Japan ginkgo season 2026: when does the yellow arrive?

Source: Pexels

The ginkgo turns before the maples do, and in five of the fourteen cities below the gap is a fortnight or more. The 2026 forecast from Japan Meteorological Corporation has Tokyo's yellow around 26 November, Kyoto's 27 and Fukuoka's 28, with Sapporo three weeks earlier. These are the avenues and the single old trees worth planning a day around, with the addresses, hours and the 2026 dates that are already fixed.

Season

Late Oct – mid Dec

2026 forecast

1 Oct 2026 (2nd)

First city to turn

Sapporo, 3 Nov

Biggest free day out

Meiji Jingu Gaien

1What the 2026 forecast says

Japan Meteorological Corporation published its second forecast of the autumn on 1 October 2026, covering about 700 leaf-viewing spots and about 3,000 mountains. The third runs in early November. Its yellow-leaf dates for the sample tree in each city, and the maples in the same table, are the numbers to plan around.

Fukuoka's ginkgo runs eight days later than normal and still nine days ahead of its maples, and Sendai is the only city where the yellow comes after the red. Everywhere else the ginkgo leads its maples, and in Kochi, Kanazawa, Wakayama, Nagoya and Kyoto it leads by a fortnight or more.

The corporation also gives the lowland windows: late October to late November in the north, early November to early December in the east, and mid-November to early December in the west. Its regional note for 2026 is that the yellow should be normal or later than normal in the north and east, and normal in the west. The forecasters, the night-opening calendars and what to pack are in our autumn colour guide.

Keep reading Japan autumn leaves 2026

2Why the yellow comes before the red

Japan Meteorological Corporation states the mechanism in its own forecast: the ginkgo starts to change colour at a slightly higher temperature than the maple, so its peak tends to arrive earlier. Both dates use the Japan Meteorological Agency's rule, the first day on which most of the sample tree's leaves have changed colour.

Source: Pexels

The tree is unusual enough that the season has two halves that people confuse. Ginkgo flowers in spring, as green catkins that almost nobody notices, and the fertilised seed ripens through the autumn into the nut sold as ginkgo nuts. The yellow isn't a flower or a fruit; it's the leaf going over, and it happens in the same weeks the nuts drop. In Sobue, in Aichi, the park at the centre of the yellow-leaf festival is named for the nut, because that's the town's crop.

A ginkgo carries its yellow evenly, then drops it fast. An avenue in full gold on a Monday can be bare by the following weekend, especially after wind or rain, so a fixed date in a fixed city matters less than being able to move a day either way.

3The yellow front, month by month

For about ten days at the end of November the country is yellow from Sendai to Kagoshima at the same time, which is why hotel rooms at that point are the hardest booking of the Japanese autumn. But the two ends of the country sit a month apart. Sapporo and Fukuoka carry the forecast's extremes, and each is worth a separate trip rather than a combined one.

4Hokkaido

Sapporo's sample tree is forecast for 3 November, the earliest of the fourteen cities, and the city's own light-up starts on 23 October, before the leaves are at their best. The row in Nakajima Park runs from the Minami 9-jo street entrance towards the iris pond, and it's the first of the five lit areas.

Source: Pexels

The light-up runs from 23 October to 3 November, 17:00 to 21:00, with the paid Japanese garden inside it lit 17:15 to 21:00, last entry 20:45. The garden costs 600 yen on the day, 500 in advance, and children of primary school age and under go free. The avenue itself is free and open all day, and the park has no car park of its own.

Across town, the Hokkaido University row on Kita 13-jo runs about 380 m with 70 trees and closes to traffic for its student festival, the 15th Kitakinpai, on 31 October and 1 November 2026. Cars aren't allowed on campus at all, the avenue is a walk-the-bike zone, and the Kita 13-jo gate isn't an entrance on festival days. The 2025 closure order covered 1 and 2 November; the university has not published the 2026 version yet.

The third Hokkaido stop is indoors. The Hokkaido Government Office, the red-brick building on Kita 3-jo, reopened on 25 July 2025 after its restoration and keeps the longest hours of anything on this page: 08:45 to 21:00, last entry 20:30, for 300 yen, 200 for high-school and university students, free for middle school and under. The octagonal tower is a guided tour at 1,200 yen, four times a day, booked ahead. It closes on 15 November 2026 for its inspection day, and from 29 December to 3 January.

Keep reading Luggage forwarding in Japan 2026

5Tohoku

Aomori's sample tree turns on 5 November, three days late, and the tree to see is the one at Kitakanegasawa in Fukaura, on the Sea of Japan coast. It's 31 m tall and about 22 m around the trunk, over 1,000 years old, and it became a national natural monument in 2004. Seeing it costs nothing and there's parking for 40 cars beside it. The town lights it from 16:30 to 20:30 in mid to late November, and has not fixed the exact dates for 2026.

