Awa Odori
阿波おどり
12–15 August 2027
Tokushima
These dates repeat every year, so they are what to expect in 2027 rather than dates the organiser has announced yet — this page is updated as soon as it confirms them. Last held 12–15 August 2026.
Awa Odori is the dance of the "fools", in the words of its own song: "the dancing fool and the watching fool are both fools, so you might as well dance." For four nights during Obon, Tokushima's city centre is turned over to hundreds of ren, dance troupes of every size, who move through the streets in lines, the women in taut, elegant unison under folded straw hats and the men in loose, comic crouches, all driven by a fast two-beat rhythm of drums, bells, flutes and shamisen.
The festival runs from 12 to 15 August, with an indoor stage show as a curtain-raiser on the 11th. Each evening the troupes work a circuit of stages across the centre. Three of them, Sansan Aibahama, Awagin Minami-Uchimachi and Konya-machi, are ticketed bleacher stands, and two, Ryogoku-Honmachi and Shinmachibashi, are free streets where you stand at the kerb. The paid stages run two sessions, 18:00 to 19:40 and 20:20 to 22:00, and the later one is the better buy: the free stages have finished by then and the most celebrated troupes fill the stands for the finale.
Tokushima is reached by bus or train from Osaka across the Akashi Strait, or by ferry and air, and the stages are a walk from the station. Hotels in the city are booked out well ahead for Obon; Takamatsu and Naruto are alternatives. After the last stage, join the niwaka-ren, the impromptu troupes that let anyone dance. Expect heat, noise and genuine crowds, and know that the dances repeat: the interest is in the variety of the troupes, not a plot.