Cherry Blossom Festivals in Japan, 2027

Ueno is the most famous of Tokyo's hanami grounds, and the loudest. Its festival lights the cherry avenue that runs the length of the park with lanterns after sunset, illuminates the trees along the shore of Shinobazu Pond, and fills Takenodai Plaza with more than fifty stalls. Some eight hundred trees stand inside the park itself and about twelve hundred across the wider Ueno grounds. By late afternoon on a fine weekend, office parties and students have covered every metre of lawn beneath them in blue tarpaulin.

Chidorigafuchi is Ueno's opposite. The Chiyoda festival here is a quiet walk: a 700-metre path of about 230 Somei Yoshino along the old moat of Edo Castle, the branches leaning out so far over the water that the rowing boats below pass through a ceiling of blossom. From 26 March to 6 April in 2026 the trees were lit after dark and the boats ran into the evening, and on weekends the path became one-way from Kudanshita to keep the crowd moving.

Along the Meguro river in Nakameguro, about eight hundred trees line 3.8 kilometres of a narrow canal, their branches meeting above the water. The festival proper is a single weekend of stalls, 28 and 29 March in 2026, but the river is the event for the whole fortnight, and in 2026 the ward's mayor asked visitors to keep walking on a one-way route and to keep their voices down for the neighbours. On the Sumida, the trees at Asakusa go back to 1717, when the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune ordered a hundred cherries planted along the bank so that ordinary Edo would have somewhere to go in spring.

Tokyo in cherry blossom season → (opens in a new tab)

Above Fujiyoshida, the Chureito Pagoda stands on the slope of Arakurayama Sengen Park with Fuji behind it, its cherry trees opening in early to mid-April. The city held no festival of its own in the park in 2026, and the park stayed open through the season; no decision for 2027 had been published by October 2026.

Across the hills, the Fuji-Kawaguchiko Sakura Matsuri ran from 28 March to 15 April 2026 on the north shore of Lake Kawaguchi, its cherry trees framing the mountain across the water, with a craft market by day and the trees lit until nine in the evening. Fuji's festivals run later than Tokyo's, from late March well into April, because the cherries around the Five Lakes stand several hundred metres higher.

Mount Fuji and the cherry blossom → (opens in a new tab)

Kyoto celebrates the season on the stage. Each spring three of its geisha districts present their own public dances, and they are the cherry blossom festivals the city takes most seriously.

The Kitano Odori of Kamishichiken, the oldest of Kyoto's geisha districts, opens the season, from 20 March to 2 April in 2026; it was first staged in 1952. The Miyako Odori of Gion Kobu follows through the whole of April. It began in 1872, as part of the first Kyoto Exposition, held to bring the city back to life after the capital moved to Tokyo, and in 2026 it reached its 152nd performance. Its geiko and maiko, in matching spring kimono, open each show in a line down both aisles of the Kaburenjo theatre to the call of "Miyako Odori wa, yo-iyasa". A first-class seat with a tea ticket begins before the curtain, with a bowl of matcha and a spring sweet at a tea ceremony performed by a geiko. The Kyo Odori of Miyagawacho runs from early to mid-April, its 75th in 2026.

On 10 April, Hirano Shrine in the north of the city holds its Ouka-sai, a festival of the cherry blossom with a procession in court dress through the shrine grounds, where cherries of dozens of varieties open over the course of the month.

Tokyo celebrates the blossom with lanterns and tarpaulins. Kyoto puts it on a stage, and dances it.

An evening with geiko in Kyoto → (opens in a new tab)

Osaka keeps the latest of the route's festivals. For one week each April the Japan Mint opens the riverside avenue inside its grounds, the Sakura no Toorinuke, a 560-metre walk past 331 trees in 140 varieties, almost all of them double-flowered cherries that open after the Somei Yoshino have fallen. It has opened to the public since 1883. In 2026 it ran from 9 to 15 April, and entry was by timed booking made online from 18 March.

Below the castle, Nishinomaru Garden, where the city's official cherry tree stands, opened into the evening from 20 March to 12 April 2026, its three hundred trees lit beneath the keep until nine. On the city's northern edge, the Expo '70 Commemorative Park holds about 5,500 cherry trees and its own festival, from 20 March to 5 April in 2026.

Osaka in cherry blossom season → (opens in a new tab)

Each city publishes its festival dates in the weeks before the season, once the first cherry blossom forecasts are in, and several, Ueno among them, state plainly that their dates follow the bloom. The long-run averages give the frame: full bloom around 31 March in Tokyo and around 4 April in Kyoto and Osaka on the Japan Meteorological Agency's 1991 to 2020 normals. The Kyoto dances keep fixed calendars set months ahead; the Mint announced its 2026 week in March.

Cherry blossom forecast 2027, city by city → (opens in a new tab)

Hanami: how Japan watches the blossom → (opens in a new tab)

The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan, from 30 March to 10 April 2027, travels through the height of this season: the Chidorigafuchi moat and the Meguro river in Tokyo, the Chureito Pagoda with Fuji behind it, three nights in Gion, and Osaka Castle among its cherry trees. Its own hanami are quieter than any festival: a rug beneath the trees of Yoyogi Park and another in the park of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, each with a bento from a Michelin-starred kitchen and cold sake. On its eighth evening the geiko and maiko of Gion dance, pour and lead the old games of the ozashiki in a private teahouse room.

It is limited to 8 guests and guaranteed to run from two, led every day by Luxury Japan Travel's own Tour Directors.

A twelve-day cherry blossom itinerary for Japan → (opens in a new tab)