As of 18 September 2026, no forecaster has issued a dated prediction for Japan's 2027 cherry blossom season. The Japan Meteorological Corporation has, in most recent years, opened its forecasting with a first release in January, though its 2026 release broke that pattern and arrived in mid-December once a newly adopted AI-assisted model let it publish earlier than before. Weathernews states plainly on its own site that its 2026 coverage has concluded and that 2027 information is scheduled for February 2027. Until one of those releases lands, the honest planning frame is the historical record: where, on average, the flower opens and reaches full bloom, city by city, read beside how the most recent season, 2026, actually ran. This page carries that record now. From January it will be updated on each forecast's release day through mid-April, replacing the averages below with the dated 2027 figures as they arrive.
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 call the same two moments by the same two words. 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 that follows on this page, historical or eventually forecast, 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 after that to release 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 itself is not a fixed line. The Agency recalculates it roughly once a decade, from a fresh rolling thirty-year window, and each recalculation in living memory has moved the date earlier rather than later as the long warming trend compounds. The 1991 to 2020 figures above are the current official normal; they will be replaced by the Agency's own next thirty-year run once it is complete, and the 2027 forecasts due in the new year are read against exactly these numbers, not against next decade's revision.
the old capitals
Kyoto, Nara and the old capitals
The old capitals sit in one narrow band on the ladder above, close enough to be read as a single fortnight rather than a spread of cities.
- 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, opening in that order across roughly three weeks each spring. 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 runs from 30 March to 10 April 2027, Tokyo to Osaka, and its dates sit against exactly this ladder. Tokyo's average full bloom, 31 March, falls inside the tour's opening days; Kyoto and Osaka's averages, both 4 April, fall inside its second week. The route is placed to the averages, not to a guess at what any single year will do, and whatever the 2027 forecasts eventually say, they will confirm that placement or shift its emphasis by a matter of days. They will not move the route itself.
the north
The north in May
Above Tohoku the season stops being a matter of days and becomes one of weeks, and it is still running when the rest of the country has already 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.
Read together, the four points barely span a week on the calendar despite standing hundreds of kilometres apart: Hakodate and Sapporo, on either side of the Tsugaru Strait, reach their own full bloom only four or five days apart in a normal year, and Hirosaki and Matsumae sit inside that same narrow stretch. What changes further north is not the date so much as its duration, since the mixed plantings at Matsumae and Hirosaki stagger their own varieties across weeks rather than days, holding the display long after a single-variety Honshu avenue has already turned green.
The Cherry Blossom Tour of Hokkaido runs from 28 April to 10 May 2027, a window built for this later, longer ladder rather than for the single date a Honshu itinerary depends on.
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. Somewhere in the window those two dates bracket, from December 2026 into February 2027, 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.
This page is rebuilt on each of those release days between now and mid-April: first the two forecasters' opening 2027 figures, then their revisions, then the Agency's own declared dates as they land city by city up the map. Until the first of them arrives, the line above holds. The average is the plan, and a forecast only ever adjusts it by days.