Source: Pexels

Inland Fukushima's row is the biggest on this page after Osaka: 116 ginkgo trees over 520 m of the central park road in the Azuma Sports Park. The park is free, the outdoor areas run 09:00 to 17:00, and it shuts on Tuesdays, or the next weekday when Tuesday is a holiday, plus the year-end closure from 29 December to 3 January. It's about 30 minutes from Fukushima Station's east exit on the number 7 bus towards Sahara and Shikinosato, getting off at the gymnasium, and 10 minutes from the Tohoku expressway's Fukushima-nishi interchange. The row's own light-up was called off in 2025 over bears in the city and nothing has been posted for 2026.

South of that, in Kitakata, the Nagatoko hall of Shingu Kumano Shrine stands in front of a ginkgo roughly 800 years old, 30 m tall, with a root spread of 8.1 m and a girth of 7.73 m. The hall itself is 44 pillars in five rows with no walls, and it's an important cultural property. Entry is 300 yen, 250 for groups of 20 or more, 200 for high schoolers and free for middle school and under, and the gates are open 08:30 to 17:00. It's a 10-minute taxi ride from Kitakata Station, and there's no light-up posted for 2026 either.

6Tokyo

The Meiji Jingu Gaien avenue is the Tokyo number: 146 trees, four rows, 9 m apart, over 300 m from the Aoyama gate to the ring road, with another two rows turning west towards the rugby ground counted in the total. The seed came from native trees at Shinjuku Gyoen in 1908 and the trees went in during 1923, planted in order of height so that the perspective makes the picture gallery at the far end look larger than it is in stone. The tallest is 28.0 m, the shortest 17.1 m. It's a public road, free and open all day, and the trees are forecast to turn on about 26 November.

Source: Pexels

The festival that used to run here, 神宮外苑いちょう祭り, last took place in 2019 and no 2026 edition is listed, so there's no food street and no programme to check. What the avenue has is the walk, the light through the canopy in the middle of the day, and the gallery at the end of it.

Showa Memorial Park in Tachikawa does the yellow twice over. The Katarai ginkgo row is 98 trees over 300 m, colouring from mid to late November, and the row along the canal is 106 trees over 150 m of water, colouring from early to mid November, so the canal is the earlier of the two. The canal trees are cut to about 7 m because of the Air Self-Defense Force runway limit of 8 m next door, which is why they are box-shaped rather than conical. Both rows need only the park ticket: 450 yen, 210 for the over-65s, free for middle school and under, or 500 for a two-day pass.

The autumn night walk runs from 29 October to 29 November 2026, 16:30 to 20:30, with last entry at 20:30 and the park closing at 21:00. At night you can only get in and out at the Nishi-Tachikawa and Tachikawa gates: the ginkgo row is 730 m from Nishi-Tachikawa and 2,000 m from Tachikawa, and the canal is 300 m from Tachikawa. The Japanese garden inside the park needs its own light-up ticket, except on 29 and 30 October, and shops and restaurants stay open to 20:30.

The University of Tokyo's Hongo campus is the free option near the middle of town. Visitors are let in from 07:00 to 18:00, groups of under 15 people need no application, there's no parking and no vehicle entry, and photographs are for personal use rather than publication. The Akamon gate at the north-west corner has been shut since February 2021 for seismic work that the university expects to finish around September 2027, so the red gate in your guidebook is under cover. Exam days close the campus to visitors: 17 and 18 January, and 25 and 26 February.

Keep reading Tokyo in three days

7Chubu

Sobue, in Inazawa west of Nagoya, is a town built on the ginkgo: about 11,000 of the trees stand in the district, and the nuts are the crop. The 29th Sobue ginkgo festival runs from 21 to 29 November 2026, with the ginkgo-nut park and Yujin-ji as its two sites. The grounds are open 09:00 to 15:00 on weekdays and to 16:00 on weekends and holidays, and the trees are lit from 21 to 28 November, 17:00 to 20:00. Nagoya's sample tree is forecast for 17 November, so the festival sits ten days behind the forecast date, which is deliberate: the organisers are waiting for the row to be worth walking through.

Source: Pexels

Gifu's entry is a city park rather than a campus. Manabi no Mori in Kakamigahara was the farm of the old Gifu University, and the big ginkgo on the lawn is the park's symbol tree, with the other mature trees carried over from the university. The city lights the ginkgo row along the promenade in winter. It's one minute on foot from Meitetsu Kakamigahara-shiyakusho-mae station and 10 minutes from JR Naka, it costs nothing, and it never closes.

