Cherry Blossom Forecast 2027

Two organisations issue Japan's cherry blossom forecasts, and both are named here by source. The Japan Meteorological Corporation, a private forecaster trading as Nihon Kishou at n-kishou.com, models roughly a thousand locations from temperature records, refining its figures across a season that in 2026 ran to fourteen separate releases, its last on 23 April. Weathernews, the country's largest private weather company, runs its own coverage at weathernews.jp/sakura, tracking spot-level forecasts for close to 1,200 mapped viewing points as ground reports accumulate through the spring.

Both forecasters, and the national weather agency behind them, use the same two words for the two moments that matter. Kaika, first bloom, is declared once five or six flowers have opened on a city's designated standard tree, almost always a Somei Yoshino. Mankai, full bloom, follows once roughly eighty per cent of that same tree's buds are open. Every figure below is read against those two declarations. The date itself turns on two things in sequence: a properly cold winter to break each bud's dormancy, then enough accumulated warmth to open it.

With no 2027 figures yet published, the frame available now is the Japan Meteorological Agency's own thirty-year normal, the average recorded at each city's standard tree between 1991 and 2020, set beside the actual dates from 2026, the most recent completed season.

Sapporo 6 MayHakodate 2 MayAomori 26 AprSendai 13 AprKanazawa 8 AprTokyo 31 MarNagoya 2 AprKyoto 4 AprOsaka 4 AprHiroshima 3 AprFukuoka 31 Mar

• By 31 March
• 1 to 10 April
• 11 to 30 April
• May

The normal moves. The Agency recalculates it once a decade from a fresh thirty-year window, and each recent revision has brought the dates earlier: Tokyo's normal flowering date has moved from 29 March in the 1961 to 1990 figures to 24 March in the current ones. The 1991 to 2020 figures above are the official normal today, and the 2027 forecasts will be measured against them.

Kyoto's cherry blossom in 2027 should open around 26 March and reach full bloom around 4 April, on the normals; the dated forecast is added here when it is released. Kyoto, Osaka and Nara sit so close together on the ladder that their averages fall within two days of one another.

• Kyoto: full bloom around 4 April on the normal, and on 30 March in 2026, five days early. Kyoto in cherry blossom season (opens in a new tab) follows the city through the week.
• Osaka: full bloom on 3 April in 2026, one day ahead of the long-run average, read at the standard tree in Nishinomaru Garden below the castle keep. Osaka in cherry blossom season (opens in a new tab) has its castle, its river and the Mint's late double cherries.
• Nara: read at the standard tree inside Nara Women's University's affiliated secondary school; 2026 full bloom fell on 31 March, four days earlier than normal.
• Yoshino: no JMA normal exists, since the mountain is not an official observation point. The town's own tourism office instead reads the bloom by four named zones climbing the slope, Shimo-senbon at the base, then Naka-senbon, Kami-senbon and Oku-senbon at the top, each opening in turn up the mountain. Its 2026 forecast placed Shimo-senbon's flowering around 28 March and full bloom around 3 April, with Oku-senbon opening from about 6 April and reaching full bloom near 12 April.

Our Japan cherry blossom tours for 2027 begin with The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan, from Tokyo to Osaka between 30 March and 10 April 2027, with three nights in Kyoto at its centre.

The Hokkaido cherry blossom tour, 28 April to 10 May 2027 →

In the far north the season is counted in weeks, and it is still running when the rest of the country has turned green.

• Aomori is the JMA station nearest Hirosaki. Hirosaki Castle Park's own trees run close behind that reading, flowering from around the middle of April and reaching full bloom about five days later; the park's Sakura Matsuri is fixed most years for 10 April to 5 May, though the city moved its 2026 opening seven days earlier to meet an unusually early bloom.
• Matsumae: no JMA normal exists for the town. Its 78th Sakura Matsuri ran from 18 April to 10 May in 2026, and the roughly 250 varieties planted across Matsumae Park are read locally as carrying the bloom for close to a month, from mid-April into early May, as one variety succeeds another.

Hakodate and Sapporo, some hundred and fifty kilometres apart, reach full bloom only four days apart in an average year, and Hirosaki and Matsumae, on either side of the Tsugaru Strait, sit inside the same narrow stretch. The north's real difference is duration. The mixed plantings at Matsumae and Hirosaki stagger their varieties so that one follows another for weeks, and the display runs on long after a single-variety avenue in Honshu has gone to leaf.

Read down the table and the 2026 season has a clear shape. The further north the city, the earlier its spring ran against the long-run normal. Tokyo reached full bloom three days early, Kyoto five, Kanazawa five, Sendai nine, and Aomori ten; Hakodate and Sapporo were each twelve days ahead. Osaka came in a single day early, on 3 April, at the standard tree in Nishinomaru Garden beneath the castle keep.

Fukuoka went the other way, reaching full bloom on 3 April, three days late. The reason sits in the botany. A cherry bud needs a properly cold winter before warmth can open it, and in the mild far south a soft winter leaves the buds slow to wake. The same warm spell that hurried the north held the south back.

None of this sets the 2027 dates, which turn on a winter that has not yet come. It shows why the forecasters model each city on its own, and why the season can arrive almost together across half the country in one year and stretch out in the next.

The Japan Meteorological Corporation has usually opened a season in January. Its 2026 release broke that pattern: a newly adopted AI-assisted long-range model let it publish its first forecast on 18 December 2025, a full month early. Weathernews' own site states that the 2026 season's updates have concluded and that 2027 coverage is scheduled for February 2027. Between December 2026 and February 2027, then, the first dated 2027 figures will appear for the cities and parks listed above.

Neither forecaster stops at one release. The Corporation issued fourteen separate updates across the 2026 season; Weathernews follows a comparable rhythm, tightening its per-spot figures as ground reports arrive through March. Behind both commercial forecasts sits an older, plainer institution: the Japan Meteorological Agency's own network of standard trees, which do not forecast at all but simply report, declaring kaika and mankai the moment each city's own tree crosses the threshold, as they did for Tokyo on 19 and 28 March in 2026 and will do again in March 2027.

The figures arrive in a set order: the two forecasters' opening 2027 forecasts, then their revisions, then the Agency's declared dates, city by city up the map. This page carries each of them as it is published, with the date of each release beside its figures.

The forecast settles the week. The rest of the season is planned around it: the route, the festivals, the rooms and whether the crowds are worth it.

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

Cherry blossom festivals in Japan, 2027 → (opens in a new tab)

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

When to book a cherry blossom trip to Japan for 2027 → (opens in a new tab)

Is cherry blossom season in Japan worth it? → (opens in a new tab)

How to choose a cherry blossom tour of Japan → (opens in a new tab)

Read how the bloom actually moves, region by region → (opens in a new tab)

Japan cherry blossom tours 2027, side by side →

The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan, from 30 March to 10 April 2027, follows the spring from Tokyo to Osaka. It sits down twice for hanami, under the cherry trees of Yoyogi Park in Tokyo and in the park of the Kyoto Imperial Palace, with bentos from Michelin-starred kitchens laid on rugs at the water's edge; it gives two nights to Mount Fuji, in a room with its own open-air bath with Fuji in view, and one evening to the geiko and maiko of a private teahouse room in Gion.

The Cherry Blossom Tour of Hokkaido, from 28 April to 10 May 2027, meets the last of the Japanese spring and follows it north in the direction it moves: from Matsumae, where ten thousand cherry trees of some two hundred and fifty kinds stand around Matsumae Castle and a hanami picnic is laid beneath its walls, to Sapporo, where the island's gardens flower last. Each of these luxury tours of Japan is limited to 8 guests, and its Tour Directors take care of every arrangement.