 to 13 November, down from the mountains beyond Sapporo to the Oirase gorge and the valleys of Yamagata, placed against the windows below.

• 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 season climbs through the mountains before it reaches the capital itself.

• 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. Kawaguchiko's own momiji corridor festival 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 that colour first should be the last place in the country to turn is a question of geography answered at length in The Foliage Front. What matters here is the date itself, and this year the two forecasters do not quite agree on it: Weathernews reads Arashiyama's own maples at around 24 November, while the Japan Meteorological Corporation's citywide figure, weighted across more temples and ginkgo avenues, lands closer to early December. Read the pair as a bracket rather than a contradiction, and expect the true peak to fall somewhere across that fortnight depending on the exact garden. Within that fortnight the old order holds: the sheltered valley at Tofuku-ji and the canal-side garden at Eikan-do turn within a few days of one another, both a little behind the open hillside at Arashiyama.

• 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 season's last act plays out along the Inland Sea and into Kyushu, arriving there only once the north has already stood leafless for weeks.

• 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).
• Yamaguchi: no 2026 figure has been issued by either forecaster as of 18 September.

These are the long-run windows the forecasters measure this year's numbers against, not a prediction for 2026 itself. Both agencies publish them alongside every dated forecast, precisely so a reader can see at a glance how far this year's figure sits from the norm. They are the frame a season further out should be planned to, before the first forecast of the year exists at all, and the one to fall back on for any place listed above that has not yet had its own 2026 figure issued.

• 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.

The route built against these averages, from Kanazawa to KyotoAutumn Leaves Tour of JapanTwelve days · 23 November to 4 December 2026 · USD $19,500 pp→

A guest reading these dates against a fixed itinerary is doing exactly what the operator did months or years earlier, when the route itself was placed against the historical averages above. The forecast's task each September and October is not to redraw that route but to confirm it, or to shift its emphasis by a few days, an extra morning in the north while Kyoto still gathers its colour, a later week in the old capital if the season is running behind, as this year's numbers suggest it is. A week's delay at Arashiyama changes nothing about which garden a guest stands in; it changes only which week they are told to expect it. The dates move a little most years, later in a hot one such as this, earlier after a cold snap in October. The places, and the order in which the country turns, do not.