8Kansai

Osaka's Midosuji is the largest ginkgo avenue in the country and the easiest to walk, because it's the pavement you're already on. Midosuji is 4 km from the Hanshin-mae crossing in Umeda to the Namba-nishiguchi crossing, 44 m wide with four rows of street trees; 928 trees were planted when the road was built between 1933 and 1937. The city has not published a current total, so quoted figures for how many stand there now are guesses.

Source: Pexels

The 2026 edition of the Midosuji illumination runs for 59 nights, from 3 November to 31 December, lit from about 17:00 to 25:00, with the switch-on ceremony on 23 November from 17:00 to 19:00. Osaka's sample tree is forecast for 24 November, so the trees are worth walking under in the last week of November and the lights outlast them by a month.

Kyoto's best ginkgo is a single tree in a working temple. It stands just north of the front of the Goeido hall at Nishi Hongwanji, free to visit, and Kyoto City's own note on it says that if it was planted when the hall was built, it's more than 330 years old. What makes it unusual for a ginkgo is its shape: thick horizontal and diagonal limbs come out at 1.5 to 3 m above the ground, which is the look that earned it the name upside-down ginkgo. The temple opens at 05:30 and closes at 17:00, and runs a free 30-minute guided walk of the precinct four times a day, at 10:00, 11:30, 13:45 and 15:30, with no booking.

Keep reading Kansai winter illuminations 2026

9Kyushu

Fukuoka is one of the places where the yellow runs late: 28 November, eight days behind normal and nine days before the maples. The park to head for is Uminonakamichi, on the sandbar north-east of the city, where the ginkgo row is 350 trees and the park's own guidance puts its best period from late October to mid November, well before the city's sample tree. Entry is 450 yen, 210 for the over-65s, free for middle school and under; hours are 09:30 to 17:30 in October and 09:30 to 17:00 from November to February. From 10 November to 30 December 2026 it shuts on Tuesdays, and it also closes on 31 December and 1 January and on the Tuesdays from the third Monday of January. Parking is 600 yen, and the JR Kashii line stops straight at Uminonakamichi station.

Source: Pexels

The Taibaru ginkgo in Hirokawa, south of Fukuoka, is the strictest date on this page. It's private land, opened to the public only from 17 to 23 November 2026, 09:00 to 17:00, and barred outside that window. The town's notice is blunt about why: the dates protect the trees rather than match the colour, so nobody can promise you yellow on the day you book. There's no car park, temporary lots open from 08:45 to 17:30, parking anywhere else on nearby land or the roadside is refused, and you walk a few hundred metres from the lot to the trees.

Kagoshima's Tarumizu garden is the southern end of the season. About 1,200 ginkgo trees cover 4.5 hectares on private land that one couple began planting in 1978, and it has been free to visit since 2008. There's no public transport: a taxi from Tarumizu port covers 6.9 km for about 2,500 yen, and the city hall is 4.7 km away, ten minutes by car. The first car park holds 33 cars all year, and the two temporary lots run with a shuttle. The 2026 dates aren't published; the 2025 festival ran 22 November to 14 December, lit 18:00 to 21:00.

10The practicals

Six of the events on this page have published 2026 dates, and the rest have not. That second list matters as much as the first, because a festival that ran for years can quietly stop, and a page that assumes it's still on will send you to an empty park.

Not on in 2026, as of 18 October: the Meiji Jingu Gaien festival, which last ran in 2019; the Azuma Sports Park light-up, called off in 2025 over bears and not posted for this year; the light-up at Shingu Kumano Shrine, which has not been announced either; and the Tarumizu festival, whose operator still lists the 2025 season. The ginkgo row at Meiji Jingu Gaien is unaffected by any of it, because it was never a ticketed event.

Source: Pexels

• Fallen ginkgo leaves hold water, and a path covered in them is slippery for a day or two after rain. Tread matters more than waterproofing. The Showa Memorial Park paths and Osaka's pavements take the worst of it.
• Two of the best places on this page aren't parks. Taibaru and the Tarumizu garden are private land opened by their owners, which is why one has a seven-day window and the other has no bus service. Stay off the planting beds and out of the fruit.
• Hokkaido University and the University of Tokyo are working institutions. No cars on either campus, no use of the hospital car park at Hokkaido, bikes walked along the avenue, and photographs for personal use rather than publication.
• And the trees go over faster than the maples. A row in full yellow is often bare a week later, and a windy night can take most of it. Keep a spare day in the plan and move it if the row you want is finished.
• Midday is the easy light: the sun gets through the canopy and the leaves read yellow rather than black. At the night walks, the ginkgo row and the canal are lit rather than floodlit, so a phone will struggle with the trunks.

11Questions and answers

The peak week, the dates that are fixed and the ones that are not.

Keep reading

Japan autumn leaves 2026: when do they peak? Tokyo and Yokohama winter illuminations 2026-27: which are free?

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