In an average year, Tokyo's cherry trees reach full bloom around 31 March, Kyoto's around 4 April and Sapporo's not until about 6 May. No forecaster has yet issued a dated prediction for the 2027 season: the Japan Meteorological Corporation published its first 2026 forecast in mid-December 2025, and Weathernews states on its own site that its 2027 information is due in February 2027. Until those figures arrive, the surest guide is the historical record set out below, city by city, beside the dates the 2026 season actually ran. The dated 2027 forecasts replace these averages as each one is released, through mid-April.
the method
How the forecast is read
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.
the spine
The historical ladder, south to north
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.
- Fukuoka: flowering around 22 March, full bloom around 31 March (JMA 1991 to 2020 normals); 2026: flowering 24 March, full bloom 3 April.
- Hiroshima: flowering around 25 March, full bloom around 3 April; 2026: flowering 19 March, full bloom 30 March.
- Nagoya: flowering around 24 March, full bloom around 2 April; 2026: flowering 17 March, full bloom 30 March.
- Tokyo: flowering around 24 March, full bloom around 31 March; 2026: flowering 19 March, full bloom 28 March.
- Kanazawa: flowering around 3 April, full bloom around 8 April; 2026: flowering 29 March, full bloom 3 April.
- Sendai: flowering around 8 April, full bloom around 13 April; 2026: flowering 31 March, full bloom 4 April.
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.
the old capitals
Kyoto, Nara and the old capitals
Kyoto, Osaka and Nara sit so close together on the ladder that their averages fall within two days of one another.
- Kyoto: flowering around 26 March, full bloom around 4 April (JMA 1991 to 2020 normals); 2026: flowering 23 March, full bloom 30 March.
- Osaka: flowering around 27 March, full bloom around 4 April; 2026: flowering 26 March, full bloom 4 April, exactly on the long-run average.
- Nara: flowering around 28 March; full bloom around 4 April, 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.
The Classic Cherry Blossom Tour of Japan travels from Tokyo to Osaka between 30 March and 10 April 2027, with three nights in Kyoto at its centre.
the north
The north in May
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, the JMA station nearest Hirosaki: flowering around 22 April, full bloom around 26 April (JMA 1991 to 2020 normals); 2026: flowering 13 April, full bloom 16 April. 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.
- Hakodate: flowering around 28 April, full bloom around 2 May; 2026: flowering 18 April, full bloom 20 April.
- 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.
- Sapporo: flowering around 1 May, full bloom around 6 May; 2026: flowering 18 April, full bloom 24 April.
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.
what comes next
What the 2027 forecasts will say, and when
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 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.
in short
Questions a guest asks first
When is the 2027 cherry blossom forecast released?
Between December 2026 and February 2027: the Japan Meteorological Corporation has opened as early as mid-December in a recent year, and Weathernews has stated its own 2027 coverage begins in February.
When do cherry blossoms bloom in Japan?
By the thirty-year average: Tokyo and Kyoto both reach full bloom in the first days of April, Fukuoka in the south a little earlier, and Hokkaido's Sapporo not until early May. The full ladder, city by city, is set out above.
Read how the bloom actually moves, region by region →
the tours
Cherry blossom tours of Japan in 2027
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 suite with its own open-air onsen and the mountain across the lake, 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 tour is limited to 8 guests, and its Tour Directors travel every mile of it beside